Writing Exercise # 28

Let's face it. Some years have been cruel to us. So let's just wring out that year of all its ugliness so we can move on with our beautiful selves, alright? Let's go.


Ingredients:


1. List three moments that will not let go of you.

2. Five honest facts about yourself. They don't have to be deep. They just have to be true.

3. Three skills you wish you had, then expand (for example: carpentry = carving = whittling a forest of brides)

- - -


Call the poem whatever you want, but dedicate it to the year(s) that (one or all of) the events from #1 occurred. It could be the Year of The Divorce. The Year of The Fires. The Year of The Left Behind...The Years of Unimaginable Difficulty and Lost Things.

Write a prayer for yourself. Build a church for yourself. A place where you are allowed to move beyond that terrible year. Weave in the facts about yourself. Allow them to be praise, even if, at first, they were not. If you stated "I am old," good. If you want to expand that, and say "My hair has become a silver lining," good. Allow yourself to create. Take #3 and run with it. Do everything.

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(Today's exercise was inspired by Anne Sexton's "For The Year of The Insane." READ IT.)