Monthly Life Writing Group (for ISPS-US members and Life Writing course graduates)
Second Thursday of each month from 4 – 6 pm Eastern Time
ISPS-US offers informal monthly gatherings that will provide a safe and nurturing space for the writers among us to read their work and receive positive feedback and gently constructive comments from fellow participants. The groups are primarily intended as informal opportunities for mutual sharing and growth. While little formal instruction will take place, the process of reading, receiving and providing feedback, and sharing of resources and ideas will provide ample opportunities for participants to grow as writers and thinkers. Having the opportunity to come to know and learn from each other through our work will further the process needed to engage in the deep thinking and feeling required to make sense of our lives in the context of “the things that happened to us.”
From time to time, members of the group may choose to share their own areas of expertise, or they may wish to invite others to share.
Adding our stories and lives to the body of work that already exists will help foster understanding – and perhaps over time, and with continued effort, movement toward more humane and effective mental health care.
Prose writers and poets are welcome.
Interested in taking part in our groups? If you’re not already a member, join ISPS-US. If you’re already a member, check out our upcoming group meetings on our event calendar to register.
Life Writing Member Samples
It has been six months since I went out into our backyard with notepad in hand to write about “something I am familiar with”. It was an assignment from our life writing class with Tanya Frank. The writing felt like a watercolor, a muted landscape filled with bittersweet emotion. It felt true.
Today the air is cooler than yesterday. I step through the smudged sliding glass doors onto the aging brown and gray mottled deck which covers half of the backyard. I remember how pleased I was when we had it built 25 years ago. It replaced a hideous tract house cement patio. I was more than pleased, I was proud of our new deck; we ate outside at every opportunity, with friends and extended family. Now my mind conjures images of twisted ankles and falls from the unevenness of the boards.
Responsibility was key to the very first act,
Of the rest of my life, and that is a fact.
When I was a tender thirty-seven,
I knew, no way, I’d get to heaven,
If I left my son on this planet earth,
With only his dad, when I’d given him birth.
