Write To Connect
Life Writing Workshops in the Disability Community
What is life writing?
Life writing usually refers to memoirs and autobiography. I use the term to mean any kind of writing that connects you back to your most dynamic self. It is writing that can take the form of novels, poems, emails, notes on Facebook, op eds for news outlets, posts on your blog, personal statements for job applications, and more! Life writing is both practical and artistic.
As a woman with a disability, my life writing practice has helped me connect with services that enable me to live independently in the community. It has helped me communicate openly and thoroughly with my doctors. Every day, my friendships and professional relationships are fortified through my life writing practice. Life writing brought me and my partner together. Most of all, life writing allows me to explore my disability through the lens of everyday experiences and to feel connected to the pulse of life even when barriers are present.
The Disability Community
Right now, so much emphasis is being placed on funding and programs to create more opportunities for social integration and employment “for” people with disabilities. But quality of life and livelihood is arrived at “by” individuals with disabilities, individuals with unique and vibrant voices.
Join a Write To Connect workshop and explore your writing voice while linking up with new friends and contacts. Build community and discover your vital self one word at a time. Writing can be pen-in-hand, audio diaries, email letters to friends. Writing can be the blink of an eye, a sip and a puff, a cartoon, a speech. Your voice is your own! Share it and connect!
How do WTC workshops work?
To find out more about WTC, go to www.writetoconnect.blogspot.com. There you can view my résumé and check out the blog.
Workshops may take place at an organization in the disability community, at a public place like the library or from your home (via internet or phone). Cost to you as a participant depends on the duration and location of the workshop series. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please contact me for details about the next series.
I would be happy to chat with you via phone or email about your interests in writing and your accessibility needs.
Email amberdipietra@yahoo.com Call 415 867 1124.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urge that motivates you.
Keep the channel open.
--Martha Graham, in a letter to Agnes DeMille in "Dance to the Piper"
