poetry – Health Family Formula

As you may know, I not only write newsletters, blog posts, and books. I am also a poet and an essayist with a masters degree in English Literature. I have been facilitating writing classes for the last 21 years, since my firstborn was 9 months old (yep, he’s 22 now!). And teaching writing has been the most rewarding experience of my vocational life. You will see why in a moment.

Libraries and bookstores are my churches, and I feel such a sense of satisfaction, of completion and peace when I see the raw, pulsing syllables of my thoughts splashed on the page. I love the freedom creative work can give me to just, well, be flawed, human, AND beautiful. My book was not a place for that. Nor is the social media medium. But my poetry, my creative non-fiction, well, that’s where it gets real.

A few months back, I ran into a student who was in the very first workshop I led for adults. She did a double-take as did I before it dawned on us how we knew each other. She told me how important the class was to her and how it changed how she saw herself. Many students have told me this over the years, but it is not me who has done this for them, but through the experience of the class they discovered their own buried insight, value, and wisdom. I only had to shine the light and hold it for them until they saw the details of their own experience. They then realized that their stories mattered, that they mattered. And you matter, too: your stories, your voice, the wisdom you have come to. Writing is an outlet, it helps us to make sense of things, it helps the writer move from strife to beauty, it connects us to others.

I had a bad mom day the other day (yes, those still happen when your children get older) and thought to myself, I must connect. I need to create something out of this. Parenting a child who has a big health challenge is a unique experience, and parents never come out unchanged. So, my brain got ticking, and I created a new creative writing program for parents who have had or are having experiences like mine: A Creative Writing Workshop For Parents of Children with Health Challenges (Online).

Using the concept of the hero’s journey as both the starting point and the anchor for the workshop, we will explore storytelling as connection with others, self-expression, and making sense of our experiences as parents who have been through a lot in our role as caregiver.

If you are interested in this powerful offering, find out more here on the program webpage.

Or simply jump in and register here.

And if you have questions, email directly to [email protected]

Objectives

The Mechanics

Writing fundamentals

Poetry and creative non-fiction

Storytelling

Metaphor and language

Receive feedback from the group, Carla, and your assigned partners

The Experience

Weekly

Live workshop instruction (1 hour) each Sunday at 4:00pm Saskatchewan, Canada time (same time zone as Guatemala)

1 Introspective Assignment (daily practice) and 1 Expressive Assignment (writing) each week

The Possibilities

Find connection and support

Heal trauma

Find voice and be heard

Make sense of your experience

Move from burnout to empowerment

Turn pain into poetry and strife into wisdom

Realize your inner power

Become more grounded and present for yourself and families

Provide a creative outlet

Work through the muck

Heal your body and heart

Identify your many hero’s journeys

Course Details

Class Begins: September 20

Duration and Cost: $500CDN (approximately $375USD) for 10 weeks of live ONLINE weekly sessions (recordings of replays will be available), exploratory assignments, and a final project complete with Carla’s feedback.

Registration: Registration is on NOW. Since the class is live and crafted for each intimate group, there is a limit to the number of students accepted. Therefore, if you are interested, please don’t wait to register. No application process is required. All you need is the desire to write and the dedication to your own self discovery and healing process.

Once registered, you will be emailed the orientation information and login access to our course page.

What is your hero’s journey?

I hope that you are having (or have had) a wonderfully restful, fun, joyful, memorable holiday! I am not sure how much rest we’ve gotten, but we sure have had some fun! Big family gatherings, performances and concerts, and successes such as my own grandmother becoming as close to pain-free as she can be for the first time in decades (I will write about how we accomplished that very soon!).

I have spent the last few months (including the holidays) deep within a creative space while finishing my book, Family Health Revolution. This process has taken me places I really needed to go and has allowed me to communicate what I have learned about family health to other parents like me. It has been cathartic, exhausting, daunting, but mostly empowering, and I can’t wait to share it with you within the coming weeks.

We tend to reflect and create when we have some space to do so, or when we turn our focus to relationships, start to question why we do what we do, ask ourselves what we want and desire and if we are living the lives we want to live, and the holidays, in particular, are a special time full of possibility for the future. The new year brings with it evolved versions of ourselves. We can try to make sense of what we do and why. We can ask ourselves these questions so we can also guide our families. We can reflect and have a good look in the mirror. With the new year comes the potential for change, for newness, for progress, and for creation. Reflection allows us insight, gives us a map toward the goals we set for our futures.

The holidays can be a time of pivotal moments, and one of mine was creating a literary piece I was inspired to write while teaching a creative writing/philosophy class to my small group of lively, inspired and inspirational teens. I wrote a spoken word poem for one of my daughters that is the culmination of everything that has been thrashing, no, rolling, no, splashing around in my head and heart for the last 6 years, or maybe even since her birth 17.5 years ago, about our experiences together. And I feel like this piece is, like her, everything I had hoped for.

Many of you are parents and would be able to relate to what I had to sort out, not necessarily because you have a child with a chronic or life-threatening illness, or because your child has grown out of childhood and into teenhood, or because you have had boughts of burnout or pain or because you have come out the other side ready to allow your child to have wings. But you have had unique challenges and triumphs that have led you to your own conclusions about life and love and what this whole parenthood thing means. For me, it is protecting while allowing them to be independent, it is about guidance in order to empower. For example, I don’t want to tell my children what to think, but that they can and should think. I want them to understand that they can always make a situation better and that those solutions are for them to uncover.

I am sharing this poem with you, fellow parents and caregivers, fellow sons and daughters, in case you find connection within, in case it sparks some reflection of your own, the reasons for my writing Family Health Revolution folded within the stanzas.

Family Health Revolution is not a book of poetry, but a book that expresses, outlines, and demystifies the practicalities and solutions to so many questions I asked and had to answer throughout this on-going journey of parenthood – “how do I raise healthy children so they can have the best life possible when faced with the realities of our often physically, emotionally, and socially toxic environment?”

In my own journey, the “why” was easy to figure out.

The “how,” not so much.

I have spent the last 6 years expanding my own understanding of health. I have spent a great deal of time figuring out how I was going to present the information I wanted to share in this book. And I hope I have done the research of many brilliant family health advocates, researchers, and scientists, my teachers and mentors, my own experience, and the experiences of my family justice.

Although Family Health Revolution is not a book of poetry, I cannot introduce the motivation behind it in any other way than in that poem that poured out from me the other day, a poem I called: “Firsts: With My First Daughter.”

So, in celebration of newness, of possibility, of a healthy, fresh new year full of health and vitality, I wish you all so many more firsts with your own families; some of them joyful, some of them hard, but all of them beautiful.

“Firsts: With My First Daughter.”

Listen to the first take of the audio: (contains mistakes, but you get the idea:)

Read the Text.

Preorder a copy of Family Health Revolution.

Happy New year to you and yours.

May you and your family be well,

Revolutionary Mama,

Carla.

Tag: poetry

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