Author: Individual Poet

What’s Cooking? A Taste of Kansas City at the Power of Words Conference — by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

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Kim Phillips, right, with Caryn

A funny thing happened on the way to planning our Power of Words conference September 26-29 at Unity Village in Kansas City, Missouri. It turns out that Unity Village, which used to have an onsite kitchen that served delectable food, shut down its food services since the pandemic, and all people holding events now need to arrange their own catering. Consider that we’re planning a community-building conference for more than 100 people with a variety of dietary needs coming from around the country, and we want to make our meals delicious and affordable, and things get complicated.

Enter Kim Phillips, a member of our conference planning committee who cheerfully took on the catering arrangements. Thanks to Kim’s steadfast and creative work — including researching possibilities, talking with caterers, getting bids, and bringing her great wisdom and big heart to the process — we now have a very special menu featuring the Best of Kansas City. With input from our conference committee , she also arranged for each meal to offer conference-goers vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options. Here’s some of the special meals ahead that came out of her intensive work for several months. All meals also include beverages and desserts.

  • Kansas City Barbecue: You can’t have a taste of Kansas City without some of the city’s award-winning BBQ. One of our dinners will include BBQ beef burnt ends, shredded chicken, tofu, plus slaw, cheesy corn, beans, and more of the works.
  • Kansas City has deep Italian roots, and few do authentic Italian food as well as the city’s restaurant Garozzo’s. Another of our dinners includes ravioli, meatball appetizers, pasta (including gluten-free), spiedini, a tasty vegan option, and of course cannoli, cheesecake, and other goodies for dessert.
  • Our lunches include a flavorful taco bar with all the fixings as well as an expansive baked potato bar (because: potatoes).
  • Breakfasts — available at the hotel for all conference-goers — offer eggs, hash browns, bacon or sausage, yogurt, fruit, and lots of other options, including the ever-needed morning coffee or tea.
  • All of our keynote sessions also include delicious and healthy snacks because creativity takes energy.

Register for the conference (we include all meals with your registration fee) and join us to feed your whole self!

In-Animate Objects: A Prose Poem Ending with a Haiku — By Joan Peters

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Through some happenstance web link, I found TLA, and have become quite the fan girl of their online courses. I’ve taken classes at many places over the years, but only TLA has resonated on such an elemental level. Many of my classmates are like me, female, of periretirement age and still seeking that counter-narrative.

Last fall I took the irresistably titled “Liminal Spaces: The Poetry of Transitions and Change” with Angie Ebba. (Who among us doesn’t wish to be changed by a poem? Who among us doesn’t wish to change their world through their poem?)

The two weeks between when I signed up for the class and when it started turned out to be quite a liminal space for me: a sprained ankle on top of a chronic mobility disorder, the death of my mother and the first time I got Covid. So my attention to the thematic possibilities, new (to me) forms like the haibon and oulipo, and techniques was mutable.

But the Week 4 assignment was on using personification, the literary device that gives human characteristics to nonhuman things or inanimate objects. To my delight, a number of us confessed to be confirmed personifiers, even and especially outside of our writing lives.

The online class thread for this assignment read like a meeting of Empathizers Anonymous. The initials of my classmates and the actual objects personified below have been changed to protect their privacy:

T posted about their mother’s lamp that did not want to be discarded.
M couldn’t stand to see the last apple alone on the store shelf.
K whose spouse who talked to their favorite stapler.

I commented how, in the early 1970s, my father made me return a midi dress to the store “because it made me look like too much of a hippie.” Never mind that, born in 1961, I had been too young for Woodstock and missed out on the Summer of Love. Even in the dress, no one would have mistaken me for Janis Joplin. Putting it in the bag to be returned, I cried for the dress and the multicolored stripes around its skirt, its hurt feelings.

Five decades later
I still glimpse the purple dress,
Now, I too am seen.

TLA Network Inaugural Awards: Outstanding Volunteer: John L. Swainston

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We have this year created a special award for an outstanding volunteer, our MVP Volunteer of the Year, if you will, to honor the service and special guidance provided to the TLA Network by John L. Swainston.

As a new member of our board, John has guided us as Treasurer on a path to financial health. He volunteered his services to us as a retired accountant with years of experience, including teaching accounting at area colleges. He has provided accessible and comprehensive monthly reporting to our board that continually helps us plot our course ahead. Because of John, our books, accounting, and tax status have been put in order, working closely with our bookkeeper. And because this has been a year of heavy transition, we have benefitted from John’s calm, cheerful, and witty presence, helping us keep our direction clear, and at times sharing his own poetry – as he is an artist in his own right. We are immensely grateful for his time, his talents, and his skills.

John says of the TLA Network: “At a young age I liked to dance. Then I discovered oil painting. When my grandpa retired he would come over and we listened to opera. Very late in life I became a poet. I never could find a place where I could enjoy all art forms. Until TLA Network. I just had to volunteer and help support the mission of TLA however I could. Discover for yourself all that they offer.”

You can see more about John and his poetry at his website and his book of poetry, Memory Box, here.

Outstanding TLA Network Volunteer: John L. Swainston, presented by Kathryn Lorenzen at the 2023 Power of Words conference.

TLA Network Inaugural Awards: Outstanding Organization of the Year: Community Building Art Works

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We award Outstanding TLA Organization of the Year to Community Building Art Works, a visionary non-profit organization making a huge difference in the world. Each week, CBAW offers lots of workshops in writing, visual arts and more for veterans and active military, their families and communities, and the general public. These workshops not only build connections, creativity, and mutual understanding and support, but help thousands of people struggling with emotional and physical injuries caused by trauma. CBAW is guided by a board of veterans from all four branches as well as established artists, military family members, and professionals.

We are proud to have Seema Reza, CBAW founder and CEO here. Seema is a poet, essayist, and deep-down TLAer – she served as chair of our TLA Network board and several Power of Words conferences, and also earned a BFA and MA from Goddard College on TLA. She began working with service members at the Walter Reed Army Medical center in 2010 and went on to create CBAW with Joe Merritt, an artist and facilitator who is medically retired from the United States Marine Corps.

Seema Reza says, “When you’ve experienced things that are out of the ‘norm’, it’s easy to feel totally isolated. Our programs give people the tools and space to talk about these things, first with people who feel the same way and then to people in their lives who are potentially very different from them. It’s how we begin to heal the fissures, and find ourselves experiencing belonging.” 

See more at https://cbaw.org/

Outstanding TLA Organization of the Year: Community Building Art Works, presented by John L. Swainston, a proud veteran, at the 2023 Power of Words conference

TLA Network Inaugural Awards: Outstanding Publication: The Journal of Expressive Writing

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When the pandemic brought tremendous risk to our good health, peace of mind and livelihoods, Jen Minotti listened to a small voice of conviction from within that urged her beyond her fears of creative risk taking. She sat down at her computer and founded the Journal of Expressive Writing. Because, Jen believes writing your feelings helps you survive, and sharing them helps others survive and say yes to each other. The Journal thrives on all of us saying yes to our feelings in writing.

As Jen describes on the journal’s website, “the journal publishes expressive writing, free writing, personal essay, non-fiction, memoir, reflective essay, poetry, prose, contemplative discourse, and creative non-fiction—all that originate from a writing prompt—by both established and emerging writers.”

As Jen describes on the journal’s website: 

At a fundamental level, I have this very strong belief that sharing our stories is a radical act of self-love and love for others. During the pandemic, I couldn’t stop thinking that if we could just share our stories—in a raw, truthful and very real way—at this moment in time when we needed connection more than ever, it just might be one of the most valuable gifts we gave to ourselves and others. It just might help bridge the political, class, and racial divides that were simultaneously exploding and perhaps help in some small way. Three and a half years later, the Journal still calls on all of us to share what matters most as a form of individual and collective activism. It’s a platform to express who we are in a particular moment and to read who others are. I think too often, we hold ourselves back when we feel our writing has to be “finished” or “perfect” or any of the conditioned belief systems we carry with us. When we can write (and operate) from our authentic selves, our inclination to judge softens. Love emerges and so does healing, not only for the writer, but for the readers, too. Eventually, it’s a ripple effect. This is ultimately what I hope to achieve with the Journal.

Here is more about Jen: Jennifer A. Minotti (she/her/hers) is a Writer-in-Residence at the Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University, where she facilitates Women’s Writing Circles as a means to merge her passions for expressive writing, positive psychology, community organizing, women’s health, and social activism.  In 2020, Jen founded the Journal of Expressive Writing in order to provide a place for sharing expressive writing, believing that we need this space on a fundamental, human level and that whatever we are feeling is a link to what others are feeling across the planet at any given moment. For the past 25 years, Jen has dedicated her professional life toward working for the betterment of society. For 17 years, Jen worked at Education Development Center(EDC)—a global non-profit working to improve education, health, and economic opportunities worldwide—in a variety of technology, research, writing, and leadership roles for projects that focused on health and human development, special education, online professional development, literacy, bullying-prevention, urban education, science, assistive technology, and inclusive schooling practices

Outstanding TLA Publication: The Journal of Expressive Writing, presented by Kelly DuMar at the 2023 Power of Words conference

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The Journal of Expressive Writing: Visit the Journal’s submission page right here — you will see a variety of themes you can write about, and please read other published submissions here.

TLA Network Inaugural Awards: Vanita Leatherwood, Outstanding TLA Practitioner

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Vanita Leatherwood exemplifies what life-saving difference one person can make. As the Director of Community Engagement at HopeWorks of Howard County – which provides support and advocacy for people affected by sexual and intimate partner violence – Vanita has founded TLA programs for survivor wellness, youth leadership, community self-care & social justice, and  Dragonfly, an artsandtransformative justice magazine. 

An award-winning poet with a MA in Transformative Language Arts from Goddard College, Vanita says, “The power of words led me to a place of safety, eventually to a place of joy, to that place within that I call the ‘YES.’ That’s part of what I wanted to create at HopeWorks – that’s what Dragonfly is; an opportunity to explore, learn, feel, connect, rebel and grow.”

We are honored to present our inaugural Outstanding TLA practitioner award to Vanita for her compassionate leadership, visionary program design, and community social justice programming, all of which she does with the heart of a poet and soul of a change-maker.

Here is a list of the programs Vanita has created:

  • Magazines (Founder/Editor): Dragonfly arts & transformative justice magazine and Cultivate youth arts magazine
  • Our Voice Project Monthly Support Groups: Preservation: Survivor Self-Care Circle, Reclamation: Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse Support, and LOVED: Survivor Self-Care Circle for Black Women
  • One-on-One Self-care Sessions with Survivors: Poetry N2 Wellness
  • Newsletter: Journaling Our Voice
  • Speakers Bureau Training
  • The Survivors Health Project Monthly Groups: ARTiculation: Support & Education Group for Survivors Living with Chronic Health Conditions and Thriving Together: Survivors Mental Health Awareness & Wellbeing Group
  • Devised Theater, Creator & Producer: Telling This Truth at Slayton House Theater
  • Educational Curriculum (public programs): Over a dozen programs, including Self-care & Social Justice Events, Know My Name: Self-care and the Healing Journey for Black Women, The Organizational Equity and Inclusion Project, Ain’t I a Woman: Using the Arts & Humanities to Explore Oppression and Revolution, Unapologetic: Using Arts and Humanities to Explore Revolution and Oppression, and WOMEN-Global: Using the Arts & Humanities to Explore Oppression and Revolution

Outstanding TLA Practitioner: Vanita Leatherwood — presented by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg at the 2023 Power of Words conference.

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Dragonfly Magazine Call for Submissions: Dragonfly arts & transformative justice magazine is a publication of HopeWorks of Howard County Maryland. Themes for submitted work (visual, literary, and musical) should focus on reflections about activism, oppression, love, advocacy, hope, transformative justice, trauma, racial and gender equity, intersectionality, relationships, healing, or self-care. Writers/Musicians/Artists do not have to be survivors. Submissions accepted until Jan. 31, 2024. Find all the details here.

Find more about Hopeworks here and more about Vanita’s TLA business, The Yes Within here.

15 Reasons to Attend the Power of Words Conference

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Renew and recharge yourself at the vibrant 18th Power of Words Conference Nov. 11! Here are 15 reasons to attend — crowdsourced from the TLAN board. Here’s 15 reasons to join us. Leap in now because our early bird rate flies away after Oct. 1:

  1. You never know where inspiration shows up and you want to be there when it does.
  2. “I have enough words… poetry… art,” said no one ever.
  3. Experience the healing balm that travels through community and connection.
  4. Discover the artist you didn’t know you were in love with, including the artist inside you.
  5. All the cool kids are going. Also, none of the cool kids are going.
  6. Writing out your emotions protects your body against stress and lifts your spirit.
  7. You’ve got questions… we’ve got… words. Lots of them!
  8. Connect with others who share your passion!
  9. One little change to a word and you have a whole new world. See what I did there? Come explore.
  10. Find signs of awe and wonder in your journal and with others.
  11. Immerse yourself in a diversity of voices and perspective.
  12. Get ideas, get inspired, and see things in a new way.
  13. Something magical happens when creative people gather together.
  14. Experience a visionary lineup of wordsmiths, change-makers, and artists, all in one conference, from the comfort of your home.
  15. You don’t know what you don’t know unless you go.

P.S. Our conference is amazingly affordable and includes special rates for students and people on limited incomes. Check out our affordable ticket prices!

Conference at a Glance

Conference is listed in U.S. Central Time. We will soon have a link for the conference in other U.S. and international time zones. Or click here for a time zone translator.

6-7 a.m. CT– Early Birds or Night Owls Reading (especially for international attendees)

10-11 a.m. CT -– Welcome and Talking Circles: Welcome and breakout rooms for talking circles for people to get to know each other. 

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT — Choose from 5 concurrent workshops 

  1. Using TLA to Create & Deepen Your Family Archive– Amanda Lacson
  2. Designing Transformative Multidisciplinary Projects with Collaboration at the Core – Akwi Nji
  3. Writing the Extraordinary Details of our Ordinary Lives – Jen Harris 
  4. Mindful Writing: Gratitude, the other side of Grief  – Marianela Medrano
  5. Flash Fiction: Exploring the Senses,  Emotional Resonance and the Path to Healing – Riham Adley

1-2 p.m. CT – TLA in the World: Transforming Communities Through the Power of Words: Panel Discussion

  • Sydney Fowler, writer, authenticity reader, Faculty and Community Engagement Coordinator at Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  • David Kopacz, physician, author, artist
  • Vanita Leatherwood, poet/artist and social change educator, director of Community Engagement at HopeWorks 
  • Alec Esperanza, Executive Director of Ozo CommUNITY PLUS, educator and activist
  • Fiona Bolger, writer, mentor, and international facilitator
  • Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Moderator, founder of TLA

2:30-3:30 p.m. CT – Choose from 5 concurrent workshop

  1. My Body is Not a Battlefield: Illness, Body, and the Use of Metaphor — Angie Ebba
  2. What Is It You Need to Say?: Time, Space, and Tools to Write Your Truth —  Fiona Bolger
  3. The Big Picture of Your TLA Livelihood and Life – Kathryn Lorenzen & Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
  4. Writing Into the Contradictions: Juxtaposing Images for Deeper Understanding – Ben Weakley
  5. From Memoir to Monologue – Kelly DuMar

5-6 p.m. CT – Coffeehouse of Wonder Open Mics: Share your writing, music, spoken word, drama, or other forms of word arts. You’ll be able to sign up for a slot, and because we’ll have several break-out rooms, all conference attendees are welcome.

7:30-9:30 CT – Keynote Performances and Closing: A Celebration of Poetry, the Spoken Word, Music & Storytelling

  • Kevin Willmott, Oscar-winning filmmaker and writer (for KKKlansman) on filmmaking the power of the stories we tell.
  • Ada Cheng, storyteller and change-maker
  • Glenn North, poet, spoken word artist, activist
  • Joy Zimmerman and Erin McGrane, music and the spoken word
  • Akwi Nji, spoken word poet, artist, and musician
  • David Romtvedt, poet laureate emeritus of Wyoming and accordionist/singer
  • Closing ceremony

12 a.m. CT – Night Owls or Early Birds Reading (especially for international attendees)

Bonus Performances & Extras

Wait, there’s more! You also receive:

  • Bonus recordings of amazing performers and writers speaking, singing, or reading just for you (each recording will be 10-15 minutes): 
    • Kelley Hunt performing original songs co-written with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, who will also share poems
    • Gregg Levoy, best-selling author of Callings and Vital Signs, on listening to and following our callings
    • Kathryn Lorenzen, singer-songwriter sharing original music
    • Seema Reza, CEO of Community Building Arts Work and author of A Constellation of Half-Lives and When the World Breaks Open.
  • A bundle of recordings from the conference, including Open Mics, Keynote Performances, Panel Discussion, and more.
  • A library of handouts from conference workshops.
  • A $20 coupon toward a TLAN class you enroll in before May 31st, 2024.

Register for the Conference

Session Descriptions

Be A Power of Words Conference Sponsor

Poems as Catalysts and Seeds to Plant Change — By Tracie Nichols

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Tracie Nichols is offering “Listening With Our Bodies: Writing Toward Resilience” through TLAN April 19 – May 10. Register by April 10 and save 20%. Details here.

August of 2021 found me deep in the magic of “Future Casting,” an online class offered through the Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN) and facilitated by the astonishingly creative Caits Meissner. In the sixth and final week, Caits suggested we write a statement of poetics. For me, this was a very new and not entirely welcome idea. The following is what I wrote in response to that invitation. (Warning: this piece mentions violence and employs some salty language.)

For most of my life, whenever anyone asked me to summarize myself or my art I panicked, froze, then fled, usually leaving a comet tail of epithets. If cornered, I deflected. “Want to know me?” I’d hiss, “Go read my poems. They’re scraped from the inner walls of my ascending aorta.” Similarly, questions about my writing process often ran into a big old slammed door of “none of your damn business.”

I always thought it was because I’m an introvert with a bit of social anxiety. Lately, though, I’m coming to understand that it’s because writing poetry is how I wrote myself back into a breathing presence in my own mind and trying to codify that feels like I risk diminishing its creative, sustaining, power. Sharing my purpose and process as a poet feels x-ray intimate.

When I was a child, I was in so much pain—so deeply psychically displaced—it seemed I was only holding on to this world by a forefinger and thumb. My seventh grade art teacher tossed me a rope when he asked our class to write a poem in response to an art film of stampeding wild horses. There were foals in that snorting, screaming, rampaging mess. I recognized their terror and out-of-control turmoil. I felt it in my body and then streamed those messy, shouting word-feelings onto the pages of my tidy school notebook. And that, as they say, is where it all started.

I continued writing poetry to locate myself in myself and in the world, to imagine a place where I belonged, to make a space for myself that made sense despite nearly nothing around me doing so. The process of writing poetry—at least the way I interpreted it—let me circumvent my indoctrinated, gas-lit mind and write what my body felt, noticed, and perceived. I could write about the tall white pine tree and how I first, finally, felt real belonging when wrapped in their branches, listening to the wind.

I write because words and images live in my bones and itch. I write so those words detach their atoms from my marrow and coalesce themselves into poems. I write because my arms ache from holding the unflinching truth of violence in one hand and the equally unflinching truth of compassion in the other. I write to make sense of violence: the large and small violences we impose on each other, the cuts and digs we carve into ourselves, the narrow, restrictive, suffocating norms a culture inflicts on its members, the ongoing rape of this planet. I write to find respite in everyday moments of connection and the steady reliability of natural rhythms—small, quiet things like morning following night. I write because my body is etched with violence and betrayal and understands how finding respite in small, everyday beauties helps survival turn the corner into living.

In the beginning, I wrote so I could know I existed. These days, I write because I hold the truth of both violence and compassion in my body and I know there are people who need to hear that is possible. I write because I have lived sixty years of life in the face of a beginning that should have ended me and there are people who need to know that’s possible, too. I write poems to be catalysts. I offer them as seeds. I hope they plant change.

Tracie Nichols is a Transformative Language Artist writing poetry and facilitating writing experiences from under two old Sycamore trees in southeastern Pennsylvania. She is the Co-founder of two writing groups, as well as a board member and newsletter editor for the Transformative Language Arts Network. Putting her master’s degree in Transformative Learning and Change to good use over the past two decades, Tracie has designed and facilitated many virtual and in-person lifelong learning experiences on a truly wide range of topics for small groups. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rogue Agent and Text Power Telling as well as two anthologies. You can connect with her at https://tracienichols.com/.

How Pictures Heal: Writing From Your Photo Stream by Kelly DuMar

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One of the many writing prompts I use in my How Pictures Heal workshops is to have participants write a three-sentence story sparked by a personal photo. A lot of wisdom, emotion and beauty can be expressed in three sentences:

  1. Fractured or whole, I am a bowl.
  1. My body contains who I am, how I have lived, my scars, my wrinkles and beauty marks.
  1. Fractured or whole, my spirit is a bowl containing the airy remarkable essence of my unique wholeness.

Here’s how one participant answered a three-sentence prompt from the question “What resistance did you overcome to get here to the workshop?”

  1. I am getting out of my comfort zone and exploring my love of words.
  2. I am overcoming the story I have said to myself––that writing is only for intelligent people and no one would be interested in what I have to say.
  3. I am feeling empowered and creative. I am exposing the ways I have been small for other people’s comfort.

Here’s something exciting I hear in all my photo-inspired creative writing workshops:

When I first saw my photo, I never imagined I would write what ended up on the page.

Writers I work with are experiencing the power of making imaginative leaps from their personal photos that allow them to express a meaningful story hidden beneath the surface of a photo.

One young man wrote from a photo of himself and his brother as a child posing in the arms of their mother for the camera. As soon as he began writing from the photo, he realized he’d never thought about who had taken the photo. Then, he realized it was the last family photo his father had taken before leaving the family. His poem germinated from with this awakening. He said:

I was able to use what I learned in class to not only write something I’m proud of, but to process and communicate emotional difficulties I hadn’t been able to find words for in years.

My workshops are inspired by the words of Jane Hirshfield in her essay, “Poetry, Permeability and Healing”:

Among the fracturings of the psyche, powerlessness and invis­ibility are not minimal things. But a person who can ask words to do things words have not done before is not powerless. To make phrases that increase what is possible to think and feel is both exhilaration and liberation. To expand reality is to counter despair, depression, and impotence.

Personal photos and expressive writing are a dynamic combination for TLA artists and writers. Your pictures hold the stories only you can write. Writing is an act of creation that puts your spirit, your mind, your mood, in transit as your pen takes you where you have been and where you have never been before.

Another writer in my How Pictures Heal workshop asked me a great question about the “magic” of how this creative writing and healing process works:

It seems to me that something quite magic happens in this work in terms of moving the mind into a positive space.  What do you think happens in the process of writing about photos and memory, Kelly, that affords this shift?

Well, let’s agree that it is mysterious. But I think it has to do with engaging our imagination, suspending our disbelief, being willing to see what’s real and remembered–– the facts of the photo and the specifics of memory––and then leap or drop into what we know that we don’t know we know. As the iconic depth psychologist, journal writer and Intensive Journal founder, Ira Progroff said:

When our attention is focused inwardly at the depth of our inner being, in the context of the wholeness of our life, resources for a profound knowledge of life become accessible to us.
Writing from our personal photos provides a quickening of spirit, an entrance into our imagination, a transit into what brings meaning, purpose, beauty, and healing into our lives. Writing from our photos is an act of transforming feelings of powerlessness into power, invisibility into visibility.

My photo-inspired writing workshops are:

  • Safe places
  • Non-judgmental experiences
  • Creative spaces for exploration self-expression
  • All levels of writing are welcome
  • All genres of writing are supported

How we will work together:

Our online webinar experience is writing-generative. We’ll meet, personally, live online in a weekly 90-minute Zoom videoconference. Additionally, each week will consist of a “Lesson” sent via e-mail for you to download that includes content designed to spark personal reflection on healing aspects of your personal photos as well as a transformative writing prompt.

Each week, you will receive insightful feedback on your writing from Kelly, and others in the group. We’ll also meet ON ZOOM in the following combinations to give those who need day versus night options. ALL ZOOM SESSIONS WILL BE RECORDED

TUES April 18, 12:30-2:00 p.m. ET

WED April 26, 7-8:30 p.m. ET

TUES May 3, 12:30-2:00 p.m. ET

TUES May 9, 12:30-2:00 p.m. ET

WED May 17, 7-8:30 p.m. ET

TUES May 23,  7-8:30 p.m. ET

I hope you’ll consider moving toward healing from your personal photos in your creative writing practice with me. You can register here.

ABOUT KELLY DUMAR

Kelly DuMar, M.Ed. is a poet, playwright, and engaging workshop leader who generates enlivening writing experiences for new and experienced writers. Her photo-inspired creative writing method elicits profound personal awakenings, deepens connection with others, and fosters beautifully crafted writing in poetry and prose. Kelly’s fourth poetry collection, “jinx and heavenly calling,” was published in March 2023 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Kelly is also author of Before You Forget—The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for Your Children. Kelly’s award-winning plays have been produced around the US and Canada, and are published by dramatic publishers. Kelly is a certified psychodramatist, former psychotherapist, and Fellow in the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. She teaches online for TLAN and the International Women’s Writing Guild, where she leads the Annual Summer Play Lab and more. Kelly also hosts the monthly Journal of Expressive Writing Open Mic with feature. Kelly inspires readers of #NewThisDay – her daily photo-inspired blog – with her mindful reflections on a writing life. You can learn more about Kelly, at www.kellydumar.com.

Will Create for Love & Money: Your Right Livelihood and TLA – by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

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“Will create for love and money” could make for a perfect bumper sticker for many of our cars or a good sign on our front doors. We write, sing, facilitate, coach, collaborate, and work deeply in the arts with others and ourselves because it’s our calling and birthright. Yet what it takes to make a living, find even more of our purpose, or craft the next season of our lives isn’t something that easily fits on a car bumper or front door. Finding our way takes courage, guidance, clarity, and often, help along the way.

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That’s why, starting many years ago when I first developed TLA, I knew that Right Livelihood, the Buddhist tradition of work that builds our communities and betters our world, was essential. By holding brave spaces for people to share their truest words and name and claim their own visions of healing and transformation, we are doing the work of Tikkun Olam, the Hebrew term for helping repair the broken world. Yet we can only do this work if we find ways to sustain our livelihoods and respect our time and gifts.

The Your Right Livelihood class began as a TLA Network project, then grew from there, having helped dozens of people since 2018 discover their work (whether for livelihood, art, service, or purpose) and how to make that work come true. I’m delighted to be offering our comprehensive class with singer-songwriter and creativity and career transition coach Kathryn Lorenzen Feb. 19 – April 16. The class surrounds you with guidance, support, best resources for your work ahead, and good company for the journey, including:

  • Weekly Zoom discussions, many featuring luminary teachers, such as Gregg Levoy (author of Callings), Yvette-Hyater-Adams (facilitator, writer, consultant), Vi Tran (arts organizer and performer), and Alana Muller (networking expert) to explore the depths and breath of callings, personal strategic planning, networking tailored to you, and finding support and care.
  • Online exploration and writing about our emerging visions as well as the inspiration and nuts-and-bolts resources we need to put them into action, plus visiting podcast teachers sharing their wisdom, including creativity expert Eric Maisel, Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Willmott, singer-songwriter Kelley Hunt, poet and facilitator Marianela Medrano, and others.
  • One-on-one in-depth coaching on how to integrate our dream work into our lives through completing a pick-your-adventure portfolio guide so that you’ll have all you need (such as web copy, funding resources, proposals and descriptions of your work, outreach plans) when you complete the class.

As part of a generous partnership agreement, all TLAN members receive a discount on our class and retreat next October. Additionally, we invite any TLAN member to attend our Sun., Feb. 5 small group coaching session “Will Create for Love and Money” as our guest (7 p.m. CT/ 8 p.m. ET/ 6 p.m. MT/ 5 p.m. PT on Sun., Feb. 5). Just email me and we’ll register you.

A number of TLA members have found great gifts and direction in Your Right Livelihood, and you can read their words directly here. We know through our experience how much a strong cohort group, excellent guides, and lots of good resources can help people make the leap into the work they love.

We come by this understanding naturally: Kathryn is a singer-songwriter who found her way into cross-country performing and having her music featured in films, along with her twin calling of coaching hundreds of people through career transition over the years. As a poet and writer, I discovered my twin calling in teaching and facilitation, which, along with writing are how I support my livelihood, do my service, and create my art.

Find out more about the class here, and if you’d like to explore whether this is a good match for you, please click on the “Discovery Call” button to set up a free consultation with us. You can also peruse of “Is Your Right Livelihood Right For You?” page here.