by Mary Ann Moore | Dec 30, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
We poets had a beautiful tradition at Glenairley in Sooke, B.C. on Friday evenings at our retreats when the Jewish women said prayers and sang songs, lighting candles as sunset approached for the beginning of Shabbos. One of the women was Isa Milman from Victoria, B.C.
Glenairley, an old farmhouse in Sooke, was an early location for poetry retreats with Patrick Lane. They had been running for several years before I began going in 2006. I was glad to meet Isa there and many other poets to whom I’m still connected.
Isa Milman is the author of three collections of poetry: Something Small to Carry Home (2012); Prairie Kaddish (2008), and Between the Doorposts (2004). She’s a three-time winner of the Helen & Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards whose jury in 2012 called Isa “a foremost Canadian writer of Jewish themes.” Besides writing and university teaching, Isa’s professional life has encompassed occupational therapy practice, entrepreneurship and art-making such as quilt making and collage.
In 2013, Isa began writing her memoir that came out in the Fall of 2021: Afterlight: In Search of Poetry, History, and Home (Heritage House). Her memoir is a family story as well as the lesser known story of “a holocaust of bullets” in Eastern Europe. Jews were shot and thrown into pits dug by local people “to get rid of Jews” or pressed into abominable service by the Soviets when Hitler and Stalin took over Poland. (Quotes are from Isa’s interview with Kathryn Marlow on North by Northwest, CBC, October 16, 2021).
As Isa says in Afterlight, “In all thirteen thousand Jews were murdered in the district of Kostopol – local Jews, and Jews brought from neighbouring towns.”
Afterlight is composed of chapters about what Isa knew of her family history told as if in an unfolding present interspersed with chapters where readers learn as Isa learns and does research including travelling to Poland and immersing herself in Polish Jewish history and poetics. I so appreciate the sharing of her journey as a poet and writer digging into the lost history of her family.
Sabina, Isa’s mother, had withheld some horrible details but had told her children about the murders of her twin sister Basia, Basia’s two-year-old son Mordechai Fishman, ripped from her arms, and other extended family members. More stories came out in the last year of her life, while living in New London, Connecticut.
“But in her newly awakened state, just steps away from the threshold to the next world, my mother returned with a story of her childhood with Basia. She told of her twin’s brilliance, her love of poetry and history, and her desire to write a book when she was only fifteen.”
As more stories were revealed, Sabina Milman said: “Isa, write this down, this should be your next book!”
Isa did jot down her mother’s words to which she would refer several years later. (Sabina Milman died in April 2007.) The photograph on the cover of Afterlight is of Sabina and Basia Kramer in Warsaw (Praga), Poland circa 1937.
Isa’s research and travel opened her up “to the complexities of how we understand history,” she said in her interview. Her memoir is “deeply rooted in the facts of the history that I tell,” Isa says in her introduction, and “it’s an exploration of imagination” as she creates scenes and dialogue as she envisions them. The book really is a marvel.
There’s also a mystery to be solved: Isa wants to learn more about her mother’s twin sister Basia who published poetry when she was fourteen, and was murdered in 1942 when she was twenty-five.
I found it heartwarming to read that Isa’s husband Robbie accompanied her to Poland where she was to present at a conference about Jewish-Canadian-Polish cultural connections in April 2014.Originally, he hadn’t want to go as nothing attracted him to Poland “not even the food.”
Robbie said: “I’ve been watching and listening as you prepare for this trip, and I think that doing it alone is a bit more than you should take on by yourself.”
Robbie, whose full name was Robert Brooke Naylor McConnell (1942 – 2019), was a fourth generation British Columbian. Afterlight is dedicated to him, Isa’s children “and theirs.”
It was also heartwarming to read of the various connections Isa made to Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in her research and travels.
Isa’s parents, Sabina and Olek Milman considered themselves lucky, she said in her interview. They were deported to Siberia, spending twenty-six days in a cattle car enroute to Itatka, “the second-to-last stop of this railway line, the farthest prison camp of the Soviet gulag,” she says in the book. [Photo of Isa Milman by Shea Lowry]
The Milmans did have some luck and synchronicity along their arduous journey, before and during their deportation. In early 1943 when they were sent to Uzbekistan, Sabina met a young Russian soldier on the journey. They conversed in Russian when their paths crossed, heading in different directions. When the soldier heard the Milmans were headed for Fergana he said his parents lived there “. . . and they would be overjoyed to receive word from me that I’m alive and well.” More than fifty years later, Sabina remembered the address on Vtoraia Ulitsa (Second Street).
Isa writes that “Once again, my mothers’ treasure chest of languages, and her natural friendliness and warmth, opened the door to the next chapter of my parents’ survival.”
Afterlight is a healing journey with its references to crimes against humans by fellow humans, Isa’s shedding of tears on the site of atrocities in Kostopil, and the blessed connections that can be made with survivors and allies. There is much to appreciate and honour in Isa’s story of uncovering the sorrows and the joys of her family. She, along with other Jews, is a member of “an ancient global family” as Rabbi Rami Shapiro has said in one of his magazine columns.
When Polish poet, Tomasz Rozycki, was visiting Victoria, Isa asked him if he had heard of “Tikkun – this beautiful Jewish concept of repair.” He shook his head and Isa told him: “This is our task on earth, to heal what’s broken, to make it a little better. It’s the most we can hope for.”
Among the amazing family photos included in Afterlight is one of Sabina, Olek and their daughters Estera and Isa Milman leaving Germany in May of 1950, where both girls had been born in DP camps.
The word “afterlight” is one Isa discovered and found to be the perfect title for her memoir. “Afterlight is an uncommon word that refers to the light visible in the sky after sunset, or to a look back in time, a retrospect,” she writes in her introduction.
The book is timely as Isa said in her interview. Hatred and genocide still exist. People are still displaced from their homelands. “What can we do as human beings to make it a little bit better in this world?” she asks.
by Mary Ann Moore | Nov 27, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
I’ve never received a book for review that comes with a box full of edible goodies – not until a recent delivery that is. Alon Ozery’s new book, Even the Sidewalk Could Tell: How I Came Out to My Wife, My Three Children, and the World (Regent Park Publishing, 2021) was accompanied by delicious treats from Alon’s two businesses of which he is the co-founder: Ozery Bakery in Vaughan, Ontario and Parallel Brothers in Toronto.
First the book: Everyone should tell their coming out story. No story is the same and the approaches can be as unique as the tellers. (I’m thinking of My Autobiography of Carson McCullers which was Jenn Shapland’s innovative coming-out story as it related to her research into the life of American writer Carson McCullers.)
Alon Ozery’s memoir is written chronologically and in a way that can be shared with his ex-wife, children and family members. He describes his life from being raised in Israel to more recent times living with his male life partner in Toronto.
Alon moved with his parents and two brothers, Guy and Aharon, to Toronto when he was sixteen and got early work experience working for Coleman’s, a Jewish deli. Following his graduation from high school, he worked at Coleman’s and then went back to Israel to fulfill the obligation of army service for three years.
When Alon returned to Canada at twenty-one, he earned an undergraduate degree in hospitality management from Ryerson University. He and his father opened a restaurant that evolved into a wholesale bakery. Alon’s wife Michelle also worked there and his brother Guy joined them four years after they opened. Alon and Michelle’s first son was born two years after opening the store. Two more children followed: another son and a daughter.
Alon doesn’t name his children which I can understand. They’re teenagers now and will have their own stories to tell. (I think of Alison Wearing telling the story of her gay father in a stage production as well as in her book: Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter: Growing Up with a Gay Dad.)
Although he had come out to his wife Michelle as well as family members and close friends, Alon and Michelle set aside a time to sit down with the children one evening to tell them. Some people know they’re gay from childhood while others, such as Alon, grow up suppressing any desire towards the same sex.
When he had his first sexual encounter Alon said “it felt as if my body had been waiting for this my entire life.” He later realized: “I had finally aligned with my true self.” Some lesbians and gay men have felt pressured to do what was expected of them (to get married to someone of the opposite sex for instance). From his own experience, Alon says: “I had trained and brainwashed myself about who I ‘needed’ to be for so long that was able to ignore the signs about my sexuality that were there from the very beginning.”
There are some charming drawings in the book which may have been done by Alon. One drawing shows the three kids sitting on the couch in the living room as he and Michelle tell them the news that would change their lives as a family. One son wanted to know if they would still have family dinners on Fridays. That tradition has continued along with Alon and Michelle’s new partners.
Alon Ozery’s memoir about coming out as a gay man describes a very positive experience as he didn’t suffer estrangement from family, a custody battle for children, physical harm or other effects of homophobia. It’s s true testament to love to come out to a beloved spouse and have that love returned in supporting the path you need to take.
I’m thinking of a less positive experience by Irish poet and theologian, Padraig O’Tuama, raised Roman Catholic, who suffered “exorcisms” for being gay. He says: “Since beginning to tell the truth of my sexual orientation more widely a number of things have happened. First, I have begun to realise the taste of relief. It is always a good thing to tell the truth. I have also found myself on the outside of the halls of holiness.” At the beginning of In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World (Hodder & Stoughton, 2015), from which the quote is taken, Padraig says: “Hello to the need for shelter. Hello to the stories that shelter us.”
Fifty percent of the profits from the sales of Even the Sidewalk Could Tell are being donated to Friends of Ruby in Toronto, an organization dedicated to the progressive well-being of LGBTQI2S youth through mental health services, social services and housing.
As for the food, I tried the halva first as I am a big fan of the sesame treat. Alon Ozery is co-owner of Parallel Brothers, a restaurant and sesame butter brand in Toronto. The halva I received is infused with chocolate and black sea salt with sesame seeds sourced from Humera, Ethiopia. It’s so light and delicious. I was having a little portion after lunch and after dinner. The take-out menu at Parallel Brothers looks delicious. For you Toronto folks, the restaurant is at 217 Geary Avenue. You can also order products online at parallelbrothers.com.
Alon is also the co-founder of the Ozery Bakery that produces products that can be purchased online. I tried all three of the Keto Snacks that are baked clusters of seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame and flax) with very little sugar. My favourite was the sweet and salty. Who doesn’t want a snack while they’re reading? You can order them from ozerybakery.com.
by Mary Ann Moore | Nov 20, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
I look forward to Rachel Lang’s astrology newsletters with her readings for the month ahead so was delighted to hear of her new book: Modern Day Magic: (Hardie Grant Books, 2021).
The book is beautifully designed with illustrations throughout and contains “ 8 Simple Rules” to “realize your power and shape your life.” Modern Day Magic isn’t about witchcraft as Rachel points out through she does include ideas, rituals and spells from her past experience as a practising witch. It’s a comprehensive book with all sorts of inspiration and possibilities for exploring our own magical power.
“Magic is not about getting something you want,” Rachel points out. “It’s about embodying your prime creative potential.” She describes how the word “magic” dating back to the 5th century BCE, was used as a derogatory term.
“The Goddess” is included in one of the sections of the book which Rachel describes as the Divine Feminine. We have come to know her by various names. Rachel doesn’t want readers to “limit Her to any one of these images or icons” (such as Diana, Demeter, Quan Yin, Aphrodite, Athena or Hera). “The Divine Feminine, the Goddess, is the presence of the Divine that’s alive and palpable in our world – in nature, humans, and even the stars. She’s the connecting force between energy and matter.”
Each of the chapters has journal prompts and in Chapter 1, readers are prompted to write a letter to the Goddess “stating your intention.” And, readers are invited to write a letter back to themselves as if she’s writing to you.
As I first read the book, I did write down my intention and didn’t write the letter back which I’m feeling the need of now. In fact, my intention may have shifted in the midst of this season of Samhain about rest and letting go.
There is also a Daily Practice as part of each chapter so that in Chapter 1 it is to gather images of goddesses or “individuals who embody Goddess energy.”
Magic Rule #1 is “Trust Yourself All of Yourself.” In that chapter, is a list of archetypes and I like the idea of choosing from the list that we embody within ourselves. For instance: mother, mystic, priestess, artist, teacher, muse.
A “magical exercise” is to imagine a scene in which “several of the different archetypes you’ve identified with meet to discuss your primary intention.” In a later chapter, there are some questions related to the four archetypes readers most identify with.
Magic Rule #3 is “Attention is Power.” Rachel says: “If you want to feel better about your finances, give attention to your successes and celebrate the abundance you experience in your life.”
I remember when I was working at a law firm in Toronto in the 1990s and although I had cut back my hours to three and a half days a week, I still wanted to leave the job altogether. I wasn’t sure how all that was going to come about but I kept visualizing doing just that, even imagining a farewell party after nine years of having worked there. As it turns out, my position was going to be phased out and although I could still work at the firm, I wouldn’t be in the position of scheduler that I had helped to create. I asked to be laid off which isn’t always a positive move but in this case receiving Employment Insurance benefits and creating my own business of offering women’s writing circles turned out very well.
Rachel includes astrological information under Magic Rule #8: “Use Magical Astrology.” I was interested to see that Wednesday or Thursday is associated with wisdom/spiritual growth with the moon sign of Sagittarius or Pisces. Wednesday is the day the Writing Life women’s writing circle meets. And Wednesday is associated with communication or writing projects with the moon sign of Gemini, Virgo or Aquarius. So that’s perfect as well.
In Chapter 12, “Working with Magic,” Rachel says she and her wife Tisha “love discovering new ways to receive guiding messages using everyday objects.” I’ve thought that way too and also, objects as metaphors in poems can be a form of divination. Just think of all that Pablo Neruda wrote in his odes to socks, a chair, a bed and a box of tea.
The Daily Practice for the chapter is “Everyday Divination.” You need to know your intention for this. I think of an intention as something to live with each day rather than a goal to be reached in the future. With that in mind, “look around you. Find three objects that grab your attention. For the first one, answer the question, ‘What does this object symbolize about my intention.’ Write down the first impressions that come to you. For the second object, answer the question, ‘What does this object say about an obstacle to my intention? Write down your impressions. Thinking of the third object, ask ‘What do I need to know about the outcome of my intention? Now, write: “Am I aligned to manifest my intention? Look for just one object or person to glean insight from. Write: ‘What does this tell me about how aligned I am to manifest my intention? Write down three things.”
The first object that drew my intention as I looked around my office was a card with a swinging writing angel that says “I love writing. I love the swirl & swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” What does this object symbolize about my intention? It’s absolutely right on. My intention was to continue to write and publish my work. It’s the writing that is most important, the process and the discoveries I make. I appreciate writing for self-expression, the choosing of words and images, the honouring of everyday ordinariness as well as what a poem or piece of writing can teach. Something new has been added to the atmosphere, emanating through the currents.
What does the second object say about an obstacle to my intention? The second object that drew my attention is a little ostrich called Olivia that I first saw in a magazine. The company is Jelly Cat Bonbon. Such a great name! This ostrich isn’t real so maybe the obstacle is attempting to be “real” in my writing. I see that as more of a challenge. Ostrichs are flightless birds and the obstacle may have something to do with my writing not taking flight.
A framed photo of Sarah’s Mr. Big, a big cat, is the third object with the question: “What do I need to know about the outcome of my intention?” Mr. Big was a beloved companion to Sarah and to her other cats which have also passed on to the spirit realm. Perhaps my writing will continue to be a loving companion and will live on after I’m gone.
“Am I aligned to manifest my intention?” I looked for one object to glean insight and it was a framed mandala Sarah drew for me that has images of things I am drawn to: the hamsa (hand), rose, mermaid, Venus of Willendorf and Frida Kahlo. What does this mandala tell me about how aligned I am to manifest my intention? It confirms that I am aligned through all my interests and passions as well as ongoing learning.
Rachel says: “Now, more than ever, we need a return to magic. It is the force that breaks walls, open hearts, and allows us to be in harmonious relationship with one another and the natural world. Think of what our collective magic can do! Imagine a world dedicated to wonder, curiosity, and connection.”
by Mary Ann Moore | Oct 7, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
Sharon Butala’s husband died when she was two weeks short of her sixty-seventh birthday she says in the first essay, “Against Ageism,” in her new book of essays on aging and the writing life: This Strange Visible Air (Freehand Books, 2021).
As she was born in 1940, Sharon is 81 years old this year. She has been on her own for over a decade and writes of loneliness in “Open Your Eyes” saying: “I was lonely because I had no significant other reading the newspaper in the other room.”
Sharon recalls being eight years old, living in a village in central Saskatchewan, as a little girl. One “hot Friday afternoon in June,” she wandered off from a softball game being organized on the baseball diamond. She knew, as a small child and not athletic, she’d be the last chosen for any team.
On the front steps to the empty school, Sharon sat alone. Although an older girl had seen her there, either she didn’t let anyone know or if she told a teacher, the teacher chose to leave Sharon alone.
From research Sharon has done about loneliness, she shares a quote by Judith Shulevitz from The New Republic in 2013: “And yet loneliness is made as well as given, and at a very early age. Deprive us of the attention of a loving, reliable parent, and, if nothing happens to make up for that lack, we’ll tend toward loneliness for the rest of our lives. Not only that, but our loneliness will probably make us moody, self-doubting, angry, pessimistic, shy, and hypersensitive to criticism.” It’s a passage that Sharon says, caused her to freeze, “so accurate a description it was of how I gradually, over my adulthood, have come to see myself.”
At the end of her essay, Sharon asks, “But if my teacher had rescued me from my desire for solitude, and my self-willed loneliness, would I be a writer today?”
Burning the Journals
As many of us grow older, we wonder what will happen to our handwritten journals. Sharon has a gas fireplace so went to a friend’s house who had a wood-burning fireplace where she could burn her journals. She says in “Cold Ankles”: “The journals so embarrassed me that I decided to burn them all while I still could, the elderly person on her own being all too well aware that at any moment the Great Catastrophe can strike.”
Stopping to read some of the dreams she had recorded on the journal pages before she threw them into the fire, Sharon saw that some of them “turned out to be prescient.”
The title of the essay is from this passage: “Last night I caught myself thinking I should buy some new socks, as winter is approaching, and my ankles are already cold.”
As for the journals, she says: “And I can’t tell you, even now, if burning my journals was a good or a bad think to have done. If burning my journals changed anything, about the life they recorded or my life to come.”
An Unsolved Murder
I’ve read other books by Sharon Butala and particularly appreciated The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature, one of her early nonfiction books. I haven’t read The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship and now I’m especially curious. Sharon writes of the subject of that particular book in her essay: “The Murder Remains Unsolved.”
“2021lmarks fifty-nine years since beauty queen Alexandra Wiwcharuk was beaten, raped, and murdered, and her body buried in a shallow grave in a copse of trees near the weir on the northeast bank of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.”
A few weeks before the discovery of her murder, Alexandra had turned twenty-three; she had graduated from nursing school and was employed at Saskatoon City Hospital. Sharon was fourteen when she met Alex and although they weren’t friends, they knew one another from high school activities.
The murder was never solved and while no harm came to Sharon as she was researching her book over a period of ten years, there was some harassment by phone and other close encounters with cars. Men she wanted to talk to avoided her. And someone anonymously “said that I would be killed if I kept on asking questions . . . “
Sharon says she learned about corruption, class, misogyny and evil. “Also, slowly, over the years, I have begun to see better what I specifically need to fear, and to separate most of that from what doesn’t need to be feared. Now, at eighty, my fears come mostly (but not all) from being an old woman in an old-woman-hostile world.”
The Writing Life
In “Vanished Without a Trace,” Sharon describes her writing life. She published her first book, a novel, in 1984 when she was forty-four. She had begun to write at thirty-eight, leaving her plan to be a painter, behind.
Sharon was a cattle rancher’s wife and rose at 5 a.m. as her husband did, going to her desk to write for two to six hours every day, “weekends and holidays included.” As she “lived in the middle of it,” Sharon wrote about rural western Canada.
“I gave up everything for writing, “she told a television interviewer. And while she thought one night, that she would give up her writing for her husband, child, mother, sisters or friends who needed her, she later acknowledged she was a “liar.” What came to Sharon was the knowledge, “that I would always put my writing ahead of any other significant demand on me; that there was nothing and nobody for whom I would s stop.”
It’s startling to realize that although she says her “sales record was still good enough to get me a publisher,” the ten percent she received “wouldn’t pay the rent, and the big-money prizes continued to elude me.” No wonder writers need to have speaking gigs, work in bakeries and bookshops, or teach.
In 2018, the Writers’ Union of Canada reported that writers’ “incomes had dropped twenty-seven percent since 1998; eighty-one percent of writers now had incomes below the poverty line; worse, female writers now earned fifty-five percent of what male writers earned.”
In August 2007, when her husband Peter died, Sharon “became the sole owner of a bank account that, if it did not make me rich, left me able to live as I always had . . “
At the end of her seventies and in good health, Sharon says in her essay that she is having “a burst of late life creativity.” She tells friends: “I haven’t much time left; I have to get everything down before I depart.” What keeps her writing is the same motive she began with which is: “I continue to have ideas that I need to explore through writing. I can see no reason to quit, for what else would I do with myself? After years of the hardest struggle, the misery of it, the pain and the doubts each day as I tried to find the right words for the idea whose shape I was struggling to reveal, writing is coming easily now, and flows.”
Perhaps Sharon has given up the award and contest-winning aspect of writing and is finding courage and solace in her writing. I know that writing will remain for me the way I make my way through life and I appreciate being in circles where we write together and share aspects of our queries and our discoveries.
Sharon’s final essay, “On the Pandemic” dated May 28, 2020, was written during the early months of the pandemic. At that time, she knew no one who was ill and no one who had died. As an introvert, life during “lockdown” wasn’t all that much different for her. She did wonder though “which would happen first: the gradual lessening of the lockdown, or our complete descent into insanity.”
Hopefully it was the gradual lessening of the lockdown so that Sharon could see her friends again. Sharon has calculated how many years she has left and I find myself thinking of that as well. Most important, is how we spend our days: writing, not for any awards, but because we need to. And while we’re at it, we can celebrate the desire and imagination that continues to nourish us.
Lorna Crozier, another Saskatchewan writer based for many years in North Saanich on Vancouver Island, says: “Oh, help me find the mettle to resist the call to go quietly into that good night. No matter how many years under my belt, may I have the audacity to open my mouth and wail. In the same essay, “Running/Writing For Your Life” (The New Quarterly, Summer 2021), Lorna says: “How will I touch with words those places aging makes tender. I don’t know, though I started to do that about three books ago. What I do know is that the days are shrinking, and that as I set out into the lengthening dark, it is a journey I must embark on alone.”
Still, Lorna will continue because as she says: “I can’t imagine a life without poetry, without writing poetry, I have to believe that the sheer wild joy of it will lead me to places I haven’t gone before, places where I can discover some shard of beauty, whether painful or joyous. These are the risks I take, the nerve I ride on.”
It’s true that beauty discovered may be painful or joyous. We remain curious. As John Gould says of This Strange Visible Air by Sharon Butala: “The insight embodied in this book doesn’t come free with age, but as the payoff for decades of fine attention, of impassioned curiosity.”
by Mary Ann Moore | Sep 3, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
There are many benefits to journaling as the editors and writers of this new, comprehensive collection, Transformational Journaling for Coaches, Therapists, and Clients (Routledge, 2021) illustrate. Among them are gaining perspective, increasing clarity with life decisions, tapping into inner ways of knowing, noticing and clearing limiting beliefs and patterns, and writing the story one wants for their life. As a journal keeper since I learned to write, I can agree with and affirm all of those benefits of personal writing. “Our life narratives . . . hold the thread of our values and desires, while also weaving us into connection with others and the world we live in,” say the co-editors Lynda Monk and Eric Maisel.
Among the coaches and therapists who have contributed to Transformational Journaling are some who describe their early days of keeping a journal. Now they’ve become counsellors advising others to do the same. Nicolle Nattrass for instance who has contributed “Creative Journaling for Self-Care,” remembers a diary with a key where she found “journaling was a soft place for me to land.” Nicolle is a Certified Addiction Counselor, playwright, professional actress and workshop facilitator who lives on Vancouver Island, B.C.
Lynda Monk who is co-editor of the book and director of the International Association for Journal Writing (IAJW) also remembers a personal diary with lock and key, realizing during adolescence, “Journaling emerged as something that I did to solve problems, express my feelings, and capture my special memories of daily life.”
Following her career as s a social worker, Lynda began a training and coaching business specializing in burnout prevention for helpers, healers, and leaders. Her contribution to the collection, “Journaling for Coach and Therapist Self-Care,” has five tips for helping professionals in which Lynda says: “Be sure that if you are recommending journaling to your clients, that you are also engaging with this transformational healing tool in your own life.” She says: “Write about how you are feeling and your own needs and responses, versus the details of your client’s situations.”
(Photo of Lynda Monk)
A. M. (Anne) Carley, a creative coach, has been journaling since childhood as well. She remembers writing in a “green spiral notebook” and says: “Over the decades, my journal has become a portal to my wisest, best self.” (from “How Journaling Benefits Your Coaching and Your Clients.”)
There are well-known contributors to the book such as its co-editor Eric Maisel, PhD who has written over fifty books. His essay, “The Focused Journal Method,” is a method of self-inquiry. Others whose names have been familiar to me for years include Kathleen Adams, founder/director of the Center for Journal Therapy; Lucia Capacchione author of The Power of Your Other Hand; and poet and writer Sheila Bender, author of several instruction books on writing. Sheila’s contribution is “Refreshing Experience with the Most Powerful of Writing Craft Tools.”
John Evans is another whose work I have read as he co-authored a book with James Pennebaker called Expressive Writing: Words That Heal. John often teaches at Duke Integrative Medicine and Duke’s Health Humanities Lab and has a private practice at Psychology Associates in Chapel Hill, NC. His essay for this collection is “The Dao of Expressive Writing to Heal” co-authored with Shu Cao Mo, a social entrepreneur advocating for individual and collective transformation through arts and education.
Whether well known or less known to readers, all contributors have something valuable to offer, from their own experience and dedicated research. Following each chapter is a list of tips for counsellors and coaches for working with their clients. There are also tips for clients and journal keepers followed by journaling prompts.
As Susan Borkin, PhD points out in “A Therapist’s Guide to Using Journaling with Clients,” “[Therapeutic journaling] is an evolving, creative, organic process with few actual rules.” Susan is a psychotherapist, speaker and author of three books on the transformative power of journaling. (Photo of Susan Borkin)
Hannah Braime has some good ideas in her essay, “Journaling for Busy Coaches and Clients”. Hannah is a creative coach and author of five books on journaling and self-care. One of her ideas is creating lists such as “10 new things I want to try this year” or “5 places I want to see during my lifetime.” I’m a big fan of lists such as books I’ve read, books I want to read, books I plan to write!
Gail Heney who works with women in recovery has contributed “Writing Through Recovery.” She acknowledges in her essay that she got sober in 2006.
Sandra Marinella wrote a wonderful book, The Story You Need to Tell, and teaches at Integrative Health at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. Her essay is “Journaling Your Stories for Growth and Healing” in which she outlines “five stages of writing to heal and transform your story and your life.”
In a section on “Spiritual and Nature Journaling,” Jackee Holder has contributed an essay on “Nature Metaphors for Journaling and Therapeutic Writing.” Jackee lives “in the heart of what was once the great North Wood that covered most of South London.” I love her idea of creating a personal deck of questions using paper luggage tags or something similar. Tree metaphors leading to questions could include such words as rooted, branching out, going out on a limb, blossoming, letting go, planting, seed, growing. (Photo of Jackee Holder)
The section entitled “Journaling with Groups and Leaders” includes an essay by Ahava Shira, PhD who co-wrote Writing Alone Together: Journalling in a Circle of Women for Creativity, Compassion and Connection with Lynda Monk and Wendy Judith Cutler.
I was also glad to see “The Women’s Writing Circle: Creating a Community Space Through Writing and Sharing” by Nancy Johnston and Shehna Javeed. I appreciate what the two women have to say: “Bringing women writers together to write in a safe, inclusive, and supportive space supports their self-expression, confidence as writers, and community building.” Nancy and Shehna live in Toronto where Nancy is an associate professor who teaches writing and courses on disability studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Shehna has had a long career in higher education administration and student advising.
In the “Techniques and Applications” section is an essay by Cynthia Holloway Kelvin entitled “Journaling with Poetry: Embracing Change Through Poetic Process.” Cynthia is a clinical psychologist, creative therapist, and performance consultant who, in her essay, offers a three-part process including movement.
Whether you are exploring the use of journaling in your professional or in your personal practice, there is lots of support here. And if you already have a regular journaling practice and thought you knew all there is to know, not so! There are so many rich resources in Transformational Journaling for Coaches, Therapists, and Clients, gathered into one place, with more than 50 journaling experts offering renewal and rejuvenation through journaling. As the co-editors say: “Journaling is an essential tool and practice for living a more conscious and awakened life.”
by Mary Ann Moore | Aug 25, 2021 | A Poet's Nanaimo
Wherever our ancestors lived, they gathered in circles around a fire. Through the years we’ve gathered in circles in various ways such as quilting, for prayer, women’s consciousness raising, for self-help and for honouring the changing seasons.
A poem by Danusha Lameris, “Small Kindnesses,” includes a reminder of how much we’re missing without the circle around the fire:
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire.
I began offering women’s writing circles in 1997 as a way to be together with our stories, each having an opportunity to be seen and heard. My motto when I began was: “Be seen. Be heard. Be amazed at what comes out of the stillness.”
In the writing circles I offer, we are a community, creating and celebrating in a form of ceremony that awakens and honours our own spirits and the seasons including the seasons of our lives. Now that September is approaching, it’s time to call the circle again, gathering women for sox-week circles to begin in person in Nanaimo on Wednesday, September 8 and via Zoom on Thursday, September 9. (I’ve included info about both circles at the end of this blog.)
“I’ve always wanted to write but I don’t know where to start,” someone may say. “I don’t call myself a writer but I keep a journal,” someone else may say. All may have a longing for a place to be heard. In the Writing Life circle you are supported by guidelines that offer a structure to explore within, as well as by one another. You can honour and give voice to your longings and dive into the stories waiting to be told. Our stories, written and shared in the circle, take us into the realm of the sacred.
We are engaging in the ancient wisdom of the circle in a modern application. As Matthew Fox said in his book Creativity: “The building of strong souls and strong communities requires strong rituals – occasions that both link us to our ancestors and that speak in a language that is fresh and challenging.”
While there are many components to the circle such as connection, communication, compassion and curiosity, I’ve narrowed them down to ten.
The Ten Components of the Circle
Container
Writing is a ceremony. Ceremonies are meaning containers.
Gail Sher, The Intuitive Writer
The circle is a container, with a structure and circle agreements. As there is structure in a story, there is structure in the circle where we learn to stretch ourselves and also learn to pause. It is a simple yet powerful way to honour ourselves.
Ceremony
The candle is lit. Some sage may have been burned to clear the space. This holy smoke is an element of most spiritual practices of the world. The poetry and prose we create together defines our longing and creates a ceremony of stillness and consciousness.
Conversation
For all creativity is communication; it is the utmost in communication, the telling of our story, our hearts, our truth, our inner wisdom, our search for beauty, and our telling of pain.
Matthew Fox, Creativity
We live in a noisy era where the levels of sound increase as the needs of people to be heard become desperate. In the circle we sit down and listen with an intentional conversation.
Composting
What we may see as scraps for the compost pile can becoming nourishing for the soil/soul. The ideas percolate for awhile and as various elements come into assist them such as the support of others in the circle, sparkling imaginings can result. Out of the daydreams, are ideas for your own stories from life.
Calling the Circle
When I put the word out about a new writing circle, I don’t think of “marketing” but rather calling people back to the circle. “A circle is not just a meeting with the chairs rearranged. It is a return to an original form of human community, as well as a leap forward to create a new form of community,” Christina Baldwin says in Calling the Circle. “Calling the circle is a declaration of readiness to link where we came from, where we are, and where we may go.”
Coming Home
I read Christina Baldwin’s book on journaling, One to One, in the 1970s and went on to read her other books on journaling and on the circle. She is a pioneer in journaling and circle work. “I want to come home to the earth again,” she wrote. Simply sitting and listening to ourselves and one another can bring us home.
Centre
The centre of the circle where I’ve placed a candle, a talking piece, and the ting sha to ring our beginning represents the great good or great spirit. As we look to the centre of ourselves, we look to the centre of the circle for strength, guidance and wisdom. The centre of the circle is like the centre of the medicine wheel, a cauldron full of possibilities.
Creativity
“The Celtic imagination loved the circle,” John O’Donohue said. “It recognized how the rhythm of experience, nature, and divinity followed a circular pattern.” The circle is a place to get in touch with all the ways in which we are creative, to remember the joy we experienced from planting a garden or creating a collage of sticks and stones on the beach or by picking up a musical instrument. In the circle we may do some collage, take a walk to loosen the ideas, create paint chip poems or a group poem, and read a poem together one line at a time.
I like what Flora Bowley says in her book The Art of Aliveness: “Now, more than ever, applying the philosophies of the creative process to our lives and to our world is not only helpful, it’s vital.”
Community
Ideally, community is a place where we can meet with others wholeheartedly to celebrate our sameness and our differences. It’s a place where we get to live up to our full potential and are supported for it. In the circle we create a community where we learn what it’s like to be all we can be and we take those experiences into creating healthy communities in our neighbourhoods and workplaces.
Celebration
How wonderful it is to celebrate together as each woman is honoured and each rite of passage is acknowledged. “Won’t you celebrate with me,” Lucille Clifton said in her poem with that title.
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
I look forward to gathering in the circle in Nanaimo as well as on Zoom with women who are further away. “Keep holding the hearth – these sometimes nearly invisible islands of calm and circle and feminine energy are the soul portals of the world at this chaotic and dangerous time,” Christina Baldwin wrote to me many years ago. How accurate those words are for us today.
There is a fire of welcome in my Nanaimo living room, although not a literal one, as well as on Zoom where we can see and hear one another to keep the embers glowing. It can become a sacred place.
Writing Life women’s writing circles
Nourish Yourself. Honour Your Voice. Write Your Stories.
Writing Life women’s writing circle in person in Nanaimo
Theme: Where Many Streams Meet
In the Writing Life women’s writing circle, you will find your voice and trust it as you’ll learn to trust the people on the journey with you. You’re not alone. Sing your song and dance your truth as you realize your stories as a place where many streams meet. Notes and handouts will be sent to those who happen to miss a week.
Wednesday, September 8 to Wednesday, October 13, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
(six Wednesday mornings)
+ a Writing Life salon for sharing your work from the six-week writing circle on Wednesday, October 20
Fee: $270 payable by cheque or e-transfer
You can be in touch with questions or to save you a space in the circle by emailing me at creativity@maryannmoore.ca.
Writing Life women’s writing circle via Zoom
Theme: Where Many Streams Meet
In the Writing Life women’s writing circle, you will find your voice and trust it as you’ll learn to trust the people on the journey with you. You’re not alone. Sing your song and dance your truth as you realize your stories as a place where many streams meet. Handouts will be sent via email before each weekly circle. Notes will be sent to those who happen to miss a week.
Thursday, September 9 to Thursday, October 14, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Pacific time
(six Wednesday mornings)
+ a Writing Life salon for sharing your work from the six-week writing circle on Thursday, October 21
Fee: $270 payable by cheque or e-transfer
You can be in touch with questions or to save you a space in the circle by emailing me at creativity@maryannmoore.ca.
