writing from a time such as this

"And the moment you decide to channel your anger into hope, and turn that hope into action, you change the world forever." — Nikita Gill

Upcoming Workshops:

January 29. Practice Session #25: Writing Through Winter // 7 - 8:30 pm et (free for paid subscribers and Inner Story members)

February 6. Free Monthly Writing the Layers Workshop // 7 pm et

February 8 & 15. Words That Heal: An Expressive Writing Workshop (via The Writer’s Center) // 2 - 4:30 pm et

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I had something completely different planned for today, but decided to let today’s story work exercise flow out organically to meet my own need to process and to offer a creative pathway for you, too.

First, a couple of updates.

two updates and a reminder

Thank you for your patience as I’ve been feeling my way into a posting rhythm that works best for me in this season. Going forward, weekly story work posts will still be shared mostly on Mondays, but I’m releasing myself from a specific posting time. I’m trusting my need for flow and flexibility while honoring my desire for consistency.

Another small shift: The weekly story work exercises will now be open to all subscribers for one week. When a new post goes up, the exercise from the week before will be archived and accessible to paid subscribers only.

The monthly free writing prompts and workshop will always be open to all subscribers, along with any other posts that I share throughout the month.

And lastly, if you’re a paid subscriber, a reminder that we have a session of The Practice, our group journaling sessions, coming up this Thursday, January 29. This one’s theme is Writing Through Winter. If you haven’t already, you can register here. If you can’t make it, we’ll miss you, but it will be recorded.

I created this session with the dark, cold weather season in mind, but also as a metaphor for what so many of us are moving through in our lives and in the world right now. Let’s gather and renew ourselves in the warmth of community, reflection, and expression.

Weekly Story Work Exercise

Our current theme is unsent letters. You can find our recent themes here. You can find all the archives here. You can purchase a copy of my book, Story Work, here.

a time such as this

I’m at my desk working when my daughter comes to me in tears.

Tears about just wanting to enjoy being a teenager and be excited about going to college in two years and the life ahead of her, but feeling selfish and even foolish for having these dreams while living in a world where people are oppressed and coming of age in a country that is one of the oppressors and where democracy is unraveling in real time.

I hold her on my lap and listen. My youngest of three. As tall as I am, draped over me in the chair. Ushering a child across the threshold from childhood into young adulthood is never easy, no matter what’s happening in the world. And in a brown body, there are added layers of complexity, vulnerability, and raw truth that can’t be ignored.

We decide we need cookies. In the kitchen, we pull out ingredients and heat up the oven, and I tell her that what we’re seeing more openly now has always existed. How people who thrive on division and control spin stories to hide and deny, gaslight and distract and none of this is new.

The curtain is just being pulled back now in such a brazen way because so many people looked the other way when brown bodies were being murdered and it didn’t feel so close to home, they believed in the distractions, avoided the inconvenient truths, and let fear do their voting and choosing.

The sharp reality is that this is not going away. And we are here, in the world right now, facing a time such as this, asking ourselves not just what to do, but how to cope, how to help our children cope, how to keep going when everything feels so heavy?

We eat our cookies while they’re still hot and I remind her that this is not the first time marginalized people and their allies have lived through fear, instability, and moral reckoning, and it won’t be the last.

Our ancestors faced unimaginable brutality and hate and pressed on anyway. They wanted to live and thrive, to get their educations, to grow with their families. They wanted safety and joy and long, prosperous lives. They wanted to hope and dream, too. And they were afraid, put in life-threatening situations every day, but they did not let fear consume them.

They had to make impossible decisions about how to survive and how to imagine a future in a world where those in power decided who counted as fully human and worthy of equal opportunity and dignity.

She says she doesn’t want to hate anyone, but she feels so angry and sad and doesn’t know where to put it. Full of cookies and milk, we stare into space for awhile—in silence. I’ve taught my kids not to bypass their feelings. They have to feel the burn of it and move through it, not around it.

We can grieve—we must grieve—and we can be scared and mad, but we can’t let fear shut us down or take over. In our home, we will keep having the hard conversations and preparing ourselves for things to get worse before they get better. We will keep practicing normalcy, too. Baking the cookies, enjoying and comforting each other, laughing and playing, getting on each other’s nerves, and crying in each other’s arms.

We will keep talking about what’s happening and what we can do, how we can help. Because inaction breeds hopelessness, while even small, authentic acts of care and contribution restore a sense of agency and remind us that hate is not in charge here.

We can’t let them steal our joy. I assure her that it’s not selfish for her to keep building her life, planning her education, and choosing wonder and happiness everyday. I want my kids to know how essential it is that we care for ourselves as a form of resistance.

I want them to know that it’s our responsibility to own our gifts and use them to not just support ourselves but to support humanity in whatever way the times call for. To not let hate turn us bitter. To refuse to let hate have the final word. To put love and humanity and unity first—always and in all ways.

story work and inconvenient truths

Right now, we are all being asked to examine the stories we’ve inherited and the ones we made up to feel safe. Stories that we’ve been living inside of without question— because the questions were just too disruptive.

Most of us are not politicians or activists. We are everyday people. We are writers and creatives, neighbors and helpers, mothers and fathers, friends and family watching narratives collapse and myths exposed, asking ourselves what can we do.

Story Work as a practice involves the willingness to look honestly at the stories we’ve been told, the stories we’ve told ourselves, and letting the truths we discover guide us.

From the book:

“How do we face the tension between love and fear? We start with self-honesty. We practice radical self-care because we know that healthy habits replenish our minds, bodies, and souls. We balance self-nurturance with service to others and make collective healing part of our creative vision. We find unique ways to share our resources, ideas, joys, and passions with the world. We don’t get lost in roles, expectations and labels. We learn how to protect our energy and harness our power. By serving in ways that honor our true nature, we honor our ancestors and plant seeds for our descendants. We give each other hope. We surrender to the unknown by choosing love over fear.” — Story Work: Field Notes on Self-Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative

In The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates names the work of interrogating the myths, starting with our own:

“There has to be something in you, something that hungers for clarity. And you will need that hunger, because if you follow that path, soon enough you will find yourself confronting not just their myths, not just their stories, but your own. This is difficult, if only because so much of our myth-making was done in service of liberation, in doing whatever we could to dig our way out of the pit into which we were cast. And above us stand the very people who did the casting, jeering, tossing soil into our eyes and yelling down at us, “You’re doing it wrong.” But we are not them, and the standards of enslavers, colonizers, and villains simply will not do. We require another standard—one that sees the sharpening of our writing as the sharpening of our quality of light. And with that light we are charged with examining the stories we have been told, and how they undergird the politics we have accepted, and then telling new stories ourselves.”

― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

Let’s write a letter to the future as a way of reflecting on what it means to live, persist, and act in challenging times.

Exercise:

This week’s exercise invites you to write a letter to your descendants—or to future generations—stepping into the role of a witness to your own time. You are writing to them from a time such as this: a moment of social and political chaos and unrest. Writing to the future allows you to connect your present experiences, fears, hopes, and lessons to the world that those who come after you will inherit.

Step One:

If you need some help getting started, consider the following prompts:

• Based on what you see happening in your world right now, what stories, truths, or challenges do you want future generations to know?

• What values are you holding onto and why do they matter?

• What lessons or warnings would you share with those who come after you?

• What are the small acts of resilience, creativity, or love that give you hope in this time?

• What hopes do you have for the future, and how do you imagine they will avoid repeating the same mistakes?

Step Two:

After writing the letter, reflect on the following:

• What emotions surfaced while you wrote the letter?

• Did this exercise create any shift in your perspective on the present moment?

• Did writing to the future help you recognize any patterns, choices, or opportunities in your creative work or life, in general?

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