As a writer my words irregularly arrive and are mysterious and unpredictable. There are long periods of sleepy silence when suddenly (almost always when I’m driving) my words wake up hungry, feverish and ready to be fed. From then on, my brain is a constant hum as phrases find their way into paragraphs until two hours or two days or two weeks later, I’m ready to type with enough meat for my fingers to eat. 

Given the fact that I have no control over when the words are conceived, birthed or delivered, I reluctantly accepted an invitation in 2018 to join a small neighborhood “writing group.” 

I only knew 2 of the 7 women. I knew they had a long history of this together writing situation. I did not know how to write with a pen and paper on-demand. I definitely knew it would be weird for me to get up and drive around in my car to figure out something to say. 

Turns out it was ok to stay silent and stay put, safe around a table with cups of tea, plates of snacks and a bowl full of little paper writing prompts. It was ok even if other women scribbled their magic pens like wands while I ate too many snacks and failed to will my own pen and paper to get along. 

Six years later, at that table, I still never know if I’ll be unable to write fast enough to get the thoughts out of my mind or if I’ll just sit and sip and snack and listen to what was on somebody else’s mind.

Almost every time we gather, there are tears. Loud ones that splash from laughing too hard at what lies behind the creative doors of pretend worlds. Silent ones that drop from the brave retelling of real life, the awakening of a window into a deep memory brimming with joy or gutted with pain. This has been the real gift, the sacred witnessing of the life lived – and living – in between the lines. And this is why our group tagline holds unwaveringly true: Your Shit Is Safe Here.

I’m excited to share some of what I’ve written during writing group and I’m starting with my favorite piece. After one particularly sacred gathering in 2023, in which I had no words to share, I got in my magic car to drive home and these words woke up, giving birth to a poem that describes who We are around that table, not just how or what We write. I’m so glad they invited Me. And that I’m a part of the We. 

Written by Tara Ross, July 28, 2023

WE.
We are married.
We are single.
We are divorced.

We have caught each other’s babies and never met each other’s children.

We have a lot of life left to live and we have lived most of our life.

We are infected with the travel bug and are easily sick for home.

We are alcoholics and we have never swallowed a single drop.

We have grief.
Fresh grief.
Ancient grief.

We are all,
recovering.
As we remember.

We are the mothers of the children we bore
and buried
and mothers of children we bore
and raised
and mothers of born children that needed we other mothers to raise them.

Our heads are fascinated with banging heavy metal and we dream in the lullabye of opera.

We listen.
Without judgement.
And expect our best selves to respond.

We have been abused by those that loved us and those that loathed us.

We forgive
but the telling does not forget.

And yet.
We.
Laugh.

We bear the scars of having chosen to prioritize relationship over rightness.
Graced, this we still somehow choose.

Maybe.
Because.
We have faith.
Knowing faith.
Evolving faith.

In God.
Or And in each other.
Or And in God through each other.
Or And in the Something we hear or feel
that sings or scampers in the spirit of the wind.

We are moved by art. And we create art with our hands and voices and with nature and words.

We are bodies. 
That both climb and crash. 
That can both do more than we thought and less than we often want. 
That are both are vulnerable and victorious. 
That make love and that are made to love.

We know how if feels to gasp,
buried
physically, emotionally, spiritually
zipped up into body bags,
into voiceless boxes
and into a kind of confinement.
Contained.

But we know how it feels to have dug out
unzipped ourselves
And what it is to have sucked in the air of a freedom that comes when individual stories are collectively heard. 

And still. To Believe. In Love.

We have tried to run but cannot hide and We. Don’t. Have. To.  

Because. 
Our shit
Is safe
Here.