Writing

We believe that writing and supportively sharing our stories can be an insightful and pleasurable means to self-discovery, personal validation, literacy skill development, connection to community, and increased emotional and physical well-being. (Writing Out Loud Instructors' Mission Statement in Morgan, 2002)

Writing and writing prompts can stir fresh ideas, trigger memories, create thoughts and help individuals to identify feelings and discover emotions. The writing process can be creative and cathartic. From their experience in their previous writing group, the women in the project were very familiar with writing. They wrote to the best of their ability, in their own language, and without focusing on spelling, grammar, or sentence structure. For those individuals who could not write, I or my co-facilitator wrote word for word as they dictated.

Each session in the project began with a free-writing exercise to explore thoughts and feelings with little direction from me as the facilitator. Participants could then choose to share or not share personal reflections with the group. For some participants, the free writing provided a release of weekly tensions and for others it provided a chance to daydream or further explore poetry. Free writing was limited to a designated time so the group had time for sharing before moving on to the more specific exercises.

Everybody has their own opinion of others, when they look at me they might say, Maybe she is nice, maybe she is so stupid, different people will have different opinions and it doesn't bother me because I have peace with my soul. When I look in the mirror I see a human being with a nose like my father's. Nature wanted me to look this way and I appreciate nature very much.

One such exercise was "The Mirror." I asked participants to look into a mirror and then respond on paper about the face looking back at them: Who was she? What were her hopes, dreams, desires? What kinds of things inspired her? Frightened her? Worried her? Discouraged her? This exercise prompted the women to connect with personal feelings they might have otherwise not recognized.

As another writing exercise to generate reflection, I handed out slips of paper with quotes on them and asked the women to respond about how the statements made them feel. Did they agree or disagree with the statement? Why or why not? The women could write their responses or speak about them. This exercise encouraged conversation and discussion, and was particularly useful when I wanted to address a specific topic or theme.