The Writing Shed

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The power of self-compassion

The holiday season can be full of comparisons. What did we do last year for Christmas dinner? Is my partner buying me more gifts than I am for him? Why does my front yard look so bare when my neighbor’s lawn looks so jolly? 

Comparisons can be particularly troublesome when I compare my mothering to the mothers I see on social media or the drop-off line at school. Am I giving my son the same magical experience this season that other parents do? Am I making sure my son has exposure to a diverse range of holiday traditions as other multi-racial families would share with their sons?

These questions can be exhausting and too focused on the external self. 

So, what’s a more flexible response than comparison this season, one that focuses on my core self?

My teacher, Anjana Deshpande, at the Center for Journal Therapy shared with me that “Compassion is very practical, active and lives in the present moment. It is not about giving yourself a break, but seeing yourself in a more realistic light. 

So when we say things to ourselves such as ‘Why am I not further along?,’ compassion will ask practical questions such as ‘Well, do you have more on your plate now than you did two years ago? Then why are you expecting to move at the same pace?’ 

Compassion helps us move away from comparisons (even with our old self) . . . and focuses on our journey right now. 

Compassion is a skill that can be cultivated, and lives in our pre-frontal cortex, which means we have to get out of our emotional brains and into our rational brains where problem solving and solutions live.”

Here’s a journaling prompt to help you move from comparisons to self-compassion this winter season:

  • Write a compassionate description of yourself from the point of view of someone who loves you (could be your dog!). Or a description of yourself from the third person. Remember to focus on your core self! Describe how someone might see you physically, emotionally, spiritually. Paint a portrait with words. (Prompt written by Anjana Deshpande).

I wrote a character sketch of myself from the perspective of my five year old son. While I saw myself as too “woo-woo” and sometimes selfish (as compared to other moms in my life), I imagined my son saw me differently:

  • He sees a mommy in love with the outside world, the small things. He tells me: Stunning pancakes mom. Massaging spaghetti Mom. Mom, do you see the orange and yellow leaves? Did you see our baby trees growing? Stunning planting of roses, Mom. 

  • He sees a woman who centers her life around beauty, makes it her prayer, and he prays along. He prays: May I get to see Grammy and Pop Pop soon. May Grand Judy get the stone out of her belly soon. May Baby Judah learn from me, his big brother. 

  • He sees a woman living in the sensory way. I say: Let’s read this poem aloud Remi Bear right here on this sidewalk. Let’s share this coconut and chocolate bar together. Let’s help each other put on our gloves so we can pick up these pine cones. 

I am aware that I am hard on myself as a mother, and that when I look at myself through the lens of my five year old son, I soften. I am dynamic. I invite connection. I am surprised at how much we are learning together as mother and son. I am surprised by how much positive influence I have on my son, including his desire to pray, to connect with his spiritual self, and his desire to be in the sensory way with me, although his responses lean towards the joyful (and my responses towards the bittersweet). 

This is my prayer for you this winter: May you feel the good work of having a self-compassionate lens—the intentionality, the rationality of looking at yourself from various angles, and the shift to a problem-solving approach. 

May you enjoy the cookies made with love—the thumbprints, the peanut butter blossoms, the gingerbread men, the toffee brittle bars.

Can’t wait to chat again in 2025!

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Journaling Tool Share: The Masks I Wear

Journaling is one of the best ways to practice mindfulness! We bring intention, cultivate awareness, and bring focus (so that our brain can do its “neuroplastic” magic).

When I’m “out of town,” I like to be creative with my five year old son. Time away from home seems to make the days longer and flow more effortlessly. This Sunday, we picked a card from a “Guided Art Therapy Card Deck” by Emily Sharp titled “The Mask I Wear,” a collage activity. My son ended up creating a self-portrait, and I followed the card’s invitation to explore my masks. Here is the prompt, which I’ve adapted some. You’ll want colored pencils and at least an hour to explore.

Draw the outline of a face. Cut out pictures from a newspaper/magazine and add them to your face. On the inside of your mask, consider placing what you show to the world and what others see. On the outside of your mask, place what you keep for yourself. Maybe there are things that align in the inside and outside? Explore these themes through colors, pictures, shapes, words, textures.

When you’re done, you can journal:

–Are the inside and outside of your mask different? Why?
–Is there something inside you that you wish you could show to the world?
–Notice what surprises you on the outside of your mask.

After my son and I finished making art, we each spoke about what the art meant to ourselves. Then we both shared “what we observed” in the other person’s art.

I also journaled a few hours after the art-making:

I am surprised that the outside includes so much about my core self. I think “glimmers” of this are shown to the world and definitely shown in my poetry/memoir writing, which are vessels for more intense truths. Social medias show highlights of this spiritual life, the tender life, the woman “in a process” way of being who has also arrived and isn’t going anywhere, so I don’t feel conflicted or am not carrying the weight of negative connotations of “mask.” I like that I hold private things longer and closer to my being. They are things that nurture me so. When they are done with this relationship with me, I give them away. This is a beautiful cycle.

Overall, I felt more connected with my son, more alive/in relationship with my core self, and more aware of how I see myself (and how others may see me). I pray my son and I continue to “hold” these positive experiences in our sphere together.

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Want to relieve stress and connect with others?

Journaling “dates” can help you do both!

It was not until I joined a women’s writing group held in Marilyn Bousquin’s home (now called Writing Women’s Lives Memoir Academy) about 15 years ago that I began to speak. And my story was held by the women who I had just recently met. It was like I was a baby who first uttered sounds, then began to form words, and then sentences, and then poems to try to understand why I had internalized the violent message that I was not already beautiful as I was. The women in the writing group didn’t judge me. They listened with attention and kindness. They sat in the comfy chairs and let me speak my truth for the first time. It was a wave of relief.

Maya Angelou reminds us that “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

As a child of emotional neglect, I carried this agony of silence inside me. Because I did not grow up learning how to express my emotions, I did not know how to feel alive. I did not know how to self-advocate using my own voice. I did not know how to translate my body’s clues.

One of the earliest stories I carried in silence was that I had to conform to the world’s beauty standards to fit in. The port-wine stain birthmark on my face was something I hid. I did not know how to communicate with the world that this was what made me beautiful and different. I literally froze when strangers asked me if I was okay, since once they saw my birthmark, they figured I was harmed or injured.

I now know that the strength required to keep something a secret (the effort involved in inhibition) has stressful effects on our bodies. Researchers James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth in Opening Up By Writing it Down (2016) conclude that “After confessions, significant drops in blood pressure and heart rate as well as improvements in immune function occur. In the weeks and months afterward, people’s physical and psychological health is improved” (41).

So, what are you keeping quiet that wants to be told and shared? We will help you hold it. We will listen with attention and kindness.

The journaling “dates” are designed for you to “dip your toes” into the waters of journaling, so they are meant to move at a slow pace as you continue to care for yourself while you tell your story.

Join me in November, December, and January, on the second and third Tuesdays of the month from 11 – 11:30 (MT) / 1 – 1:30 (ET) for journaling “dates” on Zoom. 

If you want to use your journal to tell your story in a safe and supportive group and to find relief from the stress, join our women’s journaling group and sign up here for six journaling “dates.” Drop-ins are welcome too!

https://jessicamaggiebrophy.com/events/

The “dates” will take place on:

November 12 and 19

December 10 and 17

January 14 and 21

11 – 11:30 (MT) / 1 – 1:30 (ET)

 

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One Word as Journal Entry

 

I love what Elizabeth Gilbert asks us as women creators in _Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear_: “Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

A “moment,” a “rebirth,” a “nest,” a “cocoon.” These words all come to mind when I think of the “seed I planted” for this shed shortly after my marital separation. 4 years later, and it is a real thing.

The shed is having a moment! The roof trusses are on and all four walls are standing!

And the “one word” journal entry is actually a thing. It’s not just the Zen Buddhist who gets to simplify! Try this for your next journal entry:


One Word (Beginning of Day Matin): Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and be still. Write one word on your wall, desk, or computer describing the feeling, energy, or task you would like to have in the foreground during your day today. Share here as a comment if you would like.



or



One Word (End of Day Vesper): Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and be still. When the day has come to an end, write one word describing the outcome, method, or process you achieved in your day today. Share here as a comment if you would like.

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On the [Pleasure] Bias

I’m excited to share a shift in focus at The Writing Shed. I will still offer journaling workshops, but they will be geared towards women who are done feeling guilty and want to write themselves out of a world of “shoulds” into a world of “I’d love to’s.”

The English language does not have a word like the French do—joie de vivre—joy of living. I think ebullient, afterglow, and delight offer a similar spirit to joie de vivre. But maybe you’ve heard that enjoying life can also mean you are somehow abandoning reality or sitting on a bed of roses in a delirious state?

I am a women who believes in food, the body, nature, travel, and relationships.

At The Writing Shed, pleasure is an “8 letter word.” We will write about the things that delight us and use writing as an act of deviant playfulness. We will also explore why guilt is a first-response, rather than what feels good.

Future workshops will be on the pleasure bias. Wonder fortifies us in tough times; connects us to our inner child and children; makes us content with the everyday things; fights the tyranny of boredom and monotony; helps us express our full earth-bound humanity.

A friend’s Instagram story asked me: Are you torn between changing the world and simply enjoying it?

What if you could change the world simply by enjoying it?

I believe in the power of writing to bring us pleasure, emotional ease, and authentic expression. If this new focus speaks to you, please send me a quick note on IG or in the Comments below.

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Meditation on Love

I feel selfish when . . .

I am doing something fun for myself, like journaling, listening to records, or getting a massage.

I feel selfish when . . .

I am taking a swim and my kids are getting mac and cheese again from Papa.

I feel selfish when . . .

I sign up for an art class even though my child expressed interest in it too!

Does this sound like you?

AND are you done feeling guilty and want to write yourself out of a world of should’s into a world of I would love to’s?

Here is a journaling prompt on self-love: Choose a gentle ringtone for your phone time (I like piano or the harp), and then set it for three minutes. Close your eyes, take deep breaths, and meditate on love–in the abstract, in the particular, in the past/future/present. Immerse yourself in loving thoughts, memories, aspirations. When the timer rings, re-set it for seven minutes, and then free-write a meditation on love.

This prompt is taken from the Journal to the Self card deck written by Kathleen Adams.

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Journaling Lunch in December

What food memories bring joy to your soul? I’m thinking of krimpets, hot dog stuff, peppermint patties, and sugar puffs.
You are invited to a journaling lunch on Saturday, Dec. 9 from 10:30 – 1, where we will journal about food memories using a box o’ smells.
We will eat together, drink cranberry cocktails, write together, and have some good ole’ fun.
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Landscape Stepping Stones Tool

Landscape Stepping Stones is a journaling tool created by Dr. Progoff. It is a list of 8-12 places that have been important, including residences, environments, places visited, and other significant landscapes. I chose to write a landscape of stepping stones that led to the current drafting of my memoir. When choosing what stones should be on the list, I asked myself: 1) if this place influenced or even altered the trajectory of my work and 2) if I am still living with the result/impact of this place.

 

Here is my list:

  1. It was a place where I got up every morning—one of my mother’s finger lakes painted tables, now in her basement apartment—where I would get up at the crack of dawn to revise my manuscript—The Margaret Project. I was also escaping from a violent marriage and this table was safe for me, but also hidden. 
  2. It was a room where the book covers in the special collections library were glossy and vibrant and full of red and green peppers. Where the tables had lamps with soft lighting. Where the architectural details were wood, and influenced by the Spanish invasion of New Mexico.
  3. It was an outside experience when I slipped on the ice, stepping down the front stairs of our Pine Tree Street house—the perfect house, for the perfect couple, who wanted to live a perfect dream of an interracial marriage. I now remember this falling moment as a symbol of the fatal cracking of our marriage and the memoir as a place of solace.
  4. It was a town where I noticed the weeds in the sidewalk, a town, Albuquerque, that was re-enchanting my life, even as I was letting go of monsters, villains, and real-life predators.
  5. It was a house where I learned that I could feel safe in my own body. More than this, It was a house where I learned that someone else could provide a safe place for me to rest, and we could be safe together—our bodies together safe, so that I could write out of a place of tranquility and not danger. Drew’s house.
  6. It was a visit to United World College that put me on the path of reversing former regrets, mistakes, and fucked up experiences where I was alone. This visit to former co-worker Marianne showed me how strong I was and that I would be saying a lot of goodbyes over the next few years, that I needed to do this to rebuild, to create the life I needed to create for Remi and I, and ultimately, to create the manuscript I was always meant to write. Her house was full of cats, incense, day beds, ingredients for Thai coffee, and a potpourri of shampoos and conditioners!
  7. It was a setting where I could see my mother as a woman and not my mother—the Atlantic Ocean—this big vast and deep and still place of aliveness. I want this to show up on the memoir page. And it will! It is in me.
  8. It was a landscape where I could cultivate conversation—the gardens at the Unitarian Church in Lynchburg, VA and Anne Spencer’s writing studio her husband built for her. This admiration of another woman’s backyard is something I have carried with me and now it is becoming a dream! This place has showed me how possible it is to manifest a dream and for it to be heard and executed. If I trust and take risks and share my heart and be open with my emotions, the people in my life care for me and surround me with love. 

 

Reflection on landscape stepping stones related to my drive to complete my current memoir manuscript:

I am aware that some of the most difficult places have been some of the most fruitful (e.g., the steps of a former house where I slipped and injured hip is seared in my memory as the beginning of the end of an emotionally violent marriage). I am aware that some of these beginnings took a while to develop and that the beginnings and endings frequently overlapped. So while I was starting on a path to writing the story of becoming a mother, I was saying goodbye to the ideal of a perfect family, the perfect job, the perfect interracial couple identity. I notice that I am a complex woman who is more open with her emotions now than at any other time in her life, and with this openness, comes love and support from those who care for me. I am surprised by the continued tone of forgiveness and healing when my mother pops into my journal. There is a continued softening, tenderness towards her. My body wants to smile at this list of landscape stepping stones and pay homage to its path and to giggle at some of the everyday pleasures I experienced, the orange globe mallow weed I saw on my walks that were re-enchanting my life at the same time that I was mythless and looking for new stories to fortify my life. I feel determined to continue to create a life that is pleasing to me, to seek out places that cultivate aliveness, and to embody this pleasure and aliveness in me so that it oozes into the stories I put on the page.

 

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New Offering This Fall

Poet Stanley Kunitz states “Through the years I have found the gift of poetry to be life-sustaining, life enhancing, and absolutely unpredictable. Does one live, therefore for the sake of poetry? No, the reverse is true: poetry is for the sake of the life.”

Our next workshop at The Writing Shed will be Wednesday, September 20 from noon-1:15 (MT), on Zoom Meeting Space. We will use a poem to guide our personal explorations.

Register here: https://jessicamaggiebrophy.com/registration/

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Helical Nature of Healing: Guest Blogger Cara Dinley

For the last twenty years, Cara Dinley has been exploring the miraculous bodymind. Her background is in dance and performance, and she is now a trauma informed practitioner who specializes in embodiment, regulation, and trauma release. She is currently a Lead Trauma and Regulation Practitioner at Heal Your Nervous System.

After I shared my question about “The Life Cycle of Healing” in the Heal Your Nervous System community (of which I am a member), Cara responded with insights I am deeply grateful for her and am still deliciously processing. I wanted to share them here with you at The Writing Shed as they are unique and revolutionary to what you may have learned about healing.

She wrote:

I refer very often to the cycle of life when I am relating to members and clients and it always seems to bring about a softening.

Clients often ask–Why is it we need to be reminded so often of this? It’s so obvious!–and yet we often believe the darkness will never end and that we have been dealt it because we did something wrong.

When in fact the cycle that follows is the only truly repetitive thing in life–that there is a seed that wants to grow, which requires that it changes form and moves into unknown places before blossoming; then once it has given fruit it–at its most magnificent–already begins to die. Very slowly perhaps, yet surely. This is the cycle of life.

Inhalation and exhalation follow exactly.

While this cycle seems obvious to many what often seems less obvious is how this cycle exists in each moment.

While the butterfly analogy is one we are all fed and want, it seems to miss the all important “death” aspect.

I love the word you use: recursive. For me this is very much the experience I have, and I notice it in others too. I feel like the expectation to continually move forwards and get better is actually reductive.

In the arts we call this “endgaming” –our mind creates the vision and we steadily take all the steps towards it; anything that diverts is named a distraction. If I am disciplined, I will achieve my vision. If I don’t, I have done something wrong.

This kind of endgaming removes the opportunity to be awakened by other incoming stimuli/associations which may change your vision. Becoming open to what is incoming, including others words and offerings, in my experience has generated a making that is far richer and indeed a conscious collaboration, which removes the I, the I, set up for perceived “failure”–as we rarely make anything alone.

If we can remove time and measurement, we can experience a kind of flexibility which welcomes an ever unfolding richness in every direction to a different degree.

If we apply this concept to arts making (or healing or learning), we value the inevitable expansion and condensing and non-linear leaps of experimentation, knowing that the act of jumping into the unknown can be extremely generative.

Whether we are making arts, learning, or healing, the way we navigate our own journey can only be in accordance with who we are and with what our personal capacity is. So only the individual can make the choice–

  • When is it too deep to jump?
  • When do I need stimulation? When do I need rest?
  • When do I notice myself pushing and forcing? Is this truly generative?

And while I love the word recursive (yet I haven’t been using it — so thank you for that!) the image I have is helical but not just one helix as in this pic below–I see learning as following a helical path which never repeats and instead takes a slightly different path–quite close to the previous one perhaps–the path eventually takes and ever wider and deeper trajectory. As if filling the inside of a cone ever, ever so gradually. To me that is learning.

And it is also unlearning in reverse–but not a perfect reverse . . . I feel like we can jump levels and create gaps as you say . . .

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Image Credit: Dirk van der Made 

We see the spiral unfurling also in this pic of the fern which resembles the Koru (the Maori word for loop and symbolizes the unfolding of new life and renewal).

cy9el91usw6duk5dtvge.jpegJon Radoff, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa…, via Wikimedia Commons

What’s cool about the Koru pic above is all of the little, what will be leaves curled up, as if these are alternative paths which required energy in order for the whole to find flexible strength . . .

And while I love these natural images what I see **in them is something linear–because I can’t see or know the complexity of **what is happening inside them.

However in order for them to grow from a shoot the size of a fine thread into something with luscious, strong girth . . . unbreakable in a torrential rainforest downpour, something has grown and fills within which supports the structure we can see . . .

There is so much that we can’t see . . .

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