Write Your Heart Out
Write Your Heart Out is a contemplative writing practice focused around a specific theme or state of being. As you put pen to paper, observe the emotions that pour from you, discover the truth of your feelings, and allow your heart’s energy to create both art and change.
Using stillness, writing prompts, sharing, and supportive feedback, these reflective writing experiences are open to writers of all levels.
To take part in a Write Your Heart Out session, get in touch to schedule a special session for your group. We can write about any of the themes below or create something new.
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Anxiety
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Anger
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Hope
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Gratitude
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Shine Your Light
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Stillness
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When You Love Someone Who Struggles with Addiction or Mental Illness
words are the voice
of the heart.
~
confucius
I was born in the sign of water, and it's there that I feel my best.
~ little river band
Write Your Heart Out was born on the beach
Growing up and living in the Midwest means spending nearly half the year indoors. So, when good weather makes an appearance that means, for me, being outside as much as possible. And the beach is always the first place you should look for me. To me, summer means water, sun, and sky – three elements that put me in touch with myself in a way nothing else does.
Before moving out of the city a year or so ago, I’d make the near-hour drive to Lake Michigan three or four times a week during the warmer months (if you’ve never experienced Lake Michigan, believe me when I say that it’s the next best thing to the ocean). I’d pack with me snacks, a book and magazines, homework, and my journal. Feet grounding in the sand, sun warming skin that’s been under layers of down and fancy cold-weather materials for far too long, the smell of sunscreen on my hands, the sound of the surf and gulls in my ears, is like coming home to myself.
Being fully in my body isn’t something I’ve been very good at for most of my life. But somehow, when I’m near or in the water, I am able to be present to myself. Everything else gets stripped away.
It’s easier to meditate or to pray when the horizon is fused with sunlight and wispy white clouds and the water is playing games at the shoreline. I can feel myself becoming more quintessentially me. In this state of near rapture, I find that even before I reach for my guilty-pleasure magazines, I am inclined to move my pen across the pages of my journal.
And it’s here, in this altered, ethereal state that long-hidden memories, near-impossible thoughts, elusive answers, and golden language drop into my consciousness. The pen may be in my hand, but I am not the only one moving it. This is how my heart makes its way onto the page time and again.
My surroundings, my love of words and a good story, my longing to transform, conspired to help me dive deep beneath the surface to intuit and to learn who I am and who I want to be. After a couple of years and several sessions of beach writing, an idea was delivered to me fully formed one afternoon – I could serve others by combining my coaching experience with my love of writing. And Write Your Heart Out was born.