Last night, on April 16 from 7 pm to 8:30 pm, I facilitated a WRITETOGETHER workshop for “Writers Collective of Canada.
I had just spent an 8 hour day at work where my pain throbbed for at least 4 hours, and drove home directly to my apartment, face-timed my son, cried for a good solid 5 minutes, then, without pause, right on time, at 6:50 pm, I used both palm of my hands to wipe my tears away, turned on the biggest smile and facilitated a writing workshop for about 50 beautiful, magical people. We wrote about new begininngs, and how terrifying it is – one writer said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that sometimes, she finds her feet by the door before she’s even aware she’s arrived at another new place, when really, deep inside, what she is looking for is home – a place to stay.
At the workshop, because we had a few minutes to chat, I told everyone that this – what I do for free every week – is the only time in my life when I feel magic. A different kind of love – that I feel from my son. But something unexplainable, something that lifts me above pain, above triviality, to a place with no ceilings. Where everthing is alive and infinite. I know I’m at a bad place when I lose passion. Forever, I want to be hungry, I want to be curious, I want to always fall in love, even with the wrong people, the wrong places, even if they’re mistakes. I don’t ever want to stop falling in love with this world and the people in it, and every workshop I facilitate, every prompt I give, every idea we discuss, reminds me of this.
I don’t think I ever told the story about why I became a WCC facilitator.
Read more at my blog: “The One Line I Stay Behind”
It reminds us of who we are deep inside, without jobs, without family. Our contexts and past recedes in the background while this magic happens– the magic of stripping ourselves down to our most naked, vulnerable selves. We are at our most pure, authentic selves, that’s what writing does.
It brings us back to ourselves, no matter how lost we got along the way.
Ellise Ramos
