“I wish someone had told me to take care of my body, to use it or lose it, to move my energy from my brain down into my body earlier, sooner, that one day, the habit of not doing so would be so ingrained, it would be too late. I wish someone had told me that there are no such things as mistakes in life, only wrong turns that lead to new destinations. I wish someone had told me that letting go is better than holding on, that surrender beats grasping any day. I wish someone had told me that I didn’t have to be afraid. I wish someone had told me to say “No,” to say it loudly and often when I was young and big busted and walked through the world a target to the desires of men. I wish someone had told me that I would one day be an adult and that my world would extend ... [Continue Reading]

“Some days, the first line of a poem interrupts me and insists on being written down - NOW! Other days, I write the words 'This is what I have to say to you' at the top of the page and see what comes. Like a faucet dispensing water from a hidden reservoir below the earth, this kind of writing allows the formless mystery to flow into my conscious life. What I tap into when I write from the quiet of my meditation cushion feels limitless. Each morning finds me at the edge of my current experience, writing about where I am stuck, where I am learning to let go, and what is calling me forward right now. Words on the page, both poetry and prose, are the bread crumbs left behind as I move beyond my comfort zone and into the unknown.” --Danna Faulds

When I write at ... [Continue Reading]

"The most audacious story waits behind the one trying to hide. That is the place where you'll find the most emotion, the most passion, and the most resistance." --Lisa Dale Norton, Shimmering Images, A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir

Tell the story you most want to hide.

"The experience we did not choose, which we would have given anything to avoid, has made us different, has made us better. Through it we have learned the lesson that no one studies willingly, the hard, slow lesson of Sophocles and Shakespeare--that one grows by suffering. And that too is Jessy's gift. I write not what fifteen years past I would have not have thought possible to write: that is today I were given the choice, to accept the experience, with everything that it entails, or to refuse the bitter largesse, i would have to stretch out my hands--because out of it has come, for all of us, an unimagined life. And it will not change the last word of the story. It is still love." --Clara Claiborne Park, The Siege, A Family's Journey Into the World of an Autistic ... [Continue Reading]