Life's Defining Moments: The Moment I Knew

Thank you for this opportunity to share my excitement with you and your readers.

We all have them. We're in the midst of some minor or major quandary and suddenly or not so suddenly, after much toiling and heartache, the clouds part and the view becomes clear. Deeper understanding breaks through the chaos and confusion and sheds the light we need to propel us forward The Moment I Knew: Reflections from Women on Life's Defining Moments by Terri Spahr, Editor is a collection of thirty real-life stories or poems of just such events.

It has been a thrill for me to have my story included in this candid, inspiring anthology. "This One's On Me" chronicles my friendship with a sweet girl friend that ends in heartbreak. But then a surprising epiphany assures me that all is okay.  

From concept to publication and beyond, Terri Spahr-Nelson and her Reflections From Women crew have labored tirelessly, keeping each author in the loop with regular emails and publicity opportunities. Further, proceeds from the sale of The Moment I Knew are donated to charities that empower women. To order a copy of the book and learn more about the Reflections From Women organization and to learn how you can submit a story for future anthologies, please click onthe link.

WCC guest post contributor Grace Peterson is a married mother of four grown children. She is an avid gardener and writes a garden column as well as a garden blog. She is pursuing publication of a memoir and also authors a writing blog. Her essay titled, "This One's On Me" is included in the women's anthology The Moment I Knew. She lives in western Oregon. Her blog is, www.gracepete.com.

Speaking Their Voices - Rehabilitation Through the Arts

From guest contributor Anne Twomey Lloyd:

I work in an arts program with women who are incarcerated in the only maximum security prison in New York state. I feel free when I’m behind bars with the women. Our classes are a combination of profound and sometimes heartbreaking moments and absolutely hilarious silliness. It’s three hours each week when nobody is judged on past actions, and all of us are witness to the innocent, radiant creativity that binds us together.

We open each session with meditation and yoga stretches, which can help provide tools for living in an environment as highly stressed as the facility in which our students live.

Currently, we’re exploring myths. We frequently discuss how these stories can be recognized in our own lives.

Just this morning, one of our students wrote a monologue from Ariadne’s point of view at being abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos after he promised to marry her. She wrote about Ariadne’s shock and anger at being left there as Theseus sailed off. When she read her work to us in class, Ariadne became a sorrowful, heartbroken woman sitting right in front of us. Talk about bringing a myth to life.

We meet in a huge gym inside the prison, and my workshop partner, Kim, is choreographing a dance piece telling the story of a Hawaiian myth. We work to CD recordings of beautiful, evocative, modern music that refreshes the cavernous gym’s humid, stale air.

We are beginning to create a performance piece on myths, collecting and polishing the best of our weekly work. We’ll present it using the stage in our gym to fellow inmates and prison teachers and administrators. 

Kim and I say good bye to our students and exchange wishes with all to have a good week. We come out of class energized, exclaiming about the acting of one very shy woman, or the writing and surprising wit of another. We move on to the rest of our lives, keenly aware that we get to come out of the prison. As we pass through endless heavy gates slowly sliding open and then closed behind us, past fences of barbed wire, we know that some of the closeness and commonality we share with our students is left behind the walls.

Anne Twomey Lloyd works through RTA (Rehabilitation Through the Arts), a program of Prison Communities International.  For more information about RTA and their women's program, visit http://www.rta-arts.com/.

Taking Time to Turn Inward

I stumbled across this short film and I thought I would share it with you all.  I recently took a rare day to step away from my numerous email accounts, telephone calls, messages and the daily demands to be called upon.  Caution: taking time to turn inward may result in the reduction of stress, clarity of purpose and rekindling of passion.  Enjoy!

Pretty (Outspoken)

  

On Writing Motherhood and Ourselves

Becoming a mother takes more than the physical act of giving birth or completing an adoption: it takes birthing oneself as a mother through psychological, intellectual, and spiritual work that continues throughout life. Yet most women’s stories of personal growth after motherhood tend to remain untold. As writers and mothers, Andrea Buchanan and Amy Hudock were frustrated by what they perceived as a lack of writing by mothers that captured the ambiguity, complexity, and humor of their experiences. So they decided to create the place they wanted to find, with the kind of writing they wanted to read.


This unique collection features the best of the online magazine literarymama.com, a site devoted to mama-centric writing with fresh voices, superior craft, and vivid imagery. While the majority of literature on parenting is not literary or is not written by mothers, this book is both. Including creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, Literary Mama celebrates the voices of the maternally inclined, paves the way for other writer mamas, and honors the difficult and rewarding work women do as they move into motherhood.

Literary Mama's site offers a preview of the introdocution to this powerful collection of work Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined edited by Andrea J. Buchanan and Amy Hudock.  I encourage you to read the introduction here and visit literarymama.com for more writing and information.

A few more examples of literary mothers and literature about motherhood to guide us on our journey:
***Mamaphonic: Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts Eds. Bee Lavendar & Maia Rossini
Mamaphonic Website
***Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf
Naomi Wolf Website
***Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence by Rebecca Walker
Rebecca Walker Website
*** Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich

Congratulations to Our Poet-in-Residence, Alana Joblin Ain!

The WCC congratulates Alana on the publication of her article Flunking Out at the Food Co-Op in today's New York Times.  Click here to read the article.

Alana Joblin Ain grew up in Philadelphia. Prior to making New York City her home eight years ago, she earned her B.A. at Oberlin College, studying English and Religion, followed by seven months of writing poems in Israel's desert, as part of the Arad Arts Project. Alana earned her MFA in poetry at Hunter College, where she also teaches undergraduate creative writing. Her work has appeared in Quarterly West, Crab Orchard Review, and RealPoetik. She and her husband, Rabbi Daniel Ain, live in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Check out Alana's new blog at http://www.alanajoblinain.wordpress.com/. 

Speaking Her Voice - Alana Joblin Ain

Alana Joblin Ain - poet, creative-writing instructor, freelance writer and all around creative spirit - generously shares with the WCC her amazing talent and voice.

The Slower you Travel, the Further You’ll Get

Sometimes I want to feel solidarity with Silda
but instead I think
this is none of my business
and wish there was a station above the News called “Good News”
and instead of people asking what I do, they’d say “what are you looking for?”

At the gym I am superstitious about what number locker
I will put my lock on
I look into the window of Pole Dancing class
and wonder if I don’t sign up because I’m shy?
or because I’m married?
or because I’m married to a Rabbi?

If I could go back and offer advice to an earlier self,
I’d make it specific like

Don’t drink
while working
in a foreign country
during a war –

Something to account for every occasion.

The slower you travel the further you’ll get, a woman tells me,
for no reason, without turning around
and keeps walking towards something only she knows.

Return

God— it comes back so easily. I meet someone
who grew up in the town
where I once sat

on an old sheet in the park
watching fireworks explode
over Zeppelin tracks

first with my parents, then with the boy
I loved his fine sandpaper
sideburns, lemon and cedar

chips, Italian ices melting on the sheet.
Pink and yellow sky trail of
hazy dust heat­—

Bang.

A pot falls to the floor
when I am just a baby,
I do not flinch.

My father realizes something—
fluid— trapped in my ears, I could not hear
at all, those first months

learned the world through gesture, shape—
my mother’s ripe lips moving close together,
then apart, into language I could not live without.

Alana Joblin Ain grew up in Philadelphia. Prior to making New York City her home eight years ago, she earned her B.A. at Oberlin College, studying English and Religion, followed by seven months of writing poems in Israel's desert, as part of the Arad Arts Project. Alana earned her MFA in poetry at Hunter College, where she also teaches undergraduate creative writing. Her work has appeared in Quarterly West, Crab Orchard Review, and RealPoetik. She and her husband, Rabbi Daniel Ain, live in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

For more information about Alana or to receive permission to reprint her work in another publication, please contact info@womenscollaborativecircle.org.