The ethical heart of my practice: AWA

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)

Podcast Answers - Day 2: Transformative writing

As I mentioned on Monday (here, you remember), I'm going to post longer, more well-thought-out (maybe!) answers to the questions that Britt Bravo posed to me during our Arts and Healing Network podcast conversation last week. Here's our second installation!

The second question on the list:
2. On your site, you describe [your workshops] as “transformative writing” workshops. How are they transformative?

Transformative writing is writing that changes you in the process of its creation. A dictionary gives one definition of transform as “to change completely for the better.” Another definition: “to convert one form of energy to another.”

And for the word transformation one of the definitions is: a complete change, usually into something with an improved appearance or usefulness.” Another? “A sudden changing of a stage set that takes place in sight of the audience.” Yes – that’s what we’re talking about here.

(In looking these up, I’ve just learned that there’s such a thing as transformational grammar, a phrase I find extremely exciting but which I’m not (necessarily! I can’t actually say for sure) talking about here).

Writing that’s transformative is writing that surprises the writer as it’s emerging, either with respect to form, content, structure, or some other element. It’s writing through which the writer maybe learns something about hirself* on the other end (even if the writing is fiction—that teaches us about our capacity as writers/artists). In my experience, there’s much writing that’s transformative – freewriting as a method works well for me, when I can let the writing come, can get the editor out of the way and discover after I’m done what it was that I was trying to say.

Dara Lurie, a writer and workshop leader in New York, describes transformative writing as, "a process of refining and clarifying ones own thoughts and actions through the conscious use of language." ( from her website). I like this a lot! I initially met the word 'transformative' in conjunction with writing when I learned about the Transformative Language Arts program at Goddard College, which describes itself as being "is for students interested in the intentional use of the written, spoken and sung word for individual and community growth, development, celebration, and transformation." (more info here...)

There’s also writing that, because of its structure/creation, is transformative for the reader: this is writing that gives us as readers the chance to discover something about/for ourselves as we take in the work. (I’m going to name two names here, for me: Gloria Anzaldua – Borderlands/La Frontera; Jeannette Winterson – just about anything).

This all ties into my understanding of an erotic writing practice or process: writing that is risky, genre-defying, full of metaphors, stream of consciousness, deeply connected and unconsciously-driven. An erotic writing process is distinct (though not always separate from) writing that is erotic in content (sex stories & the like), a writing session in which one engages in the erotic/organic process of freewriting, an experience of writing that brings one well into the paths of one’s inner labyrinths. Over time, through the use of this practice, we are not only able to improve our writing, but we are also able to witness ourselves in the process of changing. “One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body…We must continue to open and trust in our own voice and process. Ultimately, if the process is good, the end will be good. You will get good writing” (Nataile Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones).

I’m talking about the fact that the process of writing itself can be an erotic experience, if we can engage a definition of “erotic” that’s closer to Audre Lorde’s (“I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way. And when I say living I mean it as that force which moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change.” About Audre Lorde) or Alicia Ostriker’s (“Metaphor is the erotic element in language.” Ostriker, Alicia. “A Meditation on Metaphor.” By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry, edited by Molly McQuade.).

Transforamtive writing is rich and risky – it takes chances – it’s not driven by our inner editor. It lets the hand, the writing, do the writing and gets our head out of the mix, at least for the first draft—the head comes in later! (No pun intended – let’s move on.) Sometimes the results of this kind of writing are very linear. Sometimes the results are an almost surreal conglomeration of verbs, nouns, and adjectives with no distinct structure, conjugation or form—often the resulting writing is somewhere between these extremes, and every time, every time, though, this is writing that brings listeners to the edge of their seats, emotionally resonant, writing you don’t want to end, even if the content, the topic, is difficult or hard.

The AWA workshop method, as defined by Pat Schneider, is an especially good container for, especially encouraging of, transformative writing: writing that takes risks, that rides on the edges of control, that opens us to the possibility of change. It's what makes possible us writing ourselves whole!

What do you think about all this? What might "transformative writing" mean to you? What do you think of or envision when you hear/read that phrase? Let me know!


* hir/ze – these are gender-neutral, all-encompassing pronouns; more aesthetically-pleasing (and broader!) to me than “him/her-self,” etc,

Podcast Answers - Day 1!

As I mentioned earlier in the week (in this post), I'm going to post longer, more well-thought-out (maybe!) answers to the questions that Britt Bravo posed to me during our Arts and Healing Network podcast conversation last week.

The first question on the list:
1. What are the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops?

Most basically, Writing Ourselves Whole offers transformative writing workshops, using the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method, 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. (whew!)

I offer erotic writing workshops open to folks of all orientations and all genders, writing workshops to women survivors of sexual trauma, and (periodically) general topic writing workshops as well.

The Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method creates an ethically-boundaried and safe space in which all participants can write as they are drawn to write, and everyone will be encouraged in their writing. Groups are either single-day intensives or eight 2.5-hour meetings; because the groups are closed (not drop-in), participants come to trust one another and thus often allow their work to grow and deepen in risk and playfulness.

Although these groups aren't specifically therapy-focused, the process of writing itself can be a therapeutic and transformative process.

While we're creating narrative and art out of what we think of as the boring (or worse) stuff of our lives, in a community of like-minded others who celebrate our art, our internal selves are rearranged, sometimes without our even realizing it.

Who can participate? These groups are for anyone who currently writes or who has ever wanted to write.

Even if you have not written in years, even if you "only" write in a journal, even if you worry about your spelling when you put words to the page.

It doesn't matter if a teacher once told you that you were a poor writer because your sentences were too long, or that your tenses were incorrect. It doesn't matter if someone once told you that only "great men" can write.

Those were lies. If you want to write, you can write. The truth is that I am blown away by the art created and shared during every single session of writing, regardless of participants' writing history. You have great art in you. If the path that that art wishes to take is through writing, I hope to have the good fortune to work with you.

The Amherst Writers and Artists workshop model, as described in Pat Schneider's book Writing Alone and With Others, arises out of the belief and understanding that everyone has the ability to write: if you can speak (in any fashion), you can create writing that is deep, important, and has artistic merit. I do not ask folks interested in participating in my writing groups for a writing sample, or if/where they've published, or what their experience with writing is -- this is not a competition. Every participant will have a different relationship with writing, and every participant will produce incredible work.

As I say on the Writing Ourselves Whole website, we're "creating communal change through individual transformation..."

My vision? Writing Ourselves Whole seeks to change the world through writing. To open our hearts to ourselves and each other, so that we might live in a community of deep expressiveness and self-love, where each individual reaches his and her most complete self. I envision a community aware of its full breadth and power, one that risks speaking truth to power because it has been heard and received by its peers: an empowered community, able to effect change.


The mission of Writing Ourselves Whole is to offer safe, confidential writing groups -- that allow for transformation, risk, laughter, and artistic manifestation -- to a broad cross-section of the community.

Some writing workshops focus particularly on those who've felt marginalized and silenced (survivors of sexual trauma and domestic violence, members of the LGBTQQI communities).

To express our own story changes the world. Writing is both memory and possibility at once, and in moving through and with that tension, we create change.

Yes, it’s true. Writing can take you to the things you never thought you'd do, shift you into someone you never believed yourself able to be.