Remake of Writing toward Healing: June 11 '23 Workshop by SoulBone™ https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u In this generative workshop, poets and writers Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi help facilitate a transformation from trauma to healing. They will share from their own work and offer suggestions and ideas how you use writing as a healing modality and transform your story and narrative creatively in a manner that transforms. What helps you write toward self-care and a reframing of your own narrative? How do you deal with it when you are stuck in fight/flight/freeze/fawn when you try to tell your story? What is an empowered vision for yourself as a writer? Nynke and Jennifer know how to hold safe space for a journey to the difficult places in a manner that empowers, relieves, transforms, and redeems. en-us 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC 2025-10-20 09:58:55 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/1994153597/f8fe0df18814a33738a6d8f5d15bb92d/Soul_Bone_Literary_Festival_copy_1.png Writing toward Healing soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935490 MIU MFA faculty and poets and writers Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi reprise their generative workshop, Writing toward Healing, which was also offered as part of our last Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival. Nynke and Jennifer will share from their own work and offer suggestions and ideas how you use writing as a healing modality and transform your stories and experiences creatively in a manner that transforms, redeems, and heals. What helps you write toward self-care and a reframing of your own narrative? How do you deal with it when you are stuck in fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode (the amygdala portion of your brain) when you try to tell your story? How do you cope with PTSD or CPTSD? How do you take control of your own narratives? What is an empowered vision for yourself as a writer? 


About Soul Bone™ Literary Center

Soul Bone™ intersects writing with creative process, spirituality, social justice, and healing in tiny, winged courses that lift the spirit. 



]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935490 Jennifer & Nynke soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935491 Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. She also is the author of  I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019). She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, and is a full-time faculty in MIU's MFA in Creative Writing.

Nynke Salverda Passi is the director of MIU's MFA program and co-chair of the English dept. She is also the founder and director of the Soul Bone℠ Literary Center and Festival. She was born and raised in the Netherlands. Her work has been published in CALYX, Gulf Coast, Poetry Breakfast, Life & Legends, and more. Her poetry has been anthologized in Pandemic Puzzle Pieces and River of Earth & Sky (Blue Light Press), Carrying the Branch (Glass Lyre Press), and Oxygen: Parables of the Pandemic (River Paw Press). Together with Rustin Larson and Christine Schrum, she edited the poetry collection Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day.


Testimonials

"Every single event [of the Soul Bone Literary Festival] influenced my thinking about my own work. Right out of the gate with Nynke and Jennifer. Holy mother of all things beautiful! I was never so excited and proud to have these two women as my mentors and teachers. I remember after I heard each of them read their poems, I thought 'I hit the jack pot of professionalism!' Immediately, they opened the door of vulnerability for all the students and participants. After that, I felt there was no holding back the flood gates that wished to pour from me."  

- Jennifer Sheena

"You two made a fabulous team! Your master workshops on Writing the Wound and Writing toward Healing inspired me to create my own poem concerning a traumatic incident. I had trouble writing about it, but this time, with your positivity and support, I came up with something. I think what really did the trick was y’all saying that all of us have different traumas and it’s ok to feel how we feel. I am so grateful for your supportive space and your grace. You both have an incredible creative energy that is phenomenal to be around (even on Zoom)."  

- Jennifer Grant

"Two talented writers who have that rare ability to inspire others to write often and well.."

- Jim Turner
]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935491 soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935492 Reading List for Trauma and Recovery 

Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health & Eases Emotional Pain
by James W. Pennebaker, PhD, & Joshua M. Smyth, PhD

Expressive Writing: Words that Heal
by James W. Pennebaker

Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from trauma & emotional upheaval
by James W. Pennebaker

Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives
by Louise DeSalvo

The Artist’s Way
by Julia Cameron

Your Brain on Art
by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

Trauma & Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
by Judith Lewis Herman

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - the Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experience
by Peter A. Levine & Ann Frederick

Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body
by Peter A. Levine

I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Writers of Child Sexual Abuse
Edited by Ellen Bass

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Edited by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis

The Courage to Heal Workbook: A Guide for Women & Men Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
by Laura Davis 

The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
By Bessel van der Kolk. M.D.

The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal
By Christina Enevoldsen

Saved by a Poem 
By Kim Rosen 
]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935492 soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935494
Listen to Nynke's poem "A Sad Story in Black and White Adapted to Technicolor" in the session.

Prompt:

Choose any story from the news or from your life (a local event, an event you remember from your childhood or any part of your life) and weave it through your own memory of losing something or someone you cared about a great deal - a person, a relationship, an experience, an opportunity, an object, it does not matter what. Describe how you changed from the loss in the end through metaphors. What did you lose and what did you gain? Was there a boon you brought back? How would you like to imagine yourself fully empowered after this experience? Imagine and write that down in concrete images.


]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935494 Jennifer's Bonus Prompt soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935495
Listen to Jennifer's poem "How I Write a Poem" read aloud at the end of the session.

Bonus Prompt 1:

Write a poem about the relationship between creativity and survival.


]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935495 soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935496
You can read Jennifer's poem "EVERYBODY AT THE SAME TIME IS BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SELF" by clicking on the link above or here.

Prompt:

Write a poem that interrogates healing through a layering of opposites. In other words, write a poem that challenges some kind of given binary, and try to find the healing potential in this. It can also be a poem of self-forgiveness. Incorporate 1-3 moments of self-contradiction within the poem (e.g. “Still, the body is not a failure. / Yes it is. Of course it is.”).]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935496 soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935497 You can read Jennifer's poem "Driving through Fire" by clicking on the link above or here.

Prompt:

Prompt: Write a poem about dying and coming back to life.]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935497 soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935498 Listen to Nynke's poem "Tonight My Body is Glass" in the session.

Prompt:

Make a list of images of things in the world and in your life that are both beautiful and deeply painful. Think of the news, of creatures and animals and aspects of nature far away from your life, of people you read about or heard about. Jot down all the vivid imagery of these stories, a concrete image for each, like the crustacean with a blue bottle ring collar. Then weave these together in a poem or hybrid piece where you express something about the incomprehensible co-existence of cruelty and beauty in this world and in your own life. End with a line about yourself and what you do to make sense of the confusion of all of the paradoxes of the world.]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935498 Nynke's Bonus Prompt soulboneliterarycenter https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935499

Listen to Nynke's poem "The Morphology of Compassion & Indifference" read aloud at the end of the session. You can also read it here.

Bonus Prompt 2:

Imagine a cosmic, vast vantage point from which to view your story, untouched by personal fear or pain, personal striving or identity. What do things look like from there? Write a poem from that place, looking back on the incident you wrote about this morning, but now through a cosmic eye that sees everything through a less personal and more expansive perspective.]]> 2023-07-11 21:50:22 UTC https://padlet.com/soulboneliterarycenter/xxbcy39zw82ku13u/wish/2642935499