My Journal, My Witness.

For so many years, the writer in me was hibernating in a cold cave aka too shit scared to put myself out there.

My son’s Kindergarten teacher would start off circle time each morning with, “You are special, you have a gift, go out and share it!” So, I’d go out with her words tucked under my arm, feeling like, ‘Yeah I do!’ I’d get in my car, pump up the music, open the windows, let down my hair and once home, I’d slink back in my chair to the dis-comfort of my day job and keep my gifts hidden once more aka too shit scared to put myself out there.  

Then, a conversation with my life coach/mentor/wise elder changed everything.  She referred me to ‘a woman in Alameda who leads writing workshops’. I Googled this woman—Laurie Wagner of 27 Powers—who was about to start a training called for a process she calls Wild Writing and was holding an intro call for anyone interested. There were three of us on the call. I sat in my yard in my hammock, under the fig tree, on a bright, blue sky day in the quiet neighborhood where I was living at the time, and Laurie read aloud a poem she had written and then gave us one prompt—”Let’s start here…” That was it. And for the next 15 minutes I was transported to a world that I knew well but was on the verge of forgetting, the world of words, a world of associations, free thinking, wild awake, in tune and oblivious to the sounds around me. 

A world in which the neighbor’s wheezing dog with no vocal cords no longer exists and the other neighbor—with the red BMW and the yard that looks like a tombstone—who never greets me no longer exists. Even the fig tree and the orange tree and the lemon tree and the colorful Peruvian hammock I’m sitting in no longer exist. And it feels amazing—a rush, a high—because I’m back inside my journal world of words, connections, associations, free flowing writing and it feels so damn good and I’m already addicted and Laurie’s timer goes off at 15 minutes, which feels like three because I’m in another world of flow and synchronicity and magic. And on the call, Laurie asks one of us to read our writing out loud and for the other two women to simply bear witness without offering feedback, and we each have our turn to share what we’ve just written, and I’m hooked. 

I feel like I’ve found my calling and my purpose, which is to help people reach deep inside and pull forth their truths through the power of words, and the healing that follows when you show up to the page, naked and vulnerable and just as you are is the cherry on top. In that instant, I said, “I’m in.” And for the next five months we embarked on a journey of what Laurie birthed and calls Wild Writing. I call it Journey Writing. 

Journey Writing changed my life. 

It’s one of the greatest gifts I can offer to the people in my world. I hope that if it calls to you, you follow that call and join me to write with abandon, with focus, free of judgement, in a space of love, raw, and wild—write to set your spirit free!