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https://www.rememberinstitute.com/courses/course/lws-1-1"Liberated Wordsmith is a mindfully built and heart-healing space that encourages everyone to show up in their fullness and write who they are with space to be and grow. A must-attend event for sure!"
- The Liberated Wordsmith, Season 1 Participant

 “Reimagining the world requires that we … mourn the destructive losses that we could not control, despite our best efforts…”      We used this excerpt from adrienne maree brown’s book, Holding Change, in a Liberated Wordsmith (LWS) class earlier this year. It lit me up. Here’s an excerpt of what flowed from my fingers moments later in a fast write as I reflected upon my family dynamics:

I read this and I feel grief, and relief. And another round, a deeper round, of anger. I remind myself that I am safe, to feel the fullness of anger, in love. 

I TRIED SO HARD to do what was not mine. To mother, to father, myself and others, when I was just single digits years old. 

I tried so hard, to find a place for myself. 

I tried so hard to keep myself safe. 

I tried so hard to keep our household peaceful.

I tried so hard to keep you alive, and to keep you, and him, happy. 

I tried so hard to do all the right things so that I could not be overwhelmed with pain. 

I am angry that you let me take on roles that weren’t mine. I am rageful, that you stepped aside of your roles, and let me take them, let me be your protector, let me be his victim. A part of me finds you disgusting, at how you sacrificed me, because you were too scared to be the adult. You sacrificed me. You sacrificed me. You sacrificed me. 

You taught me to sacrifice myself 

… I didn’t see the subtle ways I was still doing that, all these years. I didn’t see how deeply I’d been tricked, how deeply I’d signed the contract. I didn’t see how deeply I viscerally believed my survival was hinged upon my creation of dysfunctional loyalty.

The wallpaper is peeling off the walls. The plaster is flaking, behind that. The rugs have holes in them, revealing the already present holes in the floor. The scaffolding is coming down, the basement filled with sewage. Always been there, covered up with your Ethan Allen furniture and your carefully placed knick knacks. The dysfunction, the utter stink, has been around since forever- and it’s not that I’ve not known about it, it’s just that it had to get this bad until I finally said No. Emphatically, no. Plainly, no. With clarity and love in my heart, no. 

I will not 

I will not

I will not

I hear the distant voices of a dysfunctional culture who believe blood comes first, that self-sacrifice is holy, that taking care of parents is the most beautiful thing a person can do. 

I will not. 

I will not.

I will not. 

I hear the voices of my young one- terrified at what will happen if the cord is clipped. This is how she learned to survive. How could it possibly be safe to extricate herself from the hand that doesn’t feed?

We will not

We will not

We will not, 

And, we don’t need to, sweetheart. 

She doesn’t quite know that we can delight, without a cost. That we can delight, without having to pay later. That we can delight, without obligation or punishment. 

And yet, we delight a lot these days. Her doubt predictably shows up. She is clever, in her attempts to hold onto this old loyalty to dysfunction. 

The other day she tried to convince me we were dirty, when delight was unfolding. No, sweetheart, I tell her. I’m not, we’re not, you never were. 

She can’t quite believe me yet. 

Ok. 

She is scared of being untethered from the pain of falseness. 

I know, sweetheart. Let’s go slow. 

She’s not quite on board yet. Ok. 

Ok. 

Ok. 

Ok. 

After the class was over, I had time to do more writing, to process further, to drop in deeper into what had profoundly landed during our class:

I feel the fullness from LWS in my body. I feel as if I might overflow. 

I drop down into my feet and find some grounding there. a burp releases. my pelvic floor drops. 

my toes help remind me of so many things that don’t require naming, just experiencing. 

my breath drops down into my toes, as if my breathing mechanics have suddenly found another octave to live from. 

my legs are filling up now. my heart is still full, and now I also feel the ache. some shakiness. 

it’s safe to embody myself, I remind myself.

it’s safe to drop an octave lower. 

I want to hum. I hum. 

my mouth wants to open, and the hum turns into a full body vocal release of air. 

I feel the desire for humor in this moment, for playfulness. a laugh emerges.

I feel the fullness of it all. 

There is awe here:  the depth of grief and the vastness of joy.

I laugh at how the mind wants to focus in- there is so much beauty when all is included, that laughter just naturally erupts. 

This depth is light hearted when singularity loses its foothold. 

Delight becomes undeniable. 

It’s not always easy to connect with hard truths from our families of origin. It is part of our design to protect what is painful, to hide what we don’t want to feel, and to pretend what regards to what we don’t want to admit. AND, It is also part of our design to grow, expand, and live in abundance. 

Something in my system changed that day. The carefully crafted container we had co-created together in the class allowed hard and uncomfortable truths to be named, owned, expressed and felt. Truths of my family of origin recognized cognitively, from my whole being, deep into my cellular somatic network; named out loud, not just to myself, but to others who witnessed me in a crucial moment in my embodiment journey; to be remembered so as to be embodied. 

It can seem somewhat counterintuitive, but connecting with what may feel heavy or burdened, while in authentic containers, predictably leaves participants with a lightness of being. As we increase our awareness of the voice of our inner child, we become more empowered as functional adults. 

Season #2

I am excited to announce that in our next Liberated Wordsmith Series, “The Inner Child & Adulting: A Relationship of Discovery & Emancipation,” we will explore the existence of our inner child: their role(s), their wounds, their innocence, their abundance and more. As we do this, our adult selves will find healing, and a healthy sense of reparenting possibility.

We will be centering pieces of writing that lift up the journey of becoming conscious participants who are in relationship with the inner child. We will connect with selected literary and poetic excerpts, quotes, and consciously crafted writing prompts that reflect and uplift these themes as we engage with and honor our experiences through our writing. We will utilize a masterfully created container alongside writing to make space for discovery and integration.

Releasing trauma from our early years in courageous containers allows our nervous system to remember that although we may experience trauma in relationship, it is also through relationships that we heal, and evolve. 

In our masterfully co-created community…

  • ·      We will have time and space to contemplate and write
  • ·      Our voices and stories will be heard, if we so desire
  • ·      We will choose what feedback on our writing we receive
  • ·      Our creativity will be inspired and honored

Practical Information 

Dates: September 18th and 25th, and October 9th and 16th, 9:30am-noon PST

Investment: $149 for the 4-week series which includes: 

  • ·      4 live interactive zoom-based writing workshop sessions, 2.5 hours each
  • ·      Basic student access to ReMember Institute’s private social media platform, including a personal profile
  • ·      Access to the Liberated Wordsmith Community Group on campus
  • ·      Attendance limit: 20 people

To learn more about The Liberated Wordsmith, please head over to The Liberated Wordsmith site.  Please send questions to LLMEUSER@me.com

Note!  We will be offering a FREE class August 28th, from 9:30-noon PST. Please reach out to get more information, at LLMEUSER@me.com

"The Liberated Wordsmith was an experience in connection like 
no other I've had as a writer. The group practices and community 
traditions are designed to create a supportive, open, non-judgmental 
space, and participants come with open hearts. I highly recommend it. 
LWS was tremendously healing."
- The Liberated Wordsmith, Season 1 Participant

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