Writing Ourselves Whole

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2010-04-26T10:35:00.001-07:00

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Spring workshops with Writing Ourselves Whole!

2010-03-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

(please feel welcome to forward this information! thank you!)

Writing Ourselves Whole
Spring 2010 Workshops

This April, re-engage with the deep-rooted and transformative power of writing!

Join us in one of our exercise-initiated and non-judgmental AWA writing workshops:

Write Whole: Survivors Write
Monday evenings, 4/12 - 6/7
Open to all women survivors of sexual trauma

Declaring Our Erotic
Tuesday evenings, 4/13 - 6/8
Open to all (18+, please)

o In the Write Whole: Survivors Write workshop, you'll gather with other survivors of sexual trauma to create new art and new beauty out of life's difficult and complicated realities. Learn to trust the flow of your own writing, and receive immediate feedback about the power of your words!
Remember: identity categories like 'woman' and 'survivor' are self-defined!

o In the Declaring Our Erotic workshop, you'll try your hand at some explicit erotic writing, and, in so doing, will get more comfortable exploring and talking about sexual desires, explore the varied and complex aspects of sexuality and desire, receive strong and focused feedback about your new writing!

No previous writing experience necessary! Workshops held in San Francisco in an accessible space, a half-block from BART and on many MUNI lines. Spaces are still available, though limited, and pre-registration is required! Fee for each eight-week workshop is $225-300, sliding scale.

To register or with any questions, contact Jen at jennifer (at) writingourselveswhole.org.
For more information, please visit www.writingourselveswhole.org!

Body Heat -- March 2010 Tour Dates and Venues!

2010-02-26T13:03:00.000-08:00

The tour hits the road in just a couple of weeks -- and I'm so excited to get out there and connect with folks again!!

The heat the heat the heat!

BODY HEAT: THE FEMME PORN TOUR, Spring 2010

The fourth installment of Body Heat: The Femme Porn Tour is set to hit the road March 12th, 2010 with the tour beginning in Boston, Massachusetts and ending in Vancouver, Canada. The line-up will feature Body Heat founder and spoken-word performer Kathleen Delaney (Atlanta, GA.), Sister Spit vet, former slam champion, filmmaker, and writer Meliza Bañales (San Francisco, CA), published author and sex-workshop facilitator Jen Cross (San Francisco, CA), Nationally renowned singer / performer Nicky Click (Durham, NH), Erotic writer and versatile performer Alex Cafarelli (San Francisco, CA.), and the always intoxicatingly sophisticated, old school class, grace and smoldering style of Vagina Jenkins (Atlanta, GA).

Armed with an arsenal of erotic song, dance, camp, poetry, smut, and prose Body Heat was hailed by the Center for Sex Positive Culture (Seattle, WA.) as “The best Femme porn writers in the country.” These ‘pull no punches,’ ‘it’s never too nasty,’ power femmes are touring to support and promote queer femmes and their contributions to erotica, the sex industry and the sex-positive movement. Thru the use of art and performance they are literally, visually, emotionally, psychologically and socially revealing a more complex sexual identity for queer femmes. You can check them out www.myspace.com/femmeporntour or write femmeswriteporn@yahoo.com.

BODY HEAT MARCH 2010 TOUR DATES/VENUES:
March 13th - Boston, MA.
@ Lily Pad
1353 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA.
$10.00
7pm
(special guest Gigi Frost of The Femme Show)

March 14th - NYC
@ Bluestockings
Bluestockings Radical Books
www.bluestockings.com
172 Allen Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 777-6028
$10.00
7pm
(special guest Gigi Frost & Diana Cage)

March 16th - Columbus, OH. - 1st night!!!!!!
@ STONEWALL CENTER ON HIGH
1160 N. High
7:30PM
$6
(special guests Viva Valezz & Missy Conley)
More info 614-564-7517
Email: skyecolumbus@sbcglobal.net

March 17th - Columbus, OH. - 2nd night!!!!!
@ BLAZER’S PUB
sw corner 5th Ave. & High St.
10PM
$4
More info 614-564-7517
Email: skyecolumbus@sbcglobal.net

March 18th - Milwaukee, WI.
@ The Tool Shed: An Erotic Boutique
2427 N. Murray Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53211
(414) 906-5304
www.toolshedtoys.com
8pm
$10.00

March 19th - Minneapolis, MN.
@ Bedlam Theater
www.bedlamtheatre.org
1501 S. 6th St
(in the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis)
special guests Pzychic Slutz
10pm
$12.00

March 20th - Ann Arbor, MI.
@ Aut Bar
315 Braun Court
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
(734) 994-0558 - office
www.autbar.com
10pm
$15.00 ($13.00 in advance)
(special guest Cookie Tuff)

March 21st - Chicago, IL.
@ Center on Halsted
3656 North Halsted, Chicago, IL 60613-5974
t (773) 472-6469 x 441
3pm - 5:30pm (matinee show!!!!!)
$12.00
(also featuring local performer DeDe Dylynn)

March 22nd - Omaha, NE.
@ Connections
1901 Leavenworth Street, Omaha, NE 68102-3126
(402) 933-3033
8pm
$10.00
time & door $ subject to change
ShadyBoi Productions
402-612-8837

Body Heat would like to thank The Lloyd E. Russell Foundation and Carol Queen and The Center for Sex & Culture for their ongoing funding and support.

On leaving

2010-02-23T16:44:00.000-08:00

I'm saying goodbye to Oakland, goodbye lake view and long cement walks, goodbye lake birds who've let me stalk and hold you with my eyes, goodbye Preacher man on Sundays and 3-redwood stand in the park across the way and the flock of Canadian geese who take over and scare the dogs away. Goodbye Hanover street and neighbors who rankle and ratchet and share and watch out for each other. Goodbye neighbor with the two small white barking-at-all-times-of-the-day dogs and goodbye walk to Woody's. Goodbye Woody's. Goodbye this neighborhood dreams: you have been so good to us. Goodbye up the street flock of chickens. Goodbye neighbors houses with windows we can see into and who can see into ours. Goodbye coin-operated laundry, goodbye one bedroom apartment, goodbye sunset view in the living room and sunrise from the kitchen.

Goodbye Grand Lake Farmer's Market on Saturdays and goodbye Jack London Square Farmer's Market on Sundays. Goodbye interracial neighborhood. Goodbye Lake Merritt walkers who say hello and good morning to each other. Goodbye partially blind man who walks the lake every day with his cane and scruffy beard who has lost so much weight. Goodbye bird sanctuary, goodbye Grand Lake district, theater, Parkway (again).

Goodbye walking into the Trader Joe's and seeing lots of folks of many races. Goodbye morning walk to BART. Goodbye morning view of people making their way into the world, headed to work or exercise. Goodbye morning window writing here in #8. Goodbye walk-in closet/dressing room. Goodbye quick drive to our friends' for dinner for hsingyi for movies. Goodbye Jack London Square walks, white pelicans in the lake, great blue herons stretching out from morning to dusk with their wingspan. Goodbye Alameda beach walks, goodbye house-hunting for the time being.

Goodbye stairstep sidewinding jasmine and hawthorne. Goodbye Lake Merritt BART and goodbye lurker night herons, goodbye man who sits and listens to headphones and thinks and watches the morning come up over the Oakland hills across the lake from his vestibule outside shelter at the Oakland Auditorium, living there. Goodbye Witnesses at BART, goodbye It's a Grind at 11th and Clay, goodbye 7am garbage pickup banging, goodbye bright flowering backyard, goodbye electric stove, goodbye big lakeshore eucalyptus and big big oak.

Goodbye Oakland. Just in the living-in way, not in the forever or break-up way. We are always here, too, sheltered, heartsick and home.

Pretty

2010-02-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

This is one of my writes from last night's workshop -- the prompt was Sarah Vaughan's rendition of "I feel pretty."

------
I infrequently feel pretty. When I first came out fem, I had fantasies about being the movie girl in front of the vanity, soft lights behind me and brash up front, makeup and brushes and atomizers of perfume splayed all around on dresser-top ready for spritzing, dusting, lining, pearling: being That Girl.

In real life, I can't habituate that girl, can't hold her down and climb into her skin, and, more to the point, i can't wait around for her to get dressed and done enough to daintyfoot herself into my skin. I have other things to do.

I've ached to be the pretty girl, the coquette, the charming klutz with the open face that guys -- and then butches -- just couldn't help but fall into. But then, in real life, I was more interested in being one of the guys, which is sort of the opposite of pretty girl -- isn't it? -- unless maybe you're a Queen, and then when I say "guys," I mean it ironically.

I put pretty on sometimes, but even then I keep ragged and rough and mussed and so pretty looks more like trashy, which I'm a lot more comfortable with. I idolize pin-up girl glamour and couldn't in a million years sit around in front of a fucking mirror every day long enough to get that glass-like gussied, just to hoof it right into a mud puddle and then whine about getting scuffed. I prefer glamour that's already ready to be smeared, that shows the true meanings of the word, glamour: a spell, witchery; glamour that lets the flaws, the real, through: shows unplucked chin and moustache beneath glitter and dark bands of eyeliner.

But these things do not make pretty. Pretty has a fragility to it that I just can't hold myself to, am unwilling to always be (yes, Ani) the kitten who needs rescuing, the one who won't eat for fear of stains, the one who won't run 'cause her shoes or skirt are too tight -- I am forever running pantyhose instead, and tearing fabric so I have a better range of motion.

What if we recalibrated pretty? But why should we, when so many other words fit better: smart, dirty, mouthy, unfettered, dangerous, roguish (yes, thank you, for a fem), calculating, powerful, aware, articulate, strong -- what if all of these are places of power for that which has been relegated to the land of pretty?

What if pink got to hold its full blood history again? The color of healing scars, of early arousal, of the just inseam of bared teeth: pink is not a dainty thing. Pink is the early blood, the foreshadowing, the heather of orchids.

I claim my right not to be pretty, to take interesting and exotic with pride, to swelter into the other labels of an engaged and cracked femininity laced with a boyness I just can't let go of all the way, not after I got so accustomed to its weight and musk after so many years -

I could do pretty when I was a boy, absolutely get all the transfags who mince into pretty as their finally due, who get to hold its danger in their hands and on their face now. Pretty boys make me want to squeal, 'cause they're dangerous, they walk with pretty and a dagger all at the same time, all hands on deck: pretty is never something for a boy to aspire to, and must always be wiped clean -- we fight for what we're not supposed to have.

I want to give any unworn pretty to these boys and their welterweight badness, learn something about the precision of desire and naming, learn something about the audacity we all require to wear our pink and chewy hearts on our sleeves.

Body Heat: queer femme tour shows! this Friday and Saturday (1/29 and 1/30) in San Francisco!

2010-01-27T17:00:00.000-08:00

The Center for Sex and Culture presents

a special SNEAK PREVIEW of BODY HEAT: a femme porn tour -- 2010!

Sizzlin' Fierce Fiery Queer Femme Porn - 2 Nights, 2 Different Shows! ***DO NOT MISS THIS EVENT!!!!!!!***

Friday, January 29 and Saturday, January 30
8pm
Cost $10.00 - $15.00 you pick :)
At the Center for Sex & Culture, 1519 Mission Street (between 11th and South Van Ness), San Francisco, CA 94103
www.sexandculture.org

Come to the Center for Sex and Culture for the one of these barely-legal Bay Area performances of the Body Heat: Femme Porn Tour. Each night will offer up decadent performances/readings by fierce local queer femme writers, performers and devastritixes!

These will be your only chances to catch Body Heat during this spring!

Both shows begin at 8pm SHARP, $10-$15 (help us fill the kitty for Body Heat's 2010 cross-country tour!), no one turned away... FMI: http://www.myspace.com/femmeporntour

Friday, January 29th Performers:
Carol Queen
Kathleen Delaney
Jen Cross
Madison Young
Amelia Mae Paradise from Diamond Daggers

Saturday, January 30th Performers:
Shar Rednour
Daphne Gottlieb
Kathleen Delaney
Jen Cross
Alex Cafarelli
Lady Fantastique

Body Heat is a collective of fierce, sassy, irreverent Femme artists setting ablaze performance art communities and smashing Femme stereotypes. Porn, Kink, Smut, Erotica - Body Heat is not reclaiming our sex so much as OWNING it.

We will turn you on.

We will challenge all of your gender, sex, feminist, social, & political boundaries & assumptions.

We will entertain the hell out of you.

Mostly we will leave you panting, begging, dripping for more.

www.myspace.com/femmeporntour

femmeswriteporn@yahoo.com

Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission St., bet 11th and So Van Ness, San Francisco!

Writing Ourselves Whole - early 2010 schedule!

2010-01-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010, all!

Here's a short list of what's coming for me/writing ourselves whole for the first part of the year -- starting next week!

Send me a note for more info (jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org)! (I, on the other hand, commence the deep breathing. :)

xox!
Jen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Begins next Monday! Winter 2010: Write Whole: Survivors Write. Open to all women survivors of sexual trauma. (8 Monday evenings beginning 1/11) $225-300, sliding scale

Winter 2010: Healing Through Writing: a workshop for folks living with cancer. Through the UCSF Mt. Zion Art for Recovery program. (7 Thursday mornings, begins 1/21) Contact Cindy Perlis for more info:Cynthia.Perlis@ucsfmedctr.org

Jan 30, 2010 (1-4pm): Declaring Our Erotic: a queer women's erotic writing workshop (In honor of the Body Heat Femme Porn Tour!), at the writing ourselves whole workshop space, $20

Jan 29-30, 2010 8pm, $10-15: Body Heat at the Center for Sex and Culture! Join us for one of these SNEAK PEEK pre-Tour shows! Jan 29: Carol Queen / Kathleen Delaney / Jen Cross / Madison Young /Vixen Noir aka Veronica Combs / Amelia Mae Paradise from Diamond Daggers; Jan 30: Shar Rednour / Daphne Gottlieb / Kathleen Delaney / Jen Cross / Alex Cafarelli / Lady Fantastique)

Feb 2010: Declaring Our Erotic: a writing workshop for ALL queer survivors of sexual trauma (4 Tuesday evenings, beginning 2/2, at Modern Times Bookstore. $50-100, sliding scale)

Feb 10, 5:30-6:30: Quick-n-Dirty Erotic Writing happy hour at Good Vibes, Polk St! Free! http://events.goodvibes.com

Feb 13, 12:00-4:00pm: Write Whole with Survivorship. Survivorship is an amazing and community-led org for folks who are survivors of ritual or cult abuse. Free!

March 10-27: Body Heat: Femme Porn Tour. The cross-country extravaganza! In this our fourth installment, Kathleen Delaney (Atlanta, GA.), Diana Cage (NYC), Meliza Bañales (San Francisco, CA), Jen Cross (San Francisco, CA), Nicky Click (Durham, NH),Gigi Frost (Boston, MA), Sossity Chiricuzio (Portland, OR.), Alex Cafarelli (San Francisco, CA.), and Al Schlong (Atlanta, GA) are prepared to rock off all your socks. We begin in Boston and our finale is scheduled for Vancouver! (Visit my website or myspace.com/femmeporntour FMI!

Spring 2010: Write Whole: Survivors Write - for women survivors of sexual trauma (8 Monday evenings beginning 4/5) $225-300, sliding scale

Spring 2010: Declaring Our Erotic: an erotic writing workshop open to everyone! (8 Tuesday evenings beginning 4/6) $225-300, sliding scale

Spring 2010: Healing Through Writing: a workshop for folks living with cancer. Through the UCSF Mt. Zion Art for Recovery program. (8 Thursday mornings, begins in April, date not yet confirmed) Contact Cindy Perlis for more info:Cynthia.Perlis@ucsfmedctr.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want more info? Check out www.writingourselveswhole.org!

get brave

2010-01-07T11:44:00.000-08:00

(from some visioning for 2010: I'd like to post more consistently here at the writingourselveswhole blog, and one topic I want to communicate about is this process I'm entering around growing the workshops into something more like a nonprofit. I never saw myself as someone who would start an org, and have a lot of 'inner critic' stuff coming up about these new steps. I want to be transparent with these voices, with my response to 'em, and more...)

Remember that writing prompt, "If I were brave, I would..."? Here's one of my writes in response:

If I were brave, I would sell my work: hold to the excitement and joy about it and share that with others. If I were brave, I would want some hope. If I were brave, I would talk about the work, I would go dancing, let myself sing, I would open hard, I would let the love happen, I would expect that the joy will keep happening, I will let myself and us fly, I will remember what words and writing can do, I will remember what words and writing can do. I will remember what words and writing can do. I will dive open. If I were brave, I would write my press release. If I were brave, I would then MAIL that press release to people, media outlets. If I were brave, I would ask for help. If I were brave, I would accept what's offered. If I were brave, I would ask to be interviewed on radio shows. I would get public about my work, about the workshops, about upcoming collaborations, about what words and writing in community can do.

What if you were only thinking about what you needed and wanted (untempered by what others say or think is possible)?

Upcoming survivors and sexuality writing workshops: Write Whole: Survivors Write begins Jan 11!

2010-01-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

And we begin again!

~ Welcome in 2010 with some deep writing, community connections, and solidarity with your resilient artist self ~

Our 8-week Write Whole: Survivors Write (for all women survivors of sexual trauma) begins January 11, and we've got a half-day queer women's erotic writing workshop on Jan 30! More info on each is below; spaces are still available -- please let me know if you have any questions or would like to register -- I'd love to write with you!

Write Whole:
Survivors Write
Eight Monday eves. Begins Jan 11.
Open to all women survivors of sexual trauma!

Transform your relationship with your writing -- and with yourself. For survivors in particular, writing freely in supportive and attentive community opens us up to the possibility of being fully heard in all of our expression, creative and otherwise!

In this workshop, write in response to exercises chosen to elicit deep-heart writing, and deal with such subjects as: body image, family/community, sexuality, dreams, love, faith, and more. We create new art and new beauty out of the difficult and complicated realities of our lives.

You'll be encouraged to trust the flow of your writing voice, and receive immediate feedback about the power of your words!

Spaces are limited and pre-registration is required. Cost for the 8 week class is on a sliding scale, $225-300 (please contact me about payment plans or other money questions!)

To register, visit www.writingourselveswhole.org or email jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org.

About your facilitator: Jen Cross is a widely published freelance writer. She's a queer incest survivor who used writing as a transformative and integral part of her own healing process. She's a certified AWA Facilitator, has led writing workshops with survivors since 2002, and writes with folks about trauma, sexuality, and more. More info, always, at writingourselveswhole.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also in January:

Declaring Our Erotic -- Let's write about sex!
Jan 30, 2010, 1-4pm
An erotic writing workshop for queer women -- in honor of the Body Heat: Femme Porn
Tour!

Ever read through a sexy short story and thought, "I'd like to do that!" This writing workshop is for queer* women who's considered writing erotic stories or writing about sex, or who'd like to get more comfortable doing so! No previous writing experience is necessary.

We each need safe space in which to be our whole erotic selves -- to delve into the fantasies and imaginings that we've learned or been told don't "go with" our public sexual identities. In this workshop we'll celebrate and struggle with the fullness of our erotic expression.

In this 3-hour class, you'll have the chance to try your hand at some explicit erotic writing. We'll write in response to exercises designed to tap into different aspects of our sexual selves: memory, fantasy, experience, relationship with the body, and more.

Don't be surprised if you find, as have previous participants, that you're more comfortable discussing your own sexual desires after practicing writing about fictional sex! Bring your notebooks or laptops and your most open mind.

When: Saturday, January 30, 2010, 1:00-4:00 PM
Where: writing ourselves whole workshop space, 870 Market St, SF!
Who: 18+
Cost: $20

To register, visit www.writingourselveswhole.org or email jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* and by 'queer women', I mean folks who identify as women (which doesn't mean you have to use the pronoun 'she') and also identify as lesbian, gay, genderqueer, dyke, butch, femme, tomboy, same-gender loving, "into women," boi, transbutch, stud, or...

Why sexuality and sexual trauma writing together, in the same ‘house’?

2009-12-16T16:27:00.000-08:00

I still panic, sometimes, talking about the fact that I lead both erotic writing and sexual trauma survivors writing workshops; there’s still that ingrained sense, for me, that these two things just don’t go together. I don’t think I probably need to explain this as often as I think I need to – and yet, every now and again, I dive back into the why.

Why sexuality and sexual trauma writing together, in the same ‘house’? Restorying our sexuality lets us come back here, into our bodies, the site of trauma, the site of violence against us if we are survivors of sexual trauma. Restorying, writing our desire, our history and too our now longing, re-embodies us in a safe-ish way (writing’s not completely without risk, of course: if the writing is to carry and convey the depth and breadth and truth of a story, an experience or possibility and that means the writing needs to be embodied and that’s a big fucking deal for sexual trauma survivors – embodiment). Writing is a way to settle into ourselves, slow back inside our skin – not the only way. One way.

When we write desire – any desire: fantasy or fiction or what just happened this afternoon – we are back in our skin, we experience the want, we feel its flesh and tingle and joy, and, too, struggle and ache and loss and fear. We can write, and so we can feel, a body free of flashbacks – and, too, we are deeply familiar with the truth of an erotic desire riddled with holes and loss and so we can describe it fully, gorgeously, achingly real and hot.

We who are sexual trauma survivors know how to embody another’s ostensible desire, because that was our job. What erotic writing can allow us to do is come into ourselves, our own wonders and imaginings – allows us to smell and taste ourselves again, or for the first time.

That’s where these two – sexual trauma and erotic writing – come together for me, are necessary together for me. In writing about sexual trauma, we can forget - we can wish to forget - about the weight of erotic desire. We can want to wipe it from our skin because that very desire sends blood pulsing through the body that was raped, makes flush the landscape of loss and terror, and who wouldn’t want to forget that place?

But we inhabit the scene of the crime. We can't ever fully vacate this place, this body, not while we're living: and an embodied erotics, a deeply creative lust for the world, was our birthright, long before we were born. We deserve to settle back fully into our bodies again. One way I've worked myself back up to the edges of my skin and beyond is through writing it.

We can claim now the heavy trail of longing, bent or shaped by our survival, we can eroticize shame, if we need to, we can claim a chosen pain because consent changes everything. We can write exactly the sex we want and deserve, and when we write it we embody it, and when we embody it, that’s a reclamation. That’s a restorying. That’s a restoration. What was slashed and burned can always take new life again, given time and space from the trauma. We tend this wound, this body, this site. Erotic writing can be damn joyful – and that joy is the tilling, the rainwater, the harvest

12/17: Holiday Dirt: fecund new erotica! A benefit for writing ourselves whole...

2009-12-01T16:02:00.001-08:00

Please help to spread the word! xoxoxo

Writing Ourselves Whole presents
~Holiday Dirt: fecund new erotica~
a benefit reading and celebration!

With special guest Carol Queen!
Featuring Alex Cafarelli, Lou Vaile, Amy Butcher, Renee Garcia, Jenn Meissonnier, Blyth Barnow and Jess Katz!

Burlesque! Sweet treats! Chapbooks!

When: Thursday, December 17, 7:30 SHARP
Cost: $10-50: sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds
Location: Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission Street (between 11th and South Van Ness), San Francisco, CA 94103

Your winter holidays shaping up to be a bit too wholesome? Never fear -- join Jen Cross as she presents these fierce new works from the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops, sharp and sexy writing that will delightfully sully your holiday spirit and open your mind to all sorts of new reindeer/dreidel games!

Celebrate risky writing and readings -- let us inspire your erotic imagination.

~~ Can't make the reading on 12/17? You can still help writing ourselves whole! We are raising funds to pay for our workshop space: whatever you can give will help! Click the link/button below to use PayPal to send your donations. Thank you so much!

A fundraiser for Writing Ourselves Whole (Declaring Our Erotic/Write Whole workshops), which exists in the service of transforming trauma and/or struggles around sexuality into art, and creating spaces in which individuals may come to recognize the artist/writer within.

Saturday 11/21 -- Body Empathy

2009-11-15T16:07:00.000-08:00

Body Empathy:
A day of body mindfulness, gentle movement and writing for queer, genderqueer
and trans survivors of sexual trauma

Facilitated by Alex Cafarelli and Jen Cross
10am-4pm, Nov 21, 2009
At The Space, 4148 Mac Arthur Blvd., Oakland
(The Space is wheelchair accessible)

No previous experience necessary! Pre-registration required. Fee: $50-100,
sliding scale (Please check in with us if funds are an issue—payment plans are
always possible, and we may be able to work out trades or other arrangements
as well!) Please write to jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org to register.

What if we could truly experience empathy for our bodies as they are – and
then, by extension, for ourselves, as we are?

As queer, genderqueer & trans survivors with a wide array of backgrounds and
identities in a sexuality-/gender-restrictive culture, our self-protective
tendency can be to “check out” by detaching mind from body to such great
degrees that it can be dangerous. Physical activity and writing are two ways
to check back in with your embodied self.

With deep respect for the privacy and variety in our personal experience of
gender expression and our individual histories, this workshop will create safe
space for participants to embrace our bodies as they are, and to write the
stories our bodies have been wishing to speak, while allowing possibility for
the integration of identity and physical presence. Using brief writing
exercises and low impact body mindfulness exercises derived from
improvisational theater, Zen meditation practice, and the internal Chinese
martial arts, participants will have the opportunity to fully embody our
gender complexity in a healing and playful environment.

The exercises we practice can be easily incorporated into our daily lives and
can enhance our ability to reflect mindfully on our experiences, while
interacting with others from a place of self-acceptance, internal power, and
confidence, as we move through the world as the fabulously feisty queer &
gender warriors we are…
________________________________________

Your facilitators:

Alex Cafarelli is a Jewish genderqueer femme trauma survivor with a background
in 17 years of martial arts training. Currently teaching body mindfulness
classes in Oakland, Alex also works as a gardener specializing in
drought-tolerant and edible landscapes, does Reiki/massage bodywork, and
develops and leads element-based rituals to support women, queers, transfolk,
and genderqueers in moving through transitions and healing from trauma. Cntact
Alex at petals_and_thorns@yahoo.com.

Jen Cross is a queer incest survivor and a widely-anthologized writer who has
facilitated survivors and sexuality writing workshops since 2002. She offers
two weekly AWA-method workshops (Write Whole: Survivors Write and Declaring
Our Erotic) in San Francisco. Fnd out more about Jen at
writingourselveswhole.org or write her at jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org.

'new' survivors

2009-11-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

This weekend, a couple of amazing women (thank you Kiki and Elicia!) organized a Peace March and Rally in Richmond, CA, to raise our voices and gather our energies in support of the high school student who was recently raped by a mob of young men -- and, too, to speak out against all sexual violences: against all sexualized violence, against all the messages we teach our children equating masculinity with violence, femininity with passivity, against rape as a weapon of war, against sexualized violence as a part of our every day lives.

After missing the first part of the rally, Fresh! and I got to ride alongside the march for a minute, honking, making a whole lotta noise -- and we were met with the voices and shouts of the marchers! Then he dropped me off and I jogged to catch up with the small march, raised my voice -- it felt good to shout, and I had to cough a couple of times after being so loud: it seems my voice box has grown unaccustomed to loud chanting -- and that's one reason I understood it was good that I was there.

It's been several years, it seems, since I participated in this sort of anti-sexual violence/pro-peace-for-all rally. It's been several years since I walked through quiet neighborhoods and shouted: No Rape! No Rape! Was the last time in Maine? How could that be?

It's not that I haven't gathered, haven't witnessed and participated. The last rally in Richmond, last year, for another gang-rape survivor, was a mostly silent candle-lit vigil. That sort of gathering carries its own weight -- all of our stories, all of our friends' and families' stories, candlit and hungry, sitting just inside our mouths, held and honored and shared in that big big quiet.

I became aware, during the public rage that followed reports of this assault, messages and articles and furious notes I read and listened to online and from friends, of my presence in the aftermath. It's where I live and work: in the aftermath of sexual violence. the workshops I facilitate, the writing I do, it's about the after-story -- what comes next. All the words I use are prefaced with "re-": reclaim, restitution, resurrect. Doing over. Taking back. I don't live anymore in the place of before. Because I can't. My own body is an aftermath.

And so it was that I felt, too, on this Saturday, that our gathering was kind of the saddest sort of welcoming committee for this young woman. She is one of us now. She has a new name: survivor. Victim. The debates bat those words back and forth, but the fact is that she wears them now. Like we do. She has been violently delivered to our side of the battle ground. And we are standing up to show her she is among our kind now; we put our hands around her and we tend her wounds. These wounds are of her now. She lives in and with them. As we do, too.

I don't want this for her. I don't want this for her family or friends. I don't want this for any of us. I want other options. I don't want any more rallies of survivors to have to gather at the gates of the next rape, the next rape, the one happening right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. I want us to be able to disperse these energies, move on to other work -- raise our voices in praise of love, not in rage and sorrow.

I raged on Saturday, was grateful for all those gathered, and on Sunday I cried. I felt, again, the big, high vision of the hawk that flew over our gathering toward its end: from up high, I can see that this change won't manifest in my lifetime. I won't live to see it. But if I don't continue to hold on to the hope, hold hands open to the possibility that we as humans can learn to relate to and with one another through something besides the veil of violence and rage, then I close one more light shining the way -- does that make sense?

I don't see how we can make the changes we want to make. I don't see how we can get there, when sexualized violence is an ever-present option for men, for women, for anyone in power over any other one. I can't see it. I can't.

But -- here's the but: I stand together with a group of folks who might otherwise pass one another on the street in judgment, we raise our voices too loud, just loud enough for a Saturday morning neighborhood, we listen to one another's words and possibilities, we hear young men and women stating new ways, and I hold my hands open to the change one more time. I let my heart imagine it. I listen to men hold men accountable. I listen to women holding one another accountable. We are accountable to one another or there's nothing left.

If we don't keep working -- which means imagining, which means speaking the possible -- saying, yes, this can change. We can change -- there's nothing for the next generations carrying the torch, lighting the way. Right?

I don't want to be in one more 'welcoming' committee, bringing blankets and hotdish and tea and notebooks and pens and oranges and candles to the newly fallen -- and still, yes, that's where my work is right now.

How do we reframe (there it is again: re: frame) this -- life? This human-ness?

Does this make sense? Tell me what you think --

Stewardship: a whole new possibility

2009-11-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

this is a bit from my Writing Ourselves Whole newsletter for November:

Last month, I attended a day-long training on Trauma Stewardship, with Laura van Dernoot Lipsky (this training was hosted by the Domestic Violence Coalition, CUAV and the Asian Women's Shelter -- thank you so much!). Here's what I want to tell you: there's not anyone I know who wouldn't benefit from the ideas and the possibility that Laura (and her coauthor Connie Burke) offer in this training, and the corresponding book. Although it's written primarily with those who work with survivors of trauma in mind, what I know is that all of the communities I participate in are traumatized right now, and so nearly all of us are going to experience trauma exposure response -- which means we could be doing trauma stewardship.

As someone who has come up with every reason there is not to take care of myself (too busy, too guilty, too tired, not as bad off as others, etc -- you know these, don't you?), I've been in need of a change for at least a year (some might say longer), and couldn't figure out how to make space in my life for self-care. And often, I couldn't honestly believe that I deserved it.

In her introduction, Laura says this about the book (Trauma Stewardship: An everyday guide to caring for self while caring for others), and about the ideas of trauma Stewardship as a different way to walk with the work we're doing in this world:

"This book is a navigational tool for remembering that we have choices at every step of our lives; we are choosing our own path. We can make a difference without suffering; we can do meaningful work in a way that works for us and for those we serve. We can enjoy the world and set it straight. Taking care of ourselves while taking care of others allows us to contribute to our societies with such impact that we will leave a legacy informed by our deepest wisdom and greatest gifts instead of burdened with our struggles and despair."

Laura's concept of Trauma Stewardship has turned a lot around for me. With deep and loving kindness, and fierce compassion, she called all of us out in that room at the Women's Building: if your work in the world isn't including time to replenish, and if you are not coming to the work from a place of powerful and rooted centeredness and choice, then your work is going to be unsustainable, and you're going to end up not recognizing yourself in the mirror.

I want to write more about what's happened for me, the changes I have started making in and for my life and work since this training, but for now, I absolutely encourage you to visit her website and buy this book -- share it with your organizations and communities and friends. We are all stewards for one another right now, and we need to be as kind and gentle with ourselves as we can be during this strong and gorgeous and difficult life.

Our look here is in flux!

2009-10-29T16:26:00.001-07:00

Just a short hello, all -- I'm in the middle of playing with the layout here, and for the moment I'm quite enjoying the clean look with most of the background graphics gone!

Just wanted to make sure folks weren't worried that their browsers were out of whack...

More soon -- all best & be easy with you in your practice and your work,

xox,
Jen

The ethical heart of my practice: AWA

2009-10-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

This is something I wrote up awhile ago, for the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) facilitator's community, and I wanted to share it with you all, here, in honor of the National Day on Writing:

As a student in the TLA program at Goddard College who was looking for a way to use writing as a healing tool, the AWA writing workshop method broke down the door for me. Here was a simple, deeply powerful and ethical-by-design method for writing in community about any topic you might wish to write about, but in particular any topic that is painful, complicated, or raw.

The AWA method we learned in the trainings that Pat Schneider led at her farmhouse in 2001 and 2002 (the latter, an Amherst Writers and Artists (AWAI) training, was co-facilitated by members of the original Chicopee Writers), revolutionized my thinking and brought me a powerful sense of peace. At the time, Goddard (where I was pursuing my MA) was undergoing an accreditation review and was at risk of closing – after my first AWA training, I was no longer afraid of what might happen if Goddard closed (which it didn't): I’d found the structure for my life’s work. Here was a resolutely non-hierarchical and safe container in which all people, regardless of their relationship to the word “writer,” could explore in words their own complicated and beautiful stories.

Because I was doing “healing” work outside of the therapeutic model (not therapy, not even poetry therapy), and also doing “writing education” outside of the traditional academic model, I found it challenging to describe to others exactly what I was doing with the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops. This proved to be relatively isolating, and I often felt like I was working in a vacuum, sometimes questioning whether I was working “appropriately” or effectively as a facilitator.

After doing the workshops in relative isolation for a couple of years in San Francisco, I connected with Chris DeLorenzo, an AWA affiliate, about joining his Laguna Writers workshops. Chris took a risk, having another AWA facilitator in his workshop, and I am forever grateful! I began to find my way into the AWA community I’d been searching for, and I got to experience the risk and freedom and vulnerability possible in the role of participant! Through Chris, I began to connect with other AWA facilitators and lovers of the method, including some especially long-term participant writers, and this informal community has made all the difference for me as I move forward in building my workshops and continuing in the role of facilitator. When I have questions or concerns, struggles as a facilitator or just need some love and support, I know I can turn to these folks and they will get it about AWA, what the method is and isn’t supposed to do, and all that can happen within the method’s clear and expansive boundaries.

I always knew that Pat was there if I had questions, although I was stubborn (like as little kid!) and stayed out of touch for several years, stumbling in the dark, an unnecessary hardship when there were so many hands around to help me get started in the work, answer questions, give feedback and guidance. Having a community – one that’s now expanded to a group of 50-some North American AWA facilitators – has been so useful for me, a reminder that I am a part of something larger, that I do not have to be in competition with these my sibling workshop leaders, that I have folks from whom I can learn and with whom to share what I’ve learned.

This method is the ethical core of my writing practice and work. Being connected with other facilitators, this now world-wide community of AWA-ers, means that we can nurture one another *and* hold one another accountable to the 5 agreements and 5 core beliefs.

It can sound a little cult-y, and yet I have never been a part of a structure or a community that feels as though it has each of our own individual best interests at its heart, alongside the best interests of each writer with whom we work and our larger communities also at heart. AWA workshops are about a sort of kindness and faith and respect that gets devastatingly short shrift in especially our western world these days. So yes, I believe in AWA as my own spiritual path (I mean it!) and I an so thankful to finally have realized that I am not alone.

As someone who is expressly not doing therapy and yet working with survivors of sexual trauma and working with issues of sexuality, I use AWA as my ethical framework, the space in which we tell our true stories, fiction or not or a commingling of these, while also developing our writer’s craft (sometimes without even realizing it). In the workshops I’m lucky enough to facilitate within this framework, each writer is allowed to hold the tender morsels of one another’s deepest pain and secret joys, our silliest moments and/or most hidden desire--these brand new creations--with the kindest regard.

(If you're in the SF Bay Area and are interested in learning more about AWA or want to participate in a facilitator training, there's one coming up in just a couple weeks in Alamo, CA: http://www.amherstwriters.com/CertTrai.html)

2009-10-20T09:20:00.001-07:00

It's the National Day on Writing -- how are you celebrating? http://ping.fm/1Cf6I

2009-10-16T10:24:00.001-07:00

Next Tues, 10/20, 5:30-6:30pm: Jen leads a Quick-n-Dirty Erotic Writing Workshop @Good Vibes on Polk - and it's free! http://ping.fm/37syV

thinking about the narrator

2009-10-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

As a certified Amherst Writers and Artists workshop facilitator, I use this structure for all of my writing workshops:
1) keep all writing offered in the workshops confidential
2) offer exercises as suggestions
3) remind folks that sharing is optional
4) respond to all writing as though it's fiction and with what we liked/found strong

Now, the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops that I facilitate (survivors writing workshops and erotic writing workshops) often end up, at least for many (but not all!) participants, being 'life writing' opportunities workshops, where the writing is a telling of our own stories, getting into that thick truth of the everyday stories we exist within.

As a facilitator (and as a writer) I am interested in making/having opportunities for us to tell the whole truth(s) and so at first when I am going through the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) practices with a new group, I describe the way the method holds space for all this openness: you get to write whatever you want here because we keep it all confidential, and you get to do the exercise or not do the exercise whatever you want, you can even write about how much you hate the exercise and you can read it or not and if you read we only say what we like and what’s strong...

and then scratch screech wham I feel like I’m pulling on the breaks around all that freedom (although that's not the case). The piece that can be the most challenging for folks new to the AWA method is the part where we talk about all the writing as though it’s fiction. Unless instructed otherwise by the writer, we talk about the narrator and the characters in the piece (rather than saying 'you' to indicate that the writer and the one written about is necessarily the same).

Initially, this can feel like a confusing irritation. I sense folks cringing under the weight of one more thing to remember and how do you talk about fiction anyway what if I do this part wrong?>

I take a deep breath. I say, this is how we talk about it – we don’t know what’s fiction and what’s nonfiction – we don’t need to know.

This is what I want to talk about: the wording matters. How we talk about something matters.

There’s a space enacted when I talk about your story in the 3rd person; there’s a different intimacy, in a way: slightly less immediacy, more distance, which, when we’re handling something raw and electrified like brand new writing is a good and useful thing.

We offer each other risky stories in these workshops – and in most writing spaces. We need to be tender with each other in response. This guideline is part of the tenderness, the way we set a structure that creates a space for enormous risk: we won’t tear it down, and we won’t tie it to you. We won’t point at you while we are talking about it.

Here’s the other thing that happens – if we have made fiction with our stories, suddenly we are strung up on the line of It All Has To Be True when someone refers to the “you” from the story as fact we all know there is a difference between facts and truth…

One more thing? Talking about the piece of writing as though it's fiction gives us as peer writers and respondents the chance to forefront and acknowledge our lenses. There’s room for each of our interpretations. If I have written a story about some situation between, say, my sister and I, and to many people it sounds sad and I am trying to find language for the joy in a difficult moment, response to that piece will likely run a gamut from “I felt the happiness they got to have at that difficult time” to “they were so sad and that was really strong for me, came through really clearly.” When someone 'misinterprets' me when I am speaking, especially in response to something intimate or personal or painful, and I feel the need to clarify, to correct. Within this structure, though, I have the freedom (the gift!) of hearing multiple interpretations of my telling – I get to hear multiple readers’ responses, what they hear in my writing, what they bring, too, to their hearing. I don’t have to take it personally – it reminds me that every reader (including editors – and friends/lovers/parents!) have a lens, bring what they’ve experienced to a story.

There’s a working space that gets opened up around us when one person puts her words in the room and then all of us, the writer included, gets to look at those words as a bit detached from the writer herself. We get to turn the story over, allow response to all of its angles, aspects, curves, undersides. Often, I picture the story as a silvery-malachite ball floating next to the writer: we all get to enjoy this creation for what it is, exactly as it is, expecting nothing more from it (even if we didn’t want it to end while we were listening).

For me as a human subject, it’s difficult to be examined, responded to this way – I get a little prickly and nervous, even if all the feedback and words I hear I know are supposed to be ‘good’ and strong – still there’s a discomfort, more

In a way, talking about the new writing as fiction objectifies the work in the best way, highlights its status as an artistic creation as opposed to a confession, and allows us as writers and as listeners to experience the distance between who we are and how we tell it; this part of the structure also holds the separation between writing group and therapy group. These workshops are not therapy groups. We are creating art while we put language to difficult or new or exciting or scary or sexy or socially-unacceptable truths.

What happens in that in-between space, the transformation of memory and fantasy into words and onto paper, is sacred, and talking about a work as though it’s fiction protects and honors that space and that artistry in all of us.

Your turn: How is it for you, if you've participated in an AWA workshop or facilitated such a space -- what's your experience of the 'fiction' part of our practice?

'indelible erotic loss'

2009-09-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

A man at the Indy Arts Expo this weekend stopped at Fresh!'s table (we were there to promote Affirmative Acts Coaching!), and this man and I talked a little bit about the writing workshops. I said I did a little bit of blogging, about sexuality, about sexual trauma, about writing as a transformative practice -- he was very interested in what sorts of sex blogging I did, said, "I'm trying to figure out what about sex you write about."

Here is what I want to have said: I write about sex in the aftermath of sexual trauma, I write about the scarred desire that remains. I write about that crystalline brilliance and shame. I write about indelible erotic loss, the way it fills our hands sometimes at the same time we are touching someone... I write about the madness of that split, the surrender and joy of it, too. I may not be what you'd expect of a 'sex' blogger.

We are flawed and magic

2009-09-24T15:53:00.000-07:00

So.

I haven’t been doing that well, lately. I’ve been triggered with loss and sorrow and rage. September does this to me a lot, and at the beginning of this September, I was in New Hampshire and Vermont, the very places where I began the break from my stepfather and his extreme control and abuse, back in 1993.

Somehow, this year, while I was driving back and forth on i-89 from Lebanon, past Hanover, to Plainfield, while the sun rose through the thick early-fall fog sweltering over the crevices in the Green Mountains to make it up for the day’s Power of Words offerings, and then back down south (through the nearly indelible dark) to my friend’s apartment for good if abbrevited conversation and sleep, I managed to drive myself right back into the past – right back into that 21 year old convinced both of the world she’d been trained into and convinced that there was nothing left to her future but utter soul-destruction if she didn’t manage to get away from the man who’d decided to turn her family into his harem; when the man she loved had given her an ultimatum (him or me, her boyfriend said, because that was what it looked like), she chose her boyfriend and was (don’t ask me how – it’s still a kind of miracle to me) able to pick up the telephone and speak into her utter terror: you can’t do this to me anymore.

It began a process of extraction. I realized, during those few days earlier this month back in that countryside, back on those roads (filled still with the echoes of all my sobbing, traced still with the fear that he would send someone to destroy me, thick still with the impossible desire that had begun to bubble in me for a new way of living, for women, for change), that I’m still extracting myself from those old horrors.

1993 is 16 years ago. Sixteen years. Sixteen years. Why am I still in this struggle? Why isn’t it done yet?

This was the sort of question I was tormenting myself with over the last month
(alongside the old sorrow, of course, trying to reach back to that 21-year old and let myself finally forgive her, forgive me, for all that she had to do to get to where she could make the break that her mother couldn’t make, her father hadn’t made, no one had stepped in to make for her. I didn’t have to crawl through a river of shit literally, but I sure did have to drag the people I loved more than myself through it)…

What good does it do to ask why you’re not over it yet? What does that question even mean? It’s not actually get-overable, this history. It’s of me now. Right?

When I’m thick in the sludge of shame and possibly-irreparable damage, depression laced with terror, sorrow that my sister and I still struggle so hard to share space, to be in the same room and really look at each other, what difference does it make why I’m not ‘over it’ yet?

And all the while, I’m trying to be functional. Functional. Show up at my day job. Truly ‘show up’ (heart and all) at the workshops, be available to hold space for us as a group of survivors writing, be open (then) to not being perfect at it. I try to show up for my husband…

And otherwise, I slip out through the thread of things. I leave conversations. I don’t return friend phone calls or emails. I leave Facebook alone, as I don’t want to be reminded of all that I’m missing, all that I’m not accomplishing, all that I’m not I’m not I’m not…

My friend asked me, when I was finally able to reach out, as the deep trance started to break and I felt my heart start to reopen again to the now: “Who can talk to you when you’re in that place?”

What? What a fantastic question, I thought, and told her. Most of the time I’m asked, Who can you talk to when you need support – but she reframed it. And I saw that there were people in my life who could meet me in the mire of shame and self-hate, who could speak kindly and gently into the midst of those old voices. And I felt a little less alone.

I’m not fixed yet. It almost feels like a confession I need to make. Now that I’m feeling better, stronger around all those fragments I still hold of me, I remember that most of us aren’t – that for so many of us, there’s no such thing. There’s learning to maneuver anew, with these scars. There’s laughing anyway. There’s learning new arms for self-care, like with the bunches of rosemary carted to every workspace, just to clear the air.

These are the voices of the depression, the old training, when I’m in the thick of it: I question who I think I am, offering writing workshops for sexual trauma survivors – and then, I think it’s unprofessional to reveal how I’m really doing. I think I can’t possibly tell my friends – they’ll think I’m pathetic, they’ll talk about me to other people, they’ll ask if I found a therapist yet.

Please note: No friend has ever responded to my sorrow this way – it’s the learning of that decade without a close friend, a pre-teen girl taken into the lair of a sociopath and trained away from the sort of socialization we’re supposed to get as teenagers, about how to have intimate relationships with people who aren’t sex partners. I only learned to relate to people through sex. It was the only option I had for intimacy outside of abuse, and I took it.

Here from this place back where my peripheral vision is wider (here, where I can see out into the music and mystery of a hawk floating over Market street, above the Flood Building, signaling to me that we’re still here, we’re still full of possibility), I know that it’s ok not to be ‘fixed.’ I know that we’re all struggling in different ways to stay engaged with this thing called humanity -- I know it’s ok to be human. Imperfect.

I want to touch that 21-year old I was, hold her hand in the impossibility of her solitude, remind her it’s ok that she’s human: that she needed an ultimatum from a lover to open the door to that previously-unimaginable action, to pick up a phone, shivering, and say, No. Enough. That it's ok that she couldn’t just choose herself: she had to choose (for) a lover. Of course, at that time, she’d (I'd) been trained into such a devaluing of self that that was the only option—and she took it. We took it. I took it. And I survived.

We do what we have to do. We are flawed and magic. And we survived. And I am sorry and I am grateful.

Poem for the day: I shall be released (Kevin Young)

2009-09-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Poetry Daily weekly newsletter that directed me to this extraordinary poem from Kevin Young:

I shall be released


What we love
    will leave us

or is it
    we leave

what we love,
    I forget—

Today, belly
    full enough

to walk the block
    after all week

too cold
    outside to smile—

I think of you, warm
    in your underground room

reading the book
    of bone. It's hard going—

your body a dead
    language—

I've begun
    to feel, if not

hope then what
    comes just after—

or before—
    Let's not call it

regret, but
    this weight,

or weightlessness,
    or just

plain waiting.
    The ice wanting

again water.
    The streams of two planes

a cross fading.

I was so busy
    telling you this I forgot

to mention the sky—
    how in the dusk

its steely edges
    have just begun to rust.

Kevin Young

Dear Darkness
Alfred A. Knopf

2009-09-16T09:26:00.001-07:00

Yes yes yes and yes, please, yes: "radicalizing vulnerability is vital." (Little Light@ Feministe) http://ping.fm/DMAGi

2009-09-16T08:57:00.001-07:00

Free NAMW teleseminar tomorrow - situating your memoir in history! http://ping.fm/9DfTb

2009-09-09T09:52:00.001-07:00

If you haven't heard (of) Taina Asili y La Bande Rebelde, go here now: http://ping.fm/JnnLQ (music will play-- a good thing!)