Writing Circles: Open-Ended & Special Focus
Find and free your voice. All forms of writing are welcome.
HOME
For Women of All Ages
After years of loving, learning, losing, and finding, women are treasure troves.
Creating a home. Leaving a home. Being home in oneself. Empty Nest. Our home, the earth. Being called home. In the shared energy of these gatherings, women can write in relation to whatever is stirring within and in whatever form seems to hold these experiences best, whether stories, poems, rants, essays, prayers, or letters. Discovering what is seeking voice and experimenting with different forms is a welcome part of the creative play.
THE SECRET POWER (AND JOYS) OF WOMEN JOURNALING
For Women of All Ages
In this session, Ani leads participants into new dimensions and depths of journal-writing. A workshop for those new to journaling or for veterans, the only prerequisite—a desire to listen deeply to yourself.
“Journaling is not just sitting with pen and paper. It’s a meeting, a rendezvous with a beloved companion. It is an act of loving respect for myself. Journaling is self-inquiry. Meditation. Prayer. It’s showing up to listen to me, to find out why the urge to cry, why the butterflies. It’s deep asking and deep listening …”
Download “So What Is the Power of Journaling”
Read Ani’s post: “Journal as Intimate Companion”
HARVESTING: For Women over 60
Creative self-expression holds a key to living with vitality, purpose, and joy in full bloom. Members of a HARVESTING Writing Circle gather together to explore and share the harvest of their lives. These writing circles welcome women new to writing, those who may have been journaling or writing regularly through other avenues for decades, and those who loved writing when younger, but left it behind. All are drawn to discovering what’s inside to express and fulfill—a desire that ripens with age.
All forms of writing welcome, including fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction—and what Ani’s teenage writers have dubbed “rants”: writing into any topic at all, in any style, without constraint.
See “Is this You?” and “What to Expect”
Local monthly Harvesting Writing Circle start date to be announced.
A second local (Western MA) monthly Harvesting Writing Circle may start in February/March 2024. Day of the week to be determined by the group. Contact Ani using the form below to let her know that you are interested.
“The power of coming together to “harvest” the wisdom of our hearts in the written word is life giving. Women together, speaking and listening, holding each other’s words in sacred space so as we might hear our own voices more clearly. Finally, a forum, a sanctuary, a place of inspiration to speak our truth. A wondrous creative and therapeutic process.”
-Peg Holcomb
“Thank you so much for your many kindnesses, Ani. I, too, feel very blessed to have found you and this welcoming circle of amazing women. The writing I have done since we came together has been and continues to be very healing.”
– With gratitude and love, Barbara Cooper
THE JOY OF WRITING
For Women and Men
Give yourself the gift of you.
Participants are invited to relax into their own creative flow. What seeks expression is given time and space to emerge and be received. Delight. Depth. Discovery. Vulnerability. Presence. Healing. Wonder. Gratitude. These are just some of the gifts of a deep dive into finding and freeing the voice of one’s heart.
A PARENT’S HEART
For Parents of Differently Abled Individuals
Your Heart is a Treasure Chest. Open it. A Parent’s Heart offers parents of differently abled individuals the chance to connect heart to heart through tuning into and sharing our stories. Allowing oneself to write freely without censorship can lead to discovering new gifts in our unforeseen and amazing journeys. Tears and laughter abound.
Download WRITING, A Key to the Heart’s Treasure (an inspirational eBook for parents)
HARVESTING YOUR LIFE: Starting Your Memoir
For Women and Men
It’s much easier to start writing one’s life than one might imagine. A fire, after all, can start with just one spark. There will be many sparks in this writing rendezvous, along with knowledge about how to self-spark. Keeping the writing going doesn’t have to be hard, either. In fact, harvesting one’s life through writing is an invigorating, life-giving process. Whether wanting to write for oneself or to leave some form of written legacy, participants will leave this session having begun the magic of weaving their memoirs.
MOTHERLOVE AND MOTHERLOSS
For Women and Men
“I feel like I have been initiated into a club that I did not know existed.” ~My brother’s words when our mother died.
Losing one’s mother to death or to dementia is a portal into new territory. In this session, participants will be gently invited to enter the space of the heart and to unearth what’s there, and in the process, bring light to the shadows and more light to the luminous.
“Being in a Dance of the Letters Writing Circle helps me feel more balanced, these moments of touching my soul for hours without interruption. It is abundant to be here.”
-Victoria Ahrensdorf
“What brought me here was a deep loneliness for myself— a need to be with myself intimately with others—a wish to hear my own voice come into being in such a strong way that I could trust myself to stride out into the world, life, on the strength of it—finally fully present.”
– Meg Fisher
LOVE LETTERS: The Delights of Letter Writing
For Women and Men
An invitation and guide to discover the simple and life-changing practice of writing of love letters to self, family, friends, pets, to objects, places, to the past, the future—the possibilities are endless.
The research of a Japanese scientist named Masaru Emoto has revealed that our words have a profound impact on matter. After wrapping a bottle of water with a paper on which the words “Thank you” and “Fool” were written, Emoto photographed the water crystals formed in response. Water exposed to “Thank you” formed beautiful, symmetrical hexagonal crystals, while the crystals of the water exposed to “fool” were malformed and fragmented. Emoto reported that water exposed to the words “love and gratitude” formed the most beautiful and delicate crystals of all.
Since we human beings consist of 98 percent water, the implications of these findings are phenomenal. Words of love and gratitude have the power not only to uplift us, but also to transform … to create harmony, perhaps even to heal. Letter writing is a stunning way to speak love.
GIVING VOICE TO THE UNSPEAKABLE
This workshop is designed to support members in giving voice to that which may have seemed unspeakable. Key is awareness of and connection with the inner, compassionate and non-judgmental listener. This abiding inner witness is the safe space to which writing can be a gentle path. Whether it is early trauma, the trauma of those around us (who perhaps raised us), or the challenges that come with being a spiritual being having a human experience, this session invites entry into the sanctuary of the heart, where all is embraced and pain can dissolve in the fire of love.
Read “My Father’s Dream”
Contact Ani for more information about Open-Ended & Special Focus Writing Circles.
HARVESTING LOVE
It’s about Love
Don’t postpone joy.
Don’t tuck it in a pocket and forget which one.
Don’t tell it just one more thing, then…
LOVE WITHOUT SUFFERING: Awakening Compassion
Join Ani’s Inner Circle
A great way to stay connected with Love:
Harvesting Love letters. Book excerpts. Recordings.
Resources to help you free the voice of your heart. And more.