mourning pages

a report from a writing room

Ever heard of “ass-in-seat asana”? As author Laura McKowen shared last weekend at A Writing Room, it is the hardest and most important part of a practice. I am forever working on how to master this pose! When my writing heroes gathered in the same workshop weekend in Santa Fe last week, you bet I figured out how to get my asana in the room.

Yup, Anne Lamott, Julia Cameron, Laura McKowen, Ryan Spear, SARK, Alex Elle…all speaking, teaching and inspiring at A Writing Room. While I could not be there in person, my Zoom room and folks met in the chat, became a virtual front row seat. Not going to lie, I wanted to jump through the screen and be in the magic energy of that writer soup.

Sure there were nuggets of craft and publishing practicality, but the sauce in each session that rang loud and true? Each presenter was doling out their version of permission to write your story. Every which way they shared, translated — your story matters. Folks were claiming their place and space in the world of writing — and it was powerful.

I am asked all the time, when my “grief book” is coming. I officially claimed it this weekend. A few messy pages amounted to a beginning. Watch this space for The Memory Circle Monologues. Let me know if you have a story to contribute. Think the Vagina Monologues, but make it grief.

Julia Cameron

For years I wrote for a living. I crafted countless public relations press kits and releases, branding copy for bold faced names, labels and chains. I wrote a few books for others and 100s of articles from my days as a reporter at The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Magazine. Mostly lifestyle and trend pieces.

More quietly, the page has been a natural place for me to go to remember my Mom Ellen. In the process of doing so, I have “RE-MEMBERED” me. Decades of putting myself back together, knowing myself as the new whole of who I am without her, decades after her sudden death.

Julia Cameron’s appearance felt epically historic to me. Just around the same year my mother died, Julia wrote The Artist’s Way. This transformational creative “bible” is one of the best 12 week journeys you can treat yourself to! I have popped open accountability groups to lead folks through. Since moving to grief coaching work, I continue to use prompted writing and journaling as a tool of expression and curiosity with clients. Sometimes what we can conjure on the page are not words we may easily find in conversation.

One of my favorite practices from The Artist’s Way are Morning Pages. These are three, long-hand pages written daily, upon waking. I call it the Windex of the day. All kinds of complaining and gunk that comes out to clear the path of a new day. I have offered them in my groups as “Mourning Pages”. Many grievers have been told, “journaling is good for you”, by someone well-meaning friend or professional. “I am not a writer,” or “what do I write” or some form of perfectionism, stops them from discovering the healing that can occur. The blank page is a daunting hurdle, for sure. I say, just write. Pen to paper and go. Ditch grammar and spelling and sentences. Heck, some “pages” practitioners say they can’t even read their scratch. There is juicy science about how the brain responds in healing when we write by hand. Julia also says Jungian psychologists theorize that the ego wakes about 45 minutes to an hour after the edge of your morning rise. This leaves you some critic-free time to draft and craft your first thing practice.

Start today. Buy and 8 x 11 ish notebook and begin. Let me know how many days you go? One day and then one week at a time. Let’s share streaks! Don’t look for pages to be prolific or ripe for publishing, let them be the clearing house for more later. Meet you there.

Thanks to those of you who have supported this Substack. We are 500+ strong. Consider an upgrade to paid, it helps fund scholarship spots to my grief groups.