Tag: women

under appreciated

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maya-angelouWomen are the one-half of humanity most likely to respond to beauty and to little children and young animals…We are the ones who bear the children and know of the effort it takes to raise a child into adulthood. We are the empathic gender … – Jean Shinoda Bolen, Urgent Message from Mother

When … [I] asked [my grandmother] of what in life/was she most proud,/ the older woman answered/each of my children lived to be/an adult. – Cinda Thompson, from ‘Homemaker’

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, we turned to lesser celebrated women in our lives. Not the ones whose praises or political efforts are widely sung; not the ones whose names are on every tongue; not the ones anyone else may even have heard of. No, this week we turned to under appreciated women we have known, attempting to create a tribute of some kind. Whether responding to one of the epigraphs or the opening poem – the brief, tongue-in-cheek ‘Except for Laura Secord’ by Sylvia Maultash Warsh – or to a magazine image of a woman that resonated with us, each one in the circle had a lot to say. About invisibility.  Emotional pain.  Hard physical labor, psychic wounds, unfulfilled dreams, even the ordinary daily routine of life … so much unspoken and unsung.

But not in our circle! The writing abounds with depth of observation and feeling, a fitting way to bring Women’s History Month to a close. Except for next week, of course!

I AM HERE

The light does not expose what has
been ripped apart within.
You see this shell and it remains intact,
a fortress if you will …
Every curve has been carved to the liking
of the rain.
Every nook has been chiseled from the lining
of a touch.
In one piece, the power is mine to keep.
No window or door opens on command.
            I do not take orders.
            I do not crumble
            I am here.
            I am built to last.
AG Continue reading →

‘a sense of belonging together on a creative level’

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English: A Sense of Belonging, acacia cedar sc...

Image via Wikipedia

This was one of many responses after last week’s ‘read-around,’ an opportunity for those who have been writing weekly inside Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility to read to guests.  All guests were other inmates who signed up to attend. At the end of the reading, everyone was invited to write a response to the question: ‘what would draw you to the group, and what would keep you away?’ Given that this reading was the first exposure to ‘writinginsidevt’ for well over half the women present, the comments speak volumes to both what women hunger for; and how strongly the safety of our circle is conveyed through our practices and words.

‘What would draw me to the group would be the sense of belonging together on a creative level; a sense of comraderie as well as self. What would keep me from coming back would be for the group to become about materialistic things rather than what we can take away. That I feel is something I desperately need in my life. It’s about getting what you put in!’ Continue reading →

we are waiting for . . .

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What we want

. . .  a letting go, a blind falling . . . permission to breathe again . . . as if our whole lives depended on . . .

These phrases from Linda Pastan’s poem, “Interlude,” opened last week’s writing circle inside Vermont’s prison for women. The ten women around the table lifted pens, wrote without stopping for 20 minutes on yellow tablets, then shared their words — some with trepidation, some boldly, some with tenderness. After their words had been held and heard, we spoke back into the circle phrases that resonated with us. These ‘read-back’ lines became the material for the following ‘found’ poem, whose title is one of the lines:

I SIT ON THE EDGE

 moral fibers now frayed
force my shoulders to drop
teetering between my two selves
self-righteous self-loathing
twisted into shards
struggling to breathe
in the armor I construct for myself. Continue reading →