Dear Brave Writers:

Dear Brave Writers: a Brave Space attendee recently thanked me for sending my follow-up email after Brave Space, saying, "this part truly helps me... seeing/hearing it again cements it..."

She is referring to seeing/reading what she said she learned from Brave Space (in our process discussion) restated in the follow-up email that goes out to all the participants afterwards. Because we learn a lot in Brave Space!

Reading words on the page (or on email) concretizes the experience. Because words carry meaning. Learning needs to be re-experienced and reflected back to the learner in order for us to truly take it in and incorporate it into our lives. 

Women's words and experiences are made so much more real when we see them on the page or stage and breathe that sigh of relief - oh! Someone else went through this! Someone else feels like I do! This is power. This creates community and kills isolation. 

That is why I write the follow-up emails, because it is powerful to see something on the page. Because my mission in creating Brave Space is to get more work by more women into the world. Because the world needs female experience from female points of view. Because the gatekeepers and the weight of history is/has been his and not all of ours. 

I want to support the work from the very beginning to get it all the way into the world so that self-doubt (that runs rampant through patriarchal culture) doesn't ruin our own sense of what we are trying to do, so we can trust our impulses and continue to believe in our projects until they are all the way born into the world to help us all.

Please join me in Brave Space at your convenience. Let me know if you have the intention to be there. 

BRAVE SPACE has a website!

For years I’ve been meaning to make a website. Internal roadblocks stopped me every time. Who am I, and why should I have a website? Those sorts of questions creep in when we’re not paying attention.

It wasn’t until I was at AROHO’s Global Summer Camp listening to Sun Cooper (https://www.sunliterary.com) talk about writers she wanted to work with - she said, “we want women who want to be found.” She was telling us to get a website! To be findable! And finally it clicked!

Of course I want to be found! I want to get women’s writing into the world, and I want to be able to support all of us in our struggles to get our words onto the pages of books and journals and other websites. So I need to be found.

From there it was easy to finish the website, or at least finish it enough to start blogging! And being! And BraveSpace.online was born.

Since I’ve been offering Brave Space sessions (since last December 2019) through word-of-mouth and by putting my info in different chats in different meetings, little by little Brave Space is growing. I now serve an international community of writers!

The best way to over-ride self-doubt is to connect to something bigger than self. So I thank all of you. Because without you, I would be stuck in the ego of my isolated self. Once I think of my writing as serving the women and girls who come after me, once I think of offering Brave Space to all women, including trans/gnc and nonbinary people, I should and I can, and so can you.