Tinker Mountain -- Day Two -- Getting Down to Business

Yesterday, my workshop met for the first time. The opening meeting is all about introductions and the beginning of trust. No, no one sang Kumbaya or Getting to Know You. This was more about what motivates us to write about traumatic experiences that happened to us or to someone close to us.

We agreed that we have a passion to tell our stories. Some are painful; some are redemptive. Others are downright terrifying, but all are stories we must tell. I don't think we are going to keep things hidden in this workshop.

While this is not a group therapy session, we will be dealing with stories about the dark places and monsters that don't live under the bed. Some live out in the open. We have stories about disconnected, alcoholic parents. We have a story about a peeping tom turned into rapist. We have stories dreaming about revenge. We have stories about wishing you lived in a different family, that Lucille Ball was your real mother. We have stories about dissociation and wanting to be anywhere but where you are.

We have stories with humor and others utterly devoid of humor. Most of all, we have honest representations of emotion. And that's sometimes hard to read. It's even harder to sleep after reading the next day's materials.

And so today we begin with our first workshop discussions of three stories. I marked them up last night and added lots of marginalia and end notes. I bled green ink all over the stories, underlining what I liked, questioning what I thought didn't work for me.

Bled green ink? Does that make me an alien???