Pick and Choose Among Scheduling Opportunities in Friday Harbor
San Juan writer Janet Thomas has organized Friday evening discussions and Saturday workshops that are an introduction to the genre of memoir and an exploration of memoir possibilities. They are repeated at different times for scheduling convenience.
The Friday evening discussions and the Saturday workshops can be attended independently. Rides from the ferry are available for those coming from Lopez, Orcas or Shaw.
The ten-week fall classes, offering ongoing support and guidance for the writing of a memoir will be scheduled later.
Instructor Thomas says, “Everyone who writes is a ‘writer.’ And nobody can write our stories for us. And when we write them, we lay claim to our lives, irrefutably and completely. The only criteria is to tell the truth, to be fierce with reality, and to let the writing lead the way. It leads us into our lives in ways that deepen our appreciation of our own and each others stories. It broadens our relationship to the world within and the world without. It tosses all the red marks into the dustbin of someone else’s “right” and “wrong” and liberates us into the unique and universal power of our own lives.”
What is A Memoir and How Can I Get One? A Talk & Discussion from 7 to 9 p.m, will be offered on:
Friday evening, June 25
or
Friday evening, July 16
or
Friday evening, August 6
Exploring the form, shape, content and collaboration found within the creative confines of memoir. Cost for each evening is $10. The discussions will be held at The Yoga Path at 849 C Spring Street in Friday Harbor.
“Exploring Our Lives for Meaning and Memoir” A Workshop, will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on:
Saturday, June 26
or
Saturday, July 17
or
Saturday, August 7
9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Cost for each workshop is $65 at The Yoga Path at 849 C Spring Street in Friday Harbor. Minimum 6 people, maximum 12. For registration call 378-3854 / jthomas@rockisland.com
Thomas says, “When we reclaim our lives in writing, we make clear who we are, what we mean, where we come from, how we got here, and why. We get to live our lives twice; complete with the grace of hindsight as well as with the honesty that makes each life compelling and true.
“This memoir workshop is about getting away from these dastardly sound-bite, disposable times and diving into the depths of our lives where our stories save the world. There is nothing to be critical of, nothing to judge, and nothing to correct.
“Many people bring to their adult lives a deep mistrust of their ability to write. All the red marks in school, the derision of professors, the impossibly subjective ivory tower of what makes “good” writing, creates a quicksand of judgment that can swallow a writer alive.”
Janet Thomas was born in Wales and raised in various homes and gardens across Canada and the U.S. Her writing encompasses plays–produced from L.A. to NYC; travel writing–from books about hostels to editor-in-chief of SPA Magazine; non-fiction–from the “Battle in Seattle–The Story Behind and Beyond the Demonstrations” to the recently published memoir, “Day Breaks Over Dharamsala–A Memoir of Life Lost and Found.” She has taught memoir writing for many years.
Having written clients’ memoirs, I’m now writing my own, too. Your approach sounds fertile. You might be interested in my book, YOUR MEMOIRS: SAVING THE STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND WORK. If you do look at it, I’d love to know what you think. It’s at https://www.amazon.com/saving-stories-your-life-work/dp/1430312815/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1278534530&sr=1-1
Dear Janet,
Sure would love to learn the fine art of memoir from you so I can finish two I am working on.
I am on chapter six of your compelling, brave, important memoir and do have something to share. Hopefully you won’t mind too much.
The psychotherapist in me has deep compassion and respect for the wonder of your ability to have found a way to allow your best self to shine through much of the time.
The one thing I would like to say that comes from all of my background is that what you have described of yourself is indeed describing a dissociative disorder but not a multiple personality disorder. A multiple personality disorder is a dissociative disorder but all dissociative disorders are not multiple personality disorders. In order to have be a multiple one must lose track of time when you are in one of your other personalities. So if you were in one of your inner personalities for a month, your other personality would have lost the time of that month. I too have a dissociative disorder as it happens, and I know all too well the feeling of being and sometimes living outside of my body. But I don’t lose track of time either.
Since you are wanting to be normal, in this area, guess what, you are.
We all are made up of many parts. The one who saves spiders out of the sink isn’t the one who would cheat on income taxes. They are different parts. Everyone has them. The optimum is to have a strong aware ego who knows about all of the parts and can decide which is best for us in which situation, so that some sub personality or part of you will, isn’t driving the car.
To not have parts is not a good thing at all- and certainly not a good thing to strive for. Best is when we are not in denial of any of our parts. The language you use sounds like you have been exposed to Voice Dialogue, which is a powerful process of getting to know all the parts of self… If you have not been, you sure have come a ways in understanding parts. Voice Dialogue is a process I trained in for three years with its originator Dr. Hal Stone, have practiced for over twenty years, and have taught it to psychotherapists in Los Angeles and in St. Petersburg, Moscow Russia and Kiev Ukraine. There are some amazing, empowering stories to tell from those years.
I would be honored to do some Voice Dialogue with you if you would like to. Some parts you might enjoy getting to know could be the inner self of you that would allow abundance and never abuse it, highest self, wise woman, Amazon (the essence of woman at the deepest level), as examples. The concept is that we all have all parts and the idea is not to get rid of any of them, but to get them in balance. For example, just a touch of a sociopath could get your children out of a fire in a burning building, but too much of that one, well, your inner children know all too well about what too much of that one can do.
It is sort of like salt in a cake. The cake needs it, but just a tiny bit. Put too much in and you ruin the cake.
It is in the denial of parts where they get too big for their britches to so speak.
There are power sides of you, developed or not, like Earth Mother, or the Amazon who could support and love the inner children parts of you and allow them voice. Of course what you would get with them more available is way more than just more of the sadness and rage, you would be even more in touch with your creative self, playful self, and spiritual self.
It is pretty much a package deal. We either feel all of our feelings or in the process of attempting to hold down a few of them, pull all the rest down with it…sort of like holding down one of those old fashioned wooden clothes pins representing a feeling, with a whole bunch of other clothes pins also representing feelings and having them be pulled down as well. LIke holding down sadness and having joy and love being pulled down with it.
Hope that makes some sort of sense. The wonder with you is that you are not a multiple. You certainly could have been. And you could have gone crazy and you could have died. That your inner child know how to somehow find a way to keep you enough away from feelings to get through your childhood without having to make that total, lost track of time split is testimony to the deep strength of your inner child energies…all of them. And that you managed to do it and not wind up like those parents, or totally shut down, or a criminal or any of the most often outcomes in such damaging childhoods, means you have and had and are pretty amazing.
Children in excessively damaging childhood situations have only three options: They can cut off their feelings, they can go crazy or they can die. Your inner children of each age managed to get through it all by cutting off feelings and somwhow without needing to totally split off the personalities where you would lose track of time when you were in one them.
And of course I am sure you already know that the perfect way to know without hesitation that none of what happened to you was or could have been in anyway your fault would be what your response would be if you found out that Colin had been raised as you were. There would be no doubt there I am sure in your mind as to who was the one at fault in such a circumstance.
I look forward to reading the rest of your book and I hope you know that my thoughts are meant with care. Your book has brought many things up for me as well.
Thank you for writing it,
Best,
Andrea