writing

What’s next? Advent & Wednesday Words

I’ve enjoyed the challenge of posting almost daily in November. I’m proud of what I accomplished and what I wrote. I want to build on the momentum. That being said, I’m feeling a bit burned out…not just from blogging but from life lifing as it does for me (and most of us, I suspect).

So, I’m going to commit to a weekly post. If I can post more often, I will. I’m thinking that Wednesdays would be good since I write on Tuesday nights with my 2 Busy 2 Write group.

Wednesday Words. I’ll share the prompts I gather and what I wound up writing about. I’ll try to keep track of the material and authors the prompts are taken from. Then maybe some of you can join me in the process and have som fun with it.

How does that sound?

I think, this year I’m going to do an Advent calendar here. So, each day leading up to Christmas, I’ll share something small to help me focus on positive things.

Image colored in “Mandala Coloring Book Adults” app in the Google Play Store. Edited in Pic Collage.

Nanopoblano Day 30: Wrapping up the blog challenge
My worksite.

Well, I missed posting Sunday through Wednesday of this week. Life’s mundanities got in the way on Sunday. Then, on Monday there was a traumatic incident where I work. You can read about it here. I’ve spent the last three days just getting through the day. The math says, with this post, I completed 87% of the challenge. Good enough.

I wrote the following on Tuesday night and shared it with the Trauma Support Team at my work yesterday.

Close to Home
A friend of mine was violently harmed
where I work, yesterday.
Of course, I was sad
scared for his wellbeing
but what was there for me
to feel traumatized by?
It is a risk of living in America these days.
It is a risk of the system I work in.
It is a risk of the job he does.
I was fine . . . or so I thought.

This morning,
after my usual sleepless night,
I went to work,
walking in the cold,
not thinking about
what the day would look like.
We were closed to the public.
Many co-workers stayed home.
I was fine . . . or so I thought.

The more I heard people sharing
their feelings and thoughts,
the more I heard
the details of what happened
and what my friend had gone through,
the less fine I felt.

Dissociated mind
Disconnected thoughts
Disoriented self
Dissatisfied with life
Disturbed reality
Distressed emotions
Distorted beliefs

Unaware of what’s real
Filled with pain and confusion
All that matters is to make it stop
Stand up and fight for your life
Make the pain stop
Go to the source
Make it stop

I don’t know the words
to describe how full I feel
of the emptiness
inside my mind and heart.
I’m not filled with fear,
yet fear is not absent,
My safe place was never safe.
Safety was an illusion
that has now been shattered
the way a prism shatters the light,
refracting it into the multihued
spectrum of bright colors.
Only, here, there is no
beautiful rainbow to be seen
after the storm of yesterday’s violence.
This violence, so close to home,
feels like an extension of the violence
happening throughout the world.
I have no control over any of it.
Near or far,
the violence isn’t mine to control.
I can protest it.
I can appeal to the powers that be,
to change their policies,
to change their responses,
to change the infrastructure,
but I have no power over anyone else,
only myself.

lem 11/28/2023

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 22: True Love, a poem

I’ve mentioned before that on Tuesday nights, I participate in an online, open to the public, zoom co-writing group. The host, Clive Matson (author of Let the Crazy Child Write!)*, calls it 2 Busy 2 Write. We gather, read poems as prompts, and then write for an hour. After the hour is over, we come back together and talk about how the writing went. Those who feel comfortable can share what they wrote and the others get to talk about what they liked about what the writer shared.

There’s a process he offers for people to get connected to their creative subconscious and quiet the inner critic. I told him I was doing this blog and that I hadn’t shared the details of his process and he gave me full permission to share.

It’s a four-step process.

  1. Write down words or phrases that capture your attention from the prompts being read
  2. Once you’ve collected 8, 10, 12, or however many, you write a sentence for each one. The sentences are independent of each other.
  3. Select the sentence that has the biggest “buzz” for you.
  4. Decide if it’s the topic, beginning, end, or somewhere in the middle of what you’re going to write.

This is the recommended process. However, there is no wrong way to do the writing prompts. The point is to write.

Last night I collected quite a few prompts and got a decent poem out of it. Here are the prompts I got from the poems that were read: Slender, Jade, Coral, Celestial, Flowers, Valley, Cryptic, Promised heart, Love what it loves, Clear pebbles of the rain, Harsh and exciting, Glimmered, Light of the fire, Songs of disappointment and love, Dismayed by the fire’s ferocity, Black tulips in my heart, Embraced wandering and hunger, Canvas of lightning, Sing for joy, Wine and rainbows, Convex shields, Rapacious 

Here’s what I came up with:

True Love

How can true love be rapacious

aggressive, greedy, and grasping

How can true love leave its object

Dismayed, weeping, and gasping

Truly passionate love burns brightly

Warm, glimmering, and exciting

Singing of wine and rainbows

Loving what it loves, not slighting

The first sings of disappointment,

Wandering, harshness, and hunger

The second sings for joy

Leaving one feeling younger

The heart is a convex canvas

Cupping the ferocious dark

Or releasing the light

Of true love’s mark

Passion’s fire wanes

To glowing embers

A soft, steady light

The promised heart remembers

lem 11/21/2023

* I am not an Amazon affiliate and will not receive any benefit from clicking the link and completing a purchase. The link is just to show what the book is and where it can be purchased online.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 21: From the Archives – 365 Writing Prompts
Photo by Du01b0u01a1ng Nhu00e2n on Pexels.com

I tend to go long periods without writing here. Then I join a challenge, like the one we’re in now. I don’t think I’ve fully completed one since 2012, maybe 2013. In the drafts folder I found this post from August 20, 2018. Apparently, I also tend to do these challenges when I’ve got a lot of other things happening and I’m a pantser, posting by the seat of my pants without planning or plotting out what I’m going to write.  Another thing I do is use socialized writing apps. First it was Heyku, then Lettrs, and now Musist (the revamped Lettrs). I have done a lot of different prompts from those apps. However, sometimes even their prompts aren’t inspiration enough for me.

So, back in 2018, I Googled “writing prompts.” I came across one article with 365 prompts on a website called “think written.” The first prompt seemed perfect back then. I’ll use it today.

“Outside the Window: What’s the weather outside your window doing right now? If that’s not inspiring, what’s the weather like somewhere you wish you could be?

Wind rustles the leaves

Ink black sky, shimmering stars

Early Fall morning

lem 11/21/2023

The prompt I chose today is: Friendship: Write about being friends with someone.

A force of nature

Insightfully traumatized

She sees me fully

  •  

Same age as my eldest

We are equals in this life

Her wisdom guides me

  •  

Parenthood struggles

Conmensurate support

We love our children

  •  

Reciprocation

We are neurodivergent

Forces of nature

lem 11/21/2023

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 17: My brain is fried
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

It’s the end of week three of working a full 40 hours a week for the first time in 15 years. I can’t seem to keep my brain in full functionality.

  • Tuesday I forgot my work phone on the charger at home.
  • Wednesday I forgot to take my meds
  • Thursday I forgot my glucometer
  • Today I forgot my work laptop

Additionally, I now have to submit all my schedule changes and updates via email to the front desk to input into the electronic health record (EHR) database we use. I’m supposed to cc: my supervisor on certain changes. Other changes I have to remember to include the following:

  • Initials
  • EHR ID #
  • Date
  • Time
  • Length of appointment
  • Type of appointment: phone, telehealth/video, or in-person

Invariably I forget to include one or more pieces of that information.

In the midst of all of this new information, I have been voluntold that I’m participating in the initial implementation of a new model of how behavioral health services are going to be provided to the organization’s clients. The five-hour “kickoff” meeting for that happened on Wednesday. At the meeting, we learned that there will be a 10-member team of service providers assigned a “panel” of 250 clients/patients to share and coordinate services with. I’m one of the 10. Here’s the lineup:

  • Peer Services Provider (me)
  • Therapist
  • Case Manager
  • Behavioral Health Nurse
  • Psychiatric Med Prescriber
  • Substance Use Disorder Counselor
  • Primary Care Provider
  • Primary Care Nurse
  • Care Coordinator
  • Administrative Assistant

There are seven different training times scheduled. The first one is only for an hour but it still is happening in person instead of via videoconferencing. The next five are from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm. The final one is from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. Not really looking forward to that in the first two weeks of December.

Supposedly we’re going to start in January. However, I’ve been told that there isn’t a transition plan in place to work with the existing client caseloads everyone is already working with and that without that in place we won’t start then. That’s comforting. What isn’t comforting is the fact that I have to proceed with building my new caseload and start relationships with people who have already been waiting for consistent services and will have to transition some of them within a short but undefined timeline. This frustrates me. That frustration just compounded the brain stress and dysfunction this week.

This is all part of why this post is nearly 15 hours later than I wanted it to be. We’ll see how well I’m able to get tomorrow’s post done.

Good night, all.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 15: Who I’m writing for
Photo by Antoni Shkraba on Pexels.com

This is the third prompt from the writing workshop I attended on Saturday. I’ve decided that my next “big” writing project is going to be memoir oriented with a focus on having grown up without my father and the heritage of his Mexican roots. So, this prompt helped me drill down into my purpose in wanting to write that.

Who are you writing for and what are you hoping your language does?

I am writing for myself, my children, and my grandchildren. I’m writing for anyone who reads this and feels alienated within themselves and alienated from themselves and their roots. I’m writing for those of us who feel orphaned and unmoored from this world, who struggle to strengthen their sense of identity without a sense of being rooted in familial and cultural history.

I hope that my language, that the words I write, and the thoughts I share, create a resonant sense of belonging and connectedness to more than the presence of loss, pain, trauma, and isolation. I hope that sharing these parts of myself enable those who encounter them to feel connected in ways they may not have felt previously. I hope that connection and resonance isn’t only to the expression of my experience but that it is a connection to a deeper part of themselves and their own experiences.

Nanopoblano Day 14: The story of my people
Photo by Amy Faru00edas on Pexels.com

In yesterday’s post I talked about a writing workshop led by Lisa Sanaye Dring that I had the privilege of participating in. One of the writing prompts she gave was “If I were to tell you the story of my people, I would say ________________ but really the story is _____________________.

Here’s what I wrote:

If I were to tell you the story of my people I would say that they are my father’s family and have had a difficult time in this country, in this state. But really the story is that I don’t know. I didn’t grow up with my father, his family, origin stories, or firsthand experiences of what it’s like to be culturally connected to the heritage of another country while living in the US. I feel a sense of loss, but I don’t really know what I’ve lost, since I never experienced it to begin with. If it was something I’d lost, I would have ideas of where and how it had been lost. I would have ideas of what to do and who to talk to so I could find what was lost. The truth is, I don’t know where to look or where to begin.

What I need to do is reach out to him and to them. However, I don’t speak the language and my ears don’t hear their words clearly because I never learned how to listen to a language other than English or people who carry the roots of their origins in the sound of the words they speak. What I need to do is move beyond my fears of not being understood and of not understanding. I need to move through the resistance of my daily realities and do the work to learn how to listen and how to understand experiences not my own that maybe should have been mine as well.

I need to prioritize getting to know them and do the work to learn about this family, their history, and their heritage. I had the opportunity 13 years ago when I first found my father and my sister. She got me onto Facebook and I got connected to a lot of extended family members. I tried communicating with some of them for a time. Then life got away from me as I left a relationship characterized by domestic violence, anger, and depression, became a single parent of an Autistic child, worked on my mental health and trauma recovery, and went to work during the COVID shutdown. Things are stabilizing, somewhat. I think I’ll commit myself to reconnecting with the family that remains on my friends list. . . I just checked and I’ve lost a few along the way.

I also just messaged my sister and a cousin. We’ll see what happens next.

Nanopoblano Day 13: Harmony, Cacophony, Change

In my Nanopoblano Day 1 post I said one of the things I’m doing this season is working with a program called Community Profile through a local theater company, Profile Theatre. The program gathers people together who have a specific thing in common which relates to the theater season’s themes. This season is focused on emerging Americans and first generation Americans. I fall into that category since my father immigrated from Mexico close to 60 years ago. More about that another time.

The program brings in professional writers: published authors, screenwriters, playwrights, poets, essayists, etc. to teach and guide the cohort members in writing their stories, whatever they may be. It’s like a miniseries of two or three hour Masterclasses. Each teaching writer takes turns with 1 – 4 sessions a month for several months.

In October we had the privilege of working with Radhika Sharma. This past Saturday we got to work with Lisa Sanaye Dring. In December we get to work with Adrienne Dawes. January we’ll work with Zachariah Ezer.

The work we got to do with Lisa on Saturday was amazing. Ten of us met with her, in person. We shared our experiences, wrote to a few prompts, shared our writing or what it was like to write, and Lisa took us through a guided meditation.

The final prompt of the day was to write something with a beginning, middle, and end that addressed questions of harmony, cacophony, and change. Here’s what I came up with:

Questions


How do we live out
The meaning of harmony
Being together


How do we walk in
Amidst the cacophony
Staying connected


How do we become
The change needed in this world
Communicating

lem 11/11/2023

UBC 4/20 Day 7: Avoidance, Fear, and Understanding Myself

I have a counseling appointment today, via computer. I really like this therapist. I met her fact-to-face just once after social distancing became a recommendation, before it became a government mandate… so, that would have been three weeks ago. I feel like she’s going to be good for me. I also think she’s going to be somewhat hard-nosed and won’t let me get away with not doing my “homework.” So, here I am, cramming homework I had all week to do, into a few hours before it’s supposed to get turned in. Just like in high school or college.

Turns out that this is exactly part of the homework I was supposed to be working on. Avoidance.

What am I avoiding, exactly?

Well, the questions she asked me to consider at our last session were about me identifying my space in the world and in my life. Not where I feel I belong, but the space that belongs to me, specifically in my own home. What do I need to work on taking back so that I can feel safe and secure? Why is there such a strong sense of avoidance? What does avoiding look like? What am I avoiding?
Believe it or not, I think tackling the questions on avoidance will be easier than the other questions. Of course, that’s also a way of avoiding examining the other questions. Right?

Aaaaand avoiding dealing with the avoiding. It’s been about an hour, maybe more, since I finished that last sentence. So, back to the question: Why such a strong sense of avoidance? I think this is the point where my “stream of consciousness” writing style may come in handy.

Fear. Fear is at the heart of avoiding. At least, I think that’s what it is. If that’s true, then, I need to figure out what it is I fear. In the context of the initial questions about space and figuring out how to take back what is mine and what I need to do to work on to taking it back, what is it my fear?
It may be two things. The first is realizing that I’ve seldom, if ever, completely had my own space, or my own place in the world. I don’t think I even understand what that looks and feels like.

I remember being a young child where a couch was my bed and the living room was my bedroom. After that, when I had my own room, it became to catch-all. Whenever my mother expected people to come into our home, all the accumulated clutter from the public spaces was moved into my room and seldom, if ever moved back out. I recall one Christmas I had been given a peppermint candy cane log – it was HUGE. If memory serves, I had carved out space for it on my dresser and I was looking at it from an angle that meant I was on the floor. I have a sense that was because the floor was the only available space and it was also where I slept. After that life fell through and we moved again, I may have had my own room for a few months before my mom and I moved to live with my grandmother. It was a small, one bedroom apartment. More moving. Then mom died, leaving me in my uncle’s custody. Another one bedroom apartment for my uncle, his wife, and me. I was 12.

Eventually, I had a room to myself, but, it never felt like it was mine or my space because I never really felt like I belonged, that I was part of his family unit. Three more moves over the next four years. Some of the time I lived with my uncle, some of the time I lived with my grandmother. Sometimes I had my own room, but, mostly not. Then, at 16, I ran away. When you’re a runaway, you really don’t get your own room. I lived out of cars and hitchhiked across the country with my son’s father, until he almost killed me in front of our two year old son. At 19, I was a single mom, with no employment history or proven work skills. So, there was no way to afford my own space. When I did afford my own space it was either studio apartments or one bedrooms that I shared with my son. Sometimes there were roommates.

During the times when I might have had my own space, I wound up helping other people out and giving them a place to stay…often for extended periods of time. Including now, when my adult daughter’s family became houseless right after Thanksgiving. Her family of five plus one on the way moved into my tiny two bedroom, one bath apartment. Even before they moved in, though, my space wasn’t my own because her younger sister, who I was partially co-parenting, but mostly single parenting, is autistic and at 10 years of age refused to sleep by herself.

So, yeah, I have no clue how to own and occupy space that’s just mine.

The second fear is that, if I push the issue and push my daughter’s family out, I’ll be abandoning them, abandoning her, the way I was. Well, maybe not the way. After all, my mother’s undiagnosed, untreated mental health issues are what caused her suicide. But, she left me alone and, even as a 50 year old woman, there are times when I wish I had a mother to turn to. I don’t want her to ever feel that I won’t be available when she needs me and, right now, she needs me.

Finally, the third fear is intertwined with the second fear. I’m afraid of losing relationship with her and my grandchildren. Six years ago, my relationship was so broken with her that I had to find out from an old family friend that she had gone into premature labor and was in the hospital. She didn’t want me there. Now she’s about to give birth to baby #4. I don’t ever want to be in a position where I am not wanted or allowed to be in my daughter’s or grandchildren’s lives again.

Well, that’s enough processing for now. I know this was long. Thank you for sticking with me until the end.

UBC 4/20 Day 6: Living

Reaching out, all I grasp is air.
Seeking what is not there.
Feeling the edges of despair.
Apathy says, “I don’t care.”

Opening my eyes, I see nothing.
Looking for one special thing.
Wanting a reason to sing.
Hope says, “Wait for spring.”

Walking into the void,
Fear being destroyed
I’m no longer paranoid.
Faith says, “Life’s to be enjoyed.”

Listening in the emptiness.
Hearing my inner distress.
I sense love’s caress.
“You are mine,” Divinity says.

lem 04/2020