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 Writing Circles for Healing is a way to help heal illness, loss, grief, and life-altering transitions. Writing in a safe, supportive environment allows us to express our deepest feelings. By sharing our stories and listening to each other with empathetic, focused attention, we validate our experiences. Using simple writing techniques, we access our inner healer as we gain fresh perspectives on our lives and find courage and hope. Writing is a way to listen to the deepest self, to find our authentic voice, and to interpret our experience. It is a way to learn from the past, plan for the future, and to coach ourselves through a crisis. We can transform what may be painful into something profound and full of meaning through the process of writing, reading, and listening. Writing about trauma, loss, grief, illness, and life-altering transitions such as re-location or divorce can be therapeutic. By using simple techniques of spontaneous timed writing and sharing our stories in a safe and supportive atmosphere, we experience commonality, connection, meaning, and wholeness. Transformation comes from understanding both the positive and the negative aspects of our experience as we delve deeper into its significance. We gain confidence in our ability to find hope, grace and renewal.
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Wendy Brown-Báez has facilitated writing groups since 1994. She managed shelters for the homeless and visited adults and teens in penitentiaries and half-way homes. She is trained as a hospice volunteer and as a facilitator of Monologue Life Stories. She studied alternative healing, ceremony, and spiritual traditions with Earthwalks for Health and is a member of a woman's Moon Lodge. Wendy is a performance poet who has performed nationally and in Mexico, in cafes, bars, galleries, bookstores, schools, cultural centers, peace centers, writers groups, art festivals, women's retreats, and private homes, solo and in collaborations. She has published poetry and creative non-fiction in numerous literary journals. In 2008, she received a McKnight grant to teach a bilingual writing workshop with at risk youth and in 2009, a McKnight grant to develop a writing workshop with impoverished youth into an art installation, both provided through COMPAS Community Art Program. She is the author of Ceremonies of the Spirit, a full-length collection of love poems published by Plain View Press in 2009. Wendy is available to speak to your writer's group or workshop, classroom or support group on the practice of creative writing, writing to heal, poetry on the page or on the stage, or to teach non-profit's staff and volunteers how to use writing as a therapeutic tool.
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testimonials: Hi Wendy, I just wanted to thank your for helping me get started with your writing workshop. I have been thinking about how therapeutic the writing has been for me, and how it has inspired me to write further. It has been very confidence building! Thanks again, Julie I was so impressed by your talents to teach; to create; to inspire; to yield stories from the heart. I loved being there, in fact, I would take your class over again--you have a very unique way of stimulating our stories. --Margareth Miller “Wendy Brown-Baez was a marvelous teaching speaker without coming across as too heavy handed.” -J. T. “Wendy's presentation on form and structure was clear, very instructive, practical, and a great help in understanding the importance of consciously structuring our writing. Great job, Wendy!” – Shane N. “Wendy Brown-Baez was quite knowledgeable about poetry and it was a worthwhile evening.” –Kate O.
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Anyone is welcome to join our writing circles; you don't have to be a writer. Just show up with a pen and a notebook and a willingness to find your own words! To contact Wendy:
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