Writing Ourselves Whole - early 2010 schedule!

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

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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

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

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

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.

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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.

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* 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’?

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

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)

Upcoming workshops with Jen & Writing Ourselves Whole -- August 2009!

Read on for more information about the upcoming Declaring Our Erotic and Write Whole workshops with Jen & Writing Ourselves Whole!
heart power!

Declaring Our Erotic-Reclaiming Our Sexuality
Eight Tuesday evenings, beginning 8/11/09
Open to queer women survivors of sexual trauma!

Have you been thinking about exploring some new edges in your writing? Are there longings you'd like to find language for?

Now's the time: Changing our language can change the way we understand ourselves and our desires! Once again, I'm opening this workshop explicitly to queer women survivors of sexual trauma who want to continue the process of reclaiming their sexuality.

In this erotic writing group, we write in response to exercises that engage or invoke various aspects of our erotic, sexual and sensual selves, in a safe and confidential group of peers. Get more comfortable writing about sexual desires, receive strong and focused feedback about your new writing, explore the varied and complex aspects of sexuality and identity, all while trying your hand at some explicit erotic writing!

In these 8 weeks, you'll create an exciting body of fresh and (often) surprising new writing, and my very well find that your experience of your erotic voice/erotic power has been transformed.


Write Whole: Survivors Write
Eight Monday evenings, beginning 8/10/09.
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!

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All workshops held in an accessible, downtown San Francisco office, near Powell Street and Market - close to Bart & Muni.

Spaces are limited and pre-registration is required.

Fee for each 8 week workshop is $250.

To register, 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 and is currently leading workshops at UCSF for folks living with cancer.

More info: www.writingourselveswhole.org.

Note: These workshops are open to individuals who identify on the woman/female spectrum and who also self-define as survivors of sexual trauma. Categorizations of gender can be highly problematic and I believe that both "women" and "survivor" are self-defined! Please don't hesitate to contact me if you're wondering whether you should attend or not.

Announce: Summer 09 Workshops with Writing Ourselves Whole!

Writing Ourselves Whole:
transformative writing workshops for the SF Bay Area

Contact: Jen Cross
jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org
http://www.writingourselveswhole.org

Are you looking for an opportunity to create some new and powerful writing in an invigorating, supportive writing community? This June and July, Writing Ourselves Whole is pleased to be offering two full 8-week writing workshops and a Saturday writing retreat:

Write Whole: Survivors Write. Monday evenings, June 1 - July 27. Open to all women survivors of sexual trauma.

Declaring Our Erotic: Take back your sexuality! Tuesday evenings, June 2 - July 28. Open to queer-identified women survivors of sexual trauma.

Raw Silk, an erotic writing retreat open to all women! Saturday, June 20, 10am-4pm.

All workshops offered at the Writing Ourselves Whole workshop space in downtown San Francisco. Register now or visit www.writingourselveswhole.org for more information!

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Write Whole: Survivors Write
Eight Monday evenings, June 1 - July 27
Open to all women survivors of sexual trauma

Transforming our language is one of the ways we transform our lives.

Many who are survivors of sexual trauma feel fragmented or disjointed and have come to believe we must always live our lives this way. Writing is one way to regain some control over our experiences and memories, and begin to create new sense out of them.

Gather with other women survivors of sexual trauma in this workshop, and 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. You'll be encouraged to trust the flow of your own writing, and receive immediate feedback about the power of your words!

These workshops are open to all women who identify in as survivors of sexual trauma. Though we come together as survivors, we are never required to write any particular version of “our story,” or even write about trauma at all if we don’t choose to! In this space, you have the opportunity to write as you feel called to write.

Although the setting is a supportive one, the workshop is different from a "support group," as the focus of the workshop itself is on each person's writing; we create beauty out of the sometimes extraordinarily difficult stuff of our lives.


Declaring Our Erotic
Eight Tuesday evenings, June 2 - July 28
For Summer 09, this workshop is open to queer women survivors of sexual trauma

Take back your sexuality! Come together with other queer-identified women survivors to create a space in which we struggle with and celebrate our complex sexualities, in an attempt to become less isolated around, and more comfortable talking about, our sexual desires. Each week, we write in response to exercises designed to tap into different aspects of our sexual selves: memory, fantasy, experience, relationship with the body, and more!

You will get more comfortable exploring and talking about sexual desires, receive strong and focused feedback about your new writing, explore the varied and complex aspects of sexuality and desire in a fun and confidential environment, and, of course, try your hand at some explicit erotic writing!

Previous participants have found the group to be transformative, feeling that the work they've done has opened up and changed not only their relationship with their erotic selves, but with many other aspects of their lives as well.


Raw Silk - Women write their erotic
an erotic writing retreat open to all women
Saturday, June 20, 2009
10:00am-4:00pm.
Continental breakfast and light lunch provided.

Treat yourself to a day of good food, powerful writing and great community! In this AWA-method day-long writing retreat, you’ll have the opportunity to get more comfortable exploring and talking about sexual desires, celebrate the varied and complex aspects of your sexual self, and, of course, dive into some explicit erotic writing! Surprise yourself with the power of your sensual/erotic voice. You'll end the day with a rich body of new creative writing and feedback from your peers about what's already strong in your work.

For each of our all-day Saturday writing retreats, we gather in the morning for coffee and some home-baked breakfast, and then write through the rest of the morning. After a break for a light lunch, we keep on diving deep into our work through the afternoon! At the end of the day, we have some conversation about revising and editing our work, and we close by four.

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All workshops are open to folks of all writing abilities: whether you write regularly, are an infrequent journaler, or used to write and would like to again, these groups are for you!

Our 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! Cost for full 8-week workshops is $250; fee for Saturday retreats is $100. Deposits are requested to reserve your space. To register or for more information, email jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org or visit www.writingourselveswhole.org!

Writing Ourselves Whole's founder and facilitator, Jen Cross, is a freelance writer whose work has been published in close to thirty anthologies and periodicals, including Nobody Passes, Visible: A Femmethology, Best Sex Writing 2008, Best Women’s Erotica 2007, and many more. Jen has facilitated writing workshops since 2002. She received her MA in Transformative Language Arts from Goddard College, and is a certified facilitator of the Amherst Writers & Artists method (www.amherstwriters.com, as developed by Pat Schneider).

Founded in 2003, 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. We exist 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.

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.

'Resurrecting' survivor voices

One of the pieces of “survivor” identity that I wrangle with is this idea that we must “recover” our voices. I mean the notion that our voices are lost, have been snatched away from us.

The literal truth for most of us is that our voices were always here – and yet swallowing this concept of "lost voice" (en)forces a deep body collusion with the prevailing myths and metaphors of those in power. We internalize the idea that we’re silenced in order, I think, to break free of the reality in fact that we are/were ignored. That there are those who heard what we said, and then just turned their faces away from ours.

I spent years believing that I was silenced, that I had no voice. The fact is that I was unheard–an important distinction. As is true for most kids, I learned not to tell my complete truth while I was growing up, and then, and, like many millions of children around the world, I was trained in secrecy by a stepfather/rapist who took my (en)forced silence as his birthright, and used it as a weapon against me. How do we who are survivors of abuse (sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse) tell our truths in a culture that doesn’t want to really hear people’s words and meanings? We are not heard by abusers who demand a silence they can interpret as “Yes.” We are not heard by a patriarchal, capitalist society that demands our silence so they can overlay our lives with their image of us. We are not heard by a government that usurps women’s tears in order to justify the killing of other women’s sons and daughters.

Sometimes I am left wondering why I should bother trying to communicate at all, when those in power aren’t listening. When I speak, my sentences often come out broken and peculiar, cut off in the middle with long stretches of silence. I stop writing to stare out the window. I stop typing to play with a candle that doesn’t want to stay lit. I stop. That’s their aim.

My aim though, is to start again. After years of internalizing the directives instructing me to be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I have begun the work of trusting the true power of my voice. I have come to believe in linguistic border-crossing as a means through which to change the world through a renewed sense of speech, voice, self, embodiment, empowerment. One means through which to enact this change is with a writing practice–a regular, repeated experience of coming to aspects of self through writing, through linguistic risk taking; the placing of self and selves on the page; the attempt to name what cannot be named and what we have been told should not be named. I have used this writing practice to struggle with and against the silences imposed on me, silences I’ve been expected to collude with, to put voice and flesh to experiences and desires–both sexual and not–that were never meant to be articulated.

Sometimes it seems we speak into the wind and feel the craziness of unhearing laying across our face and shoulders like a heavy wet blanket. Our government is at war, killing people for no reason other than money and hatred. Here again is the time and place for our writing, through which we can do difficult work. We are a nation of subjected and silenced people. We are a nation of people trained into the difference of others as reason enough to kill them. Millions of people around the world gathered to declare their opposition to a U.S.-led invasion, and the U.S. invaded anyway. Does this mean that those millions all lost their voices? No–they were ignored.

We are a nation raised on our supremacy–the United States of America is the greatest country in the world!–and so many of us believe it even as we see the leaders stripping away our bedsheets and clothes, snatching the food from our and our children’s mouths, tearing down our homes, thieving the books from our children’s hands and tossing it all on the bonfires of their war, tossing it all into their own furnaces; selling our bodies on the open market to the highest or most connected bidder and pocketing the money themselves.

If we don’t tell our stories, others will tell them for us, and they will get them wrong. (I’m not the first one to articulate this fact; who said that?) The stories that others tell for and about you will be used to build policy and pathology, will be used to build houses to hide you in / used to build walls to close around you / will be used to build stories to their own ends / will be used against you. If we do not tell our stories, the stories told about us will be used to our detriment.

Your voice, however it sounds or doesn't, has always been in you, with you, of you, you. And what happens in the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops, in most Amherst Writers and Artists workshops, is that your words – that relentless creative speech and possibility – are deeply attended to, not pathologized or ensnared in sin or broken down but opened into all it’s matter-of-factness, heard as beauty and majesty or rage, walked through as a garden full of flowers, a pond lily marshside.

March retreat on 3/14 and Spring workshops!

Don't forget: there's a Saturday Write Whole retreat on 3/14, and the spring workshops begin on 4/6 and 4/7! More information below -- visit www.writingourselveswhole.org for more information or to sign up!

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Spring 2009 AWA-model writing workshops
with Jen Cross/Writing Ourselves Whole!

** Write Whole: Survivors Write - Saturday Intensive!
An all-day writing retreat
Saturday, March 14, 2009
9:00am-4:00pm.
(Check-in and registration/continental breakfast 8:30-9:00am)
Light lunch also provided.
~ Treat yourself to a day of good writing, good food, and good community! For each of our all-day Saturday writing retreats, we gather in the morning for coffee and some home-baked breakfast, and then write through the rest of the morning. After a break for a light lunch, we keep on diving deep into our work through the afternoon! We create new art and new beauty out of the complicated realities of our lives. Open to all women who identify in as survivors of sexual trauma.


**Write Whole: Survivors Write**
Special 5-week workshop meets Monday evenings, beginning April 6.

~ Gather with other women survivors of sexual trauma in this workshop, and 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. You'll be encouraged to trust the flow of your own writing, and receive immediate feedback about the power of your words! Open to all women who identify in as survivors of sexual trauma.



**Declaring Our Erotic**
Special 5-week workshop meets Tuesday evenings, beginning April 7.
Open to folks of all sexualities and all genders!

~ Are you ready to explore some new edges in your writing? Are there longings you would like to find language for? Now's the time: you may very well surprise yourself with the depth and power of your writing!

This is a deliberately-diverse erotic writing workshop open to folks of all sexualities and all genders. For anyone who's ever thought about writing erotic stories - now's the time to get some of those fantasies down on the page! In these workshops, you will get more comfortable exploring and talking about sexual desires, receive strong and focused feedback about your new writing, explore the varied and complex aspects of sexuality and desire in a fun and confidential environment, and, of course, try your hand at some explicit erotic writing! In addition, if you choose, you may share your manuscripts with peer writers for well-rounded response to your erotic work.


All 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 5 weeks is $175; fee for Saturday retreat is $100. To register or for more information, email jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org or visit
www.writingourselveswhole.org!


About your facilitator: Jen Cross is a freelance writer whose work has been published in many anthologies and periodicals. Jen has facilitated writing workshops since 2002. She received her MA in Transformative Language Arts from Goddard College, and is a certified facilitator of the Amherst Writers & Artists method (http://www.amherstwriters.com/).

2009 Workshop Schedule!

Hello all!

I've finally got the 2009 workshop schedule up on the Writing Ourselves Whole website -- http://www.writingourselveswhole.org/ClassSchedule.htm.

Coming up, we have a Saturday Write Whole Intensive in March, and the Spring workshops begin in April.

Have a look -- and let me know if I can hold you a space!

Podcast Answers - Day 9: What inspires me about the writing workshops?

Back in November, I committed to posting longer, more well-thought-out answers to the questions that Britt Bravo posed to me during our Arts and Healing Network podcast conversation. Here’s my answer for day 9!

9. What inspires you the most about your workshops?


I’m consistently inspired by these two facts: The ongoing reminder that every person has artistic brilliance inside that is seeking an outlet, and that community can web together to support one another – that we can collaborate around healing and individual/social transformation without needing MSWs or other clinical degrees. These have something to do with one another.

Have I mentioned this here before? Pat Schneider says in her book, Writing Alone and With Others, “What I believe is not what everyone believes. It is this: There is no place for hierarchies in the heart, and the making of art is a matter of the heart. Art is the creative expression of the human spirit.”

This is what I believe: Give us safe space, a room of our own (with or without safe others) and we will create change in our lives. We can be safe and explore what it means to lie and truth our way to safety, to lie our way home. We must take what we need to continue the process of survival, which is ultimately a process of resistance: the pen the paper the time the space the cafe or bedroom or kitchen table the 3 a.m. living room the subway train the cemetery the laundromat the whatever you need.

I’m working as a part of an alternative healing movement seeking to provide and facilitate spaces for self-empowerment, which might be witnessed and supported/encouraged by others on a similar journey. I struggle whenever anyone refers to the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops as “therapy.” If anything, I’d like to be known simply a writer and a group facilitator/participant. I do this work with survivors of sexual trauma and around sexuality/erotic writing because I believe in its effectiveness, and because I’d like to continue to have available to me and others like me the options of non-clinical healing/transformative process and practice.


I’m interested in what a specifically non-clinical model of Transformative Language Arts (TLA) can accomplish. I’m interested in transformative/healing modalities that will not reproduce the old analytic model, will not appropriate the language of clients and masters, will not capitulate to professionalizing drives that are infiltrating social service agencies around the country. What can we do when we come together with people, with mutual respect, with a give-and-take of information, with a possibility of mutual ex/change? Those in power will work to rewrite us broken bodies back into some semblance of (their) normalcy. They don’t want us rocking the boat.


Together, we who participate in these writing groups engage in the communal creation (and continual re-creation) of a space that allows for risk, performance and play. As a participant, I struggle to make clear for the rest of the writers: I will take the same risks you will. I will trust you to cherish what of myself I offer, and I will be open to your feedback. I have something at stake here, personally, just as you do. This willingness, in my experience, allows for a leveling of the power in the room–which is transformative in itself. (It also, of course, comes with its own difficulties.)

When we, whether or not we’re survivors or sexual trauma, come together this way—-assiduously working to remain aware and respectful of the differences among us, and share our words—-we have the opportunity to acknowledge our individual places of beauty and strength, both because we listen to our own poetic phrasing and descriptions, and because others tell us what is beautiful and strong for them in the writings we offer. We hear, witness, and open (to) the splendor in ourselves and in others. There is transformation in those moments, particularly when we who have spent years reiterating to ourselves the lessons of ugliness that we learned at our abusers’ hips are able to acknowledge beauty in ourselves.

The truth is, those interested in liberating themselves and each other from the weight of oppression must be involved in the process, the development, of any education or liberating strategy. Education cannot be bestowed. Wellness cannot be bestowed. Liberation cannot be bestowed. These are all processes in which one must be continually and consciously engaged.

We must have multiple possibilities, routes, and paths of transformation and life change. As soon as we who are “alternative” start bending ourselves to look more “respectable” and “acceptable” to the mainstream, the alternative has thrown up its hands to governmental organizations, to the drug corporations and lobbyists, to the medical doctors and to The Old Mothers and Fathers.

And so I’m privileged to have the opportunity to walk alongside and sing the songs that rise when we are all similarly invested in a process of transformation. Instead of grabbing the shreds of authority that Power pretends to offer those of us interested in healing work, along with the false promise of more control (and more money!, they say) in the future as long as we follow their rules, I would rather continue to experience the empowerment and full-bodied joy of the deep connection and conversation that occurs when folks walk their transformation side-by-side.

Take me backward into your dreams and let me watch you stumble. Your language is yours alone, the sounds of your body the stretch and wrinkle of your face the wrinkled words and nods, shrugs and shivers and shifts of eyeballs. You don’t know that you know your own way and I cannot tell it for you. I can take your hand, though, and promise not to leave you while you float in your own waters, while you choke down the nausea of history in your instance to see the clownfish and schools of yellowtail floating around the coral of yourself.

What has inspired you about workshops you've participated in and/or facilitated?

Podcast Answers - Day 7: How facilitating the workshops has changed my own writing?

About a month ago, I committed to posting longer, more well-thought-out answers to the questions that Britt Bravo posed to me during our Arts and Healing Network podcast conversation. Here’s my answer for day seven!

7. How has [facilitating] the workshops changed your own writing?



I think the most important impact that the workshops have had on my own work is an encouragement to be more, and more consistently, brave.

Each week I get to write with folks who are taking chances, finding new language for old pains, old desires, or new and surprising ones. Every week I am inspired by these writers’ braveries, their risk and subtle (and not-so-subtle!) implosion of yet another barrier to connection with others, of demands to silence, of old trainings. The way we often go ahead and read aloud the work we hate, the work that scares us to have written, the work that seems to make no sense, the work that is “too” stream of consciousness, “too” organized, “too” truthful or “too” fictional.” The way Pat Schneider organized the AWA method makes it feel ok, feel possible, for folks to “go there” in their writing, to speak the unmentionables, to create a story for that thing without words.

I am someone who believes that you ought not ask someone to do something you haven’t, or wouldn’t, do yourself--so I am driven to step into similar risk. To let myself try on words for a big fear, a big loss, a big shame, a big longing. To let myself strip out the words to a new story that needs an old telling. The folks I’ve written with since 2002 encourage me over and over purely through their example to take more risks in my writing, to follow the truths in my writing, as they do, to say what isn’t supposed to be said., like they do, to claim my multiplicity of voices, like they do. This is the most profound effect that facilitating these workshops has had on my work.

The fact that I’m always reading aloud what I’ve just written means my work, overall, is more performative, more ready to be performed, because I’m writing it with the knowledge that I will most often be reading it aloud – that means I pay a different quality of attention, even unintentionally, to how the words will sound when I bring them up off the page and into my lungs, off my tongue and into the room. Most of the pieces I performed on this year’s Body Heat: Femme porn tour were written in an AWA-method workshop, either Writing Ourselves Whole or Laguna Writers workshops, first read there, first received in these crucibles of risk and transformation and possibility – and those receptions paved the way for a more public (nation-wide!) reading!

These are the biggest effects on my own writing of facilitating the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops – in addition, of course, to writing a whole lot more regularly. What about for you? Are there ways that working/writing in one of the Writing Ourselves Whole or another AWA-method workshop has impacted your writing?

Spaces still available in this Saturday's Write Whole introductory intensive!

Don't forget -- we've got one more Saturday intensive coming up this weekend, 12/20, and there's still room if you'd like to treat yourself to a day of good writing, good food, and good community!

Write Whole: Survivors Write -- an all-day writing retreat open to women survivors of sexual trauma
Saturday, December 20, 8:30am-4:00pm.
(Check-in and registration/continental breakfast 8:30-9:00am)
Light lunch also provided.

Location: Writing Ourselves Whole workshop space in downtown San Francisco.


For each of our all-day Saturday writing retreats, we gather in the morning for coffee and some home-baked breakfast, and then write through the rest of the morning. After a break for a light lunch, we keep on diving deep into our work through the afternoon! At the end of the day, we have some conversation about revising and editing our work, and we close by four.

As for all the other writing groups, we will be using the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method. You'll leave with: a rich body of new creative writing; feedback from your peers about what's already strong in your new writing; and some thoughts about revising your new work.

The fee for these retreats is $100. Please let me know if you'd like more information or would like to register -- send an email to jennifer (at) writingourselveswhole (dot) org, or visit www.writingourselveswhole.org!

Join us!

Saturday Intensives on 12/13 and 12/20!

Treat yourself to a day of good writing, good food, and good community!

Declaring Our Erotic -- an all-day erotic writing retreat open to folks of all genders
Saturday, December 13, 8:30am-4:00pm.
(Check-in and registration/continental breakfast 8:30-9:00am)
Light lunch also provided.

Write Whole: Survivors Write -- an all-day writing retreat open to women survivors of sexual trauma
Saturday, December 20, 8:30am-4:00pm.
(Check-in and registration/continental breakfast 8:30-9:00am)
Light lunch also provided.

Location: Writing Ourselves Whole workshop space in downtown San Francisco.


For each of our all-day Saturday writing retreats, we gather in the morning for coffee and some home-baked breakfast, and then write through the rest of the morning. After a break for a light lunch, we keep on diving deep into our work through the afternoon! At the end of the day, we have some conversation about revising and editing our work, and we close by four.

As for all the other writing groups, we will be using the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method. You'll leave with: a rich body of new creative writing; feedback from your peers about what's already strong in your new writing; and some thoughts about revising your new work.

The fee for these retreats is $100. Please let me know if you'd like more information or would like to register!

Join us!

Fall workshops begin in October!

Registration open for Fall workshops!
Join us!

Beginning in October, I'm again offering three AWA-method workshops: our Monday night Write Whole group for women survivors of sexual trauma, the Tuesday night erotic workshop (open to all genders!), and our Wednesday morning women's sensuality writing workshop!

Write Whole: Survivors Write
Monday evenings 10/6-12/1.
Gather with other women survivors of sexual trauma to 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 own writing, and receive immediate feedback about the power of your words!

Declaring Our Erotic
Tuesday pm, 10/7-12/2.
Get more comfortable exploring and talking about sexual desires, receive strong and focused feedback about your new writing, explore the varied and complex aspects of sexuality and desire, and, of course, try your hand at some explicit erotic writing! In 8 weeks, you'll create an exciting body of fresh and often surprising new writing!

Raw Silk: Women write desire
Wednesday mornings, 10/8-12/3.
Spend your Wednesday mornings wrapping yourself in the language of longing, celebrating the complex textures of sensuality. Each week, we delve into a new thread in the interweaving of our desires: memory, fantasy, experience, relationship with the body, spirituality, and so on. Experience your fully empowered writing voice in this safe, confidential, and fun erotic writing workshop. Explore desire through writing with Raw Silk.

Changing our language can change who we understand ourselves to be.

No previous experience necessary! Pre-registration required. Fee for 8-week AWA workshops is $250. Workshops held our wheelchair accessible downtown SF location, right near BART and multiple MUNI routes!

As always, if you've got any questions, please send them to me at jennifer (at) writingourselveswhole (dot) org. Use the links at the top of this page to learn more info, or visit www.writingourselveswhole.org to register!

Reminder: Summer writing workshops begin next week!

Eight-week writing workshops
With Writing Ourselves Whole!

Summer workshops begin July 14 and 15
www.writingourselveswhole.org


**Write Whole-Survivors Write**
meets Monday evenings, beginning July 14.
Open to women survivors of sexual trauma.
Gather with other survivors to create new art and new beauty out of your experiences, and deepen your sense of wholeness. (note: both "woman" and "survivor" are intended to be self-defined.)


**Declaring Our Erotic**
meets Tuesday evenings, beginning July 15.
Open to folks of all sexualities and all genders!
DOE workshops provide a space to get more comfortable exploring and talking about sexuality and desire, and to become less inhibited in your own writing. Share your manuscripts with peer writers for well-rounded response to your erotic work, and create an exciting body of fresh and (often) surprising new writing in 8 weeks!

No previous writing experience necessary -- Open to folks of
all writing abilities!

Workshops held in San Francisco in an accessible space, a half-block from BART and on many MUNI lines. Spaces are limited and pre-registration is required! Cost for 8 weeks is $250. To register, visit www.writingourselveswhole.org!

About your facilitator: Jen Cross is a freelance writer
whose work has been published in numerous anthologies, and
is fresh off the very successful Body Heat tour with
kathleen delaney and Vixen Noir/Veronica Combs! She's a
queer incest survivor, and has facilitated writing workshops
for the past 5 years. She received her MA in Transformative
Language Arts from Goddard College, and is a certified
facilitator of the Amherst Writers & Artists method
(http://www.amherstwriters.com/).

Fearless Words: A free writing workshop for women survivors (with SFWAR!)

San Francisco Women Against Rape is offering our Fearless Words Creative Writing Workshop for women survivors of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and child sexual abuse. Beginning June 4 (just two weeks away!) Eight Wednesdays, 6-8pm at The Women's Building San Francisco (18th and Valencia) Woman-identified writers of all levels are invited to attend this workshop created especially for survivors of sexual violence to discover our voices, create political dialogue and develop our craft as writers, while using writing as a medium of healing and transformation. Facilitated by Jen Cross, this group is free, wheelchair accessible, and runs 8 weeks. Call Lisa at 415/861-2024 ext. 302 for a short intake interview or for more information. Thank you!

Erotic/sensuality writing workshops begin next week!

EDIT: Note new workshop start dates!

There are still spaces available in both of the Writing Ourselves Whole sensuality/erotic writing workshops that begin next Tuesday, 5/6, and Wednesday, 5/7 -- please spread the word!

Register at http://www.writingourselveswhole.org/Contact.htm!

Declaring Our Erotic begins Tuesday evening, May 6. Open to folks of all sexualities and all genders!

Raw Silk: Women write desire begins Wednesday morning, May 7. Open to all women.

Workshops meet in downtown San Francisco in an accessible, BART-friendly location. Write to jennifer (at) writingourselveswhole (dot) org, or visit www.writingourselveswhole.org, for more information about the workshops or your facilitator, Jen Cross.

Here's what some folks have said about these workshops:

Magic happens here, that's the thing. We explore the politics of desire in the most amazing ways. Jen's workshops are good nourishment for the soul and creativity, as well as really empowering and FUN!!! Go toward the fun..... -- Cayenne

The chance to integrate erotica and language, out loud in community, every week, is such a human delight and relief--it can lead us to unexpected discoveries, both inside us and out there in the world. --LB

Interested? Or know someone else who might be? Send me a note at jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org, and I can tell you whatever you'd like to know about how to get some more erotic writing into your week days.

This March, join us for one of our weekend intensive writing days!

Announcing weekend-day workshops this March - Reserve your space now!

Want to get a feel for how the workshops run before committing to a full 8-week session? Not able to join to a full 8-week workshop session? Want the opportunity to go a little deeper into the writing that you've gotten started on your own, or during regular workshop meetings?

Here's your chance!

Join us for a day of good writing, good food and great company! The March dates are:

Saturday, March 22: Declaring Our Erotic: open to folks of all genders and orientations!

Saturday, March 29: Raw Silk-Women write desire: open to all women

Sunday, March 30: Write Whole-Survivors Write: for women survivors of sexual trauma

I'll provide breakfast and light snacks for the day. As for all the other writing groups, we will be using the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method. You'll leave with: a rich body of new creative writing; feedback from your peers about what's already strong in your new writing; and some thoughts about revising your new work.

Each retreat day runs 10:00am-4:00pm (Breakfast 9:30-10:00am). The cost will be $100; sliding scale may be available. All workshop meetings held in our convenient Flood Building office, right off the Powell Street BART stop. Contact me (jennifer (at) writingourselveswhole (dot) org) with questions or to reserve a space!

Reminder: All identities (i.e., women, survivor) are to be self-defined!

Celebrate the new year with new words! Winter 2008 Workshops Begin Soon -

Transformative writing workshops:
Winter 2008 sessions begin January 7, 8 and 9.

Erotic writing workshops and workshop for survivors of sexual trauma begin soon! Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about these special topic writing workshops: jennifer@writingourselveshwhole.org.

----------------------------------------

~ Transforming our language is one way we transform our lives. ~

~ Visit www.writingourselveswhole.org to register for these special topic writing workshops~

Write Whole-Survivors Write meets Monday evenings beginning January 7.
Open to women survivors of sexual trauma. Gather with other survivors to create new art and new beauty out of your experiences, and deepen your sense of wholeness.

Declaring Our Erotic workshops meet Tuesday evenings and Wednesday mornings. DOE workshops provide a space to get more comfortable exploring and talking about sexuality and desire, and to become less inhibited in your own writing.

Mixed DOE: Tuesday evenings beginning January 8 - Open to folks of all sexualities and all genders!

Women's DOE, Wednesday mornings beginning January 9 - open to all women!

~note: both "woman" and "survivor" are intended to be self-defined.~

Transform your relationship with your writing and with yourself. Open to folks of all writing abilities!

A few spaces are still available in each workshop. Cost for 8-week workshops is $250. Workshops held in downtown San Francisco, near BART and MUNI. To register, or for more information, visit www.writingourselveswhole.org!

About your facilitator: Jen Cross is a freelance writer and queer incest survivor whose work has been published in numerous anthologies. She's facilitated writing workshops for the past 5 years.

Reminder: Fall workshops begin October 1!

UPDATE: The fall series of the Writing Ourselves Whole writing workshops begins soon -- start dates moved to October 1, 2 and 3!

Write Whole: Survivors Write (open to women survivors of sexual abuse) will meet Monday evenings, October 1 - November 26, 2007 (no meeting October 29).

mixed Declaring Our Erotic (open to folks of all sexualities and all genders) will meet Tuesday evenings, October 2 - November 27, 2007 (no meeting October 30).

Women Declaring our Erotic (open to women) will meet Wednesday mornings, October 3 - November 28, 2007 (no meeting October 31).

(As always - identities such as "woman" and "survivor" are intended to be self-defined.)

There are still spaces available in each workshop: let me know if you'd like me to reserve a space for you! The cost is $200 for 8 weeks of writing and sharing! For more details or to register, please visit writingourselveswhole.org - thank you!

Also -- New offering: Day-long writing intensives
I'm planning a couple of local area weekend-day writing intensives for the fall. The first will be a general topic writing intensive San Francisco on Saturday, October 6, and the second will be a women's erotic writing intensive in the East Bay on Saturday, November 10th. Each day will run from 8:30-4, and I will provide both coffee/baked goods in the morning and light lunch. The cost will be $100. Please let me know if you'd like more information or would like to reserve a space.

Reminder: Fall workshops begin next week!

The fall series of the Writing Ourselves Whole writing workshops begins September 17, 18 and 19!

Write Whole: Survivors Write (open to women survivors of sexual abuse) will meet Monday evenings, September 17 - Nov 12, 2007 (no meeting Oct 8).

mixed Declaring Our Erotic (open to folks of all sexualities and all genders) will meet Tuesday evenings, September 18 - Nov 13, 2007 (no meeting Oct 9).

Women Declaring our Erotic (open to women) will meet Wednesday mornings, September 19- Nov 14, 2007 (no meeting Oct 10).

(As always - identities such as "woman" and "survivor" are intended to be self-defined.)

There are still spaces available in each workshop: let me know if you'd like me to reserve a space for you! The cost is $200 for 8 weeks of writing and sharing! For more details or to register, please visit writingourselveswhole.org - thank you!

Also -- New offering: Day-long writing intensives
I'm planning a couple of local area weekend-day writing intensives for the fall. The first will be a general topic writing intensive San Francisco on Saturday, October 6, and the second will be a women's erotic writing intensive in the East Bay on Saturday, November 10th. Each day will run from 8:30-4, and I will provide both coffee/baked goods in the morning and light lunch. The cost will be $100. Please let me know if you'd like more information or would like to reserve a space.