Transformation & Gratitude
A writing prompt and a wholeness tip for you!
Happy Thanksgiving to All! The schedule this week in Brave Space:
Monday at 12pm ET
Tuesday at 10am ET
Tuesday night at 7pm ET for All Humans More Brave Space Info Here
New Offerings: 2024 Winter Playwrights Workshop openings for the Thursday section from 6-9pm Et on zoom. Begins January 4th. If you have a full-length play or you're writing one and want to hear it with feedback in a supportive group that focuses on craft, my workshops are limited to 6 participants. 10 weeks, $500. More Workshop Info Here
Brave Group Coaching for Everyone! If you've been interested in discovering more about your nervous system and how to better regulate it and you're also interested in getting to know and working with your parts, then this is perfect for you! I have a few spots left Tuesdays starting January 9th from 7-830pm for 6 weeks. $120 discounted rate paid in full in advance (partially refundable). Or you can reserve your spot for $50 (nonrefundable) and then pay either $100 to start or $25/weekly. More Coaching Info Here
Writing Prompt: This one is from this past week’s Brave Space prompt so you can have a taste of what we offer prompt-wise (this is one of the week’s prompts among several).
Transformation Exercise - how to practice turns, reversals, revelations, moments of recognition and change! We rarely go to the theatre or read a book (story, poem, anything) to see stasis. What we hope to find is change, transformation, the way other people get unstuck, even if it's different from our own stuckness. It is inspiring to all of us because we are all stuck in our own ways. (Even though anyone could be despairing and get a phone call and immediately feel uplifted and energized.)
I believe life is a series of stickings and stuckness and (in my case) always working to move forward, to get unstuck. I am still unsticking myself from my history, my culture, the traumas I've survived and the way they affect me, my relentless attachments, my fears, etc. And the truth is, so is everyone else (or they are stuck in denial or inertia, not seeing their stuckness or seeing it and deciding not to try to unstick). No judgment. And not everything has to change or show change - sometimes stasis is the point. But if you yearn, as I do, for change, it was helpful to me to do a series of exercises to make change happen.
This means starting a narrative (in your chosen form or genre) close up to the moment of potential change. In playwrighting, we'd create a 1-minute play or a 5 minute play. In poetry, it's the volta of the poem where the change occurs, so maybe 2 lines before that, the change and then the ending, so maybe 6 lines. Or haiku! In stories, a flash fiction or a flash cnf, maybe 300 words or fewer.
Start with looking for potential changes, characters moving from x to y. Make a list: living to dead, jealous to rageful, smoker to crusader against smoking, provider to gambler, liar to truthteller, etc. Yes, for the purposes of this exercise we’ll create characters who turn on a dime, for better or for worse.
Once you’ve got a list, take the juiciest one(s) and write a short narrative(s) focusing on the transformational moment(s). When you make yourself write these instant turns, sometimes they can feel awkward or forced. Sometimes they become comical sketches. Sometimes they are awful. And that's fine! That's actually good! You are making sketches like any other artist before you work on the big painting, the fresco on the ceiling of your church...
We all need a place to do it badly first. We all need permission to practice and learn, to stretch ourselves by falling down, by getting back up and trying again. The point is not to be instantly good at it! Many of us are writers or artists because someone at some point said, wow, you're good at that, so we kept going. But being good is not the point. We're all already really good at this. Now we can get even better. By letting ourselves do it badly on purpose. The frustration we feel upon doing it badly actually contributes to our ability to learn and grow.
This “frustration causing neuroplasticity” has been documented - so if you get frustrated, embrace your frustration as the moment when your brain is actually going to do some transforming of its own, right here and now, if you can just hang in an extra 5-10 minutes with the work. Link for more about this here!
Wholeness Tip: If the year is a full-length play, we're at the climax. The Moment when we experience the highest tension of the year each year: the Thanksgiving ritual meal. We hope for a transformation, usually from other characters in our lives! When that doesn't happen, we grab onto our coping mechanisms (from over-eating to over-buying or any excess of the season). Then we try to create transformation (this time for ourselves) in the New Year with Resolutions (or the refusal to make them). Either way, we typically fail.
In failing, we set ourselves up for Inner Critics and other Judging Parts to push us toward more coping strategies or another year where stasis is often the best we can hope for.
Befriending our Critics and Judges is a whole new way to approach this. Truly spending time with the Parts of us we hear berating, shaming, and doing their best to keep us small and risk-averse. Parts that work hard to stop Transformation!
In truth, there are no bad Parts! All of our Parts always have our best interests at heart! Many of them are burdened, doing work they are not truly capable of doing while simultaneously being kept from doing the work they were born with you to do.
We can begin to notice our Parts and let them know that we see them. Just like Tevye (in this clip from Fiddler). He approaches his Parts on one hand and then the other hand. We recognize this internal argument because we all actually know what this feels like. And the truth is we do have many inner hands; we all have Parts!
I know that I am multiple, made up of many Parts. I have Inner Critics that say I'm falling short, Judges that say I'm not good enough, Scheduler Parts that try to keep me too busy to think, Intelligent Parts that want to make everything about thinking, and Creative Parts that help me avoid avoid avoid...
What if we were to start listening to our Parts from a place of non-judgment? Consider spending some more time this holiday season in a place of non-judgment. Consider seeing your relatives from that place of non-judgment (just as an exercise), and maybe thinking this is Uncle Harry's Judgmental Part (but not all of Uncle Harry). Or this is Aunt Sue's Materialistic Part (but not all of Aunt Sue)... And maybe you can extend the same non-judgment to yourself and your Parts? The Parts that tell you what you think of your body parts - that's a Part of you, and there's a reason that Part is saying that. Usually a fear or a core belief, something passed down/inherited or from a trauma.
You can offer these Parts compassion. You can. (Hand on heart, in touch with yourself, offering an acknowledgment of suffering. I see you. I know that hurts. I'm sending love or compassion or it's okay, I'm here with you.)
You are not 3 or 5 or 9 years old anymore even if many of your Parts still are. You have capacities you may not even be aware of yet. I'd love to help you discover them in a non-pathologizing and compassionate practice called parts work. Try it. See what happens.
I send you all reiki for healing and the hope that you can try to find some curiosity toward the Parts of yourself that are showing up. Curiosity and compassion can go a long way toward helping us to transform these holy days into peaceful ease.
Playwright Opportunity: Emily Perez, the Literary Manager for the Athena Project, is looking for scripts for their Read & Rant program. These scripts must be written by artists of underrepresented genders. Historically, Athena Project has used the word woman to describe the artists they have served, which they recognize as a word that is not inherently inclusive of all identities across the gender spectrum. They seek to create a safe creative space for all individuals who have been historically and presently marginalized on the basis of gender including all women, non-binary, genderqueer, and otherwise LGBTQ+ individuals. It's a book club for plays. They will feature one to two scripts that have not yet been produced each session and invite the playwright to join our conversation. Guided by a professional dramaturg, they invite attendees to share constructive comments, thoughts, and affirmations in order to aid in the development process of the piece. You can find out more about our past sessions here. Submissions will be accepted from now through November 30. The link for playwrights to submit their work is Here
Thank you all for reading! I’m grateful for you all!
Onward,
Emma
Your description of the holiday season is the most insightful thing I've read in a very long time.
Great, helpful, moving- -thank you!