Not until late in life did I come to understand how my life is framed by white privilege. In fact, this reality influences everything in my life. And if you are white—poor or not—this is also true for you. To reveal and benefit from the paradoxical nature of white privilege, we must explore what white privilege means within the context of our daily lives and how it affects our experience as a human being—a white woman in America, in my case. At some point, those of us who are privileged need to acknowledge this dynamic if we are to live an authentic life. White privilege isn’t in and of itself a paradox; as with any dynamic, it holds within it a paradoxical narrative. And white privilege holds many paradoxical narratives. My privileged life doesn’t mean I have always felt privileged. Therein lies a core paradox: we may have shame or fear, dynamics that drive our experience, but we may not be aware we have them. Once we realize that shame, for example, influences everything in our lives, we can begin to transform our lives. We can turn shame into self-compassion. This is true with white privilege too. Once we become aware of white privilege as a dynamic, we can live more honestly. We can be more fearless and compassionate. We can challenge this dynamic and own up to it through our beliefs, assumptions, and actions. Then, the second layer of paradox arrives: we still are privileged. With shame or fear, we may actually become wholly free of its influence on our lives. This is possible. At least such dynamics no longer drive our experience. White privilege has a culturally set context and cannot simply be shaken off with awareness or practice. The color of our skin—white privilege—follows us to our grave. Still, its paradoxical nature can help us live more honestly and compassionately. As long as we first maintain an awareness of how this dynamic is part of every experience, it may no longer secretly drive our experiences. As we challenge this dynamic internally, we can help change the outer landscape of racial injustices. 

Herein arrives the third layer of paradox with white privilege: We can use our white privilege. We can choose to challenge racial injustices we encounter. We can speak up when we see someone being mistreated, bullied, or denied something because of their skin color.

This particular privileged state is just one.
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In the words of the poet, Rebecca Cecchini: "There are, of course, many privileged states in our world that could be paradoxically included in this thread, including male privilege, young privilege, hetero privilege, economic privilege (often stemming from the others). These and other privileges so often ride unimpeded under our awareness but affect others deeply. They are part of our social constructs and move through all of us, surfacing wounds as the many “isms” we don’t personally wish to claim. Opportunity abounds here to make broader applications of the paradoxical lessons."  

A worthwhile exploration for each of us may be to identify a particular privilege that is current in our life. There are simple approaches we can use to challenge and shift our privileged states and all of our contradictions to help us find contradictions’ inherent paradoxes.   Write about that.

What are the paradoxes inherent in some of your stories and experiences?  Write about that. 


SAVE THE DATE:  Laurie Scheer and I are finishing up the final plans for what this year will be Write-by-the-LIGHT. Since the UW Continuing Studies, Writing Program is closing, last year was the last WBTLake.  However Laurie Scheer, myself, Angela Rydell and Tim Storm will be offering a superb and dynamic WBTLIGHT!. 
 
Laurie and I will be offering a full retreat/workshop experience to choose from. There will be optional sessions with Tim Storm and Angela Rydell. And an open mike night, one yoga class for writers from Molly Chanson, as well as ways to meet up with other writers.  For those who live near Madison, I will hold one in person meet up “on the lake, in the light.”   Investment: $225. .  And! Laurie and I will be offering a consultation on 10 pages for free afterward for all who sign up.
 
This will be great.  It will be live and ZOOMED.  The dates are June 16th through Saturday (till 4:00) the 19th. 



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When I first heard this quote read out loud in a 1993 psychic development class, an inward shift began. So much was within me that wanted release and expression. My gifts, my knowledge, and intuition, all qualities that I was born with that up till then remained hidden, even to me.  My first book came forth. My pain stories and trauma also came to my awareness for understanding and transformation. I understood then and now that our life's journey is about bringing forth what is within us. 

​These stories, personal experiences and gifts need releasing from the body and mind. 

Writing flames us alive and brings forth what seeks expression, understanding and transformation. All we have to do is listen. Writing is listening. Writing is an expression. Writing brings transformation because it can bring up the pain stories for further healing and acknowledgment. 

Eleven books have been brought forth from me.  Each book contains  what has been "within me." 

What does writing bringing forth from you? Write about that?
What themes are weaved through your life? Write about that.
What does the quote mean to you?  What might destroy or save you? Write about that. 

What is something, perhaps your greatest fear, right now?  Write about that. 

That fear will point to what you need to bring forth, what you most want. My latest book, The Clue of the Red Thread came from my abandonment anxiety, of feeling alone, that somehow I would lose everything and everyone I love (pain story).  The flip side of this of course is my desire to belong. I let this desire to belong, to collaborate with others out through action. I reached out to Parker J Palmer and began conversations that resulted in this book. Over the past six years my intention and actions have been to collaborate with others, to reach out and develop community through all my interests and projects. To join in. (Which is what motivated me to sign up for Yoga Teacher Training at Kripalu two weeks ago). 

How can you bring forth one of your deepest fears and its desire?  Write about that.
How can you act on your desire?  Write about that.

My most recent collaborations include working with Laurie Scheer to bring you a Write-by-the-Light workshop and retreat this June! I have been collaborating with Molly Chanson to bring writing and yoga together in our free fourth Wednesday nights of yoga and writing and our Sacred Thread retreats for yogis and writers. 

​All I see now are opportunities of collaboration.
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Hidden Victims/Hidden Healers was the first book I let out from within.  So much was brought forth!; the pain story of living with a brother with mental illness, the healing process of gathering with others in circle, the transformation of sharing our stories (first stage of healing) and what it meant to be a sister. 

“The thing is, there is a need to deal with climate change, restore our democracy, heal the injustices close in and further out. We need to actually get that job, or finish that project. We need to connect. We need to change the conversation or let the conversation change us. We need to move forward somehow into the new next,”
          - Julie Tallard Johnson, The Changing Conversation, the New Next & Clue of the Red Thread, February 5, 2021

A few weeks ago, while discussing her brilliant new book The Clue of the Red Thread, Julie said it best within the above quote - we need to move forward into the new next. She also mentions dealing with climate change and I would like to introduce you to a writing genre that offers opportunity to write within the world of the new next where your words can change our planet.
 
Welcome to a writing genre that you have always lived in.
 
When you began your day today did you notice the first bird, cloud, flower, or tree you viewed or passed by? Writers generally welcome writing prompts and this writing genre offers prompts 24/7 because it always surrounds you. The genre is known as Nature Writing and it has been around for decades.
 
The genre of Nature Writing is experiencing a popularity boost mostly due to the concern we have for our planet’s climate change and, in a nearly post-pandemic world, after having worked from home for a few months, we’ve been able to view and experience our backyards and common green areas in-between working on our screens more than we did when working in offices. Writing about Nature is, well, alive again.
 
Nature Writing often involves the love of a place, a favorite land, and/or an experience held/shared in Nature. Nature Writing is timeless, and necessary. If we do not write about our places and experiences then how will future generations know about our land, our Earth?
Sometimes referred to as Adventure Writing and Outdoor writing, this genre has its roots in the 19th century globally and continues to currently find engaged writers and avid readers – more than ever in previous decades. The genre is also welcoming many diverse voices and hence the genre is fast becoming known as a group of New Nature Writers.
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More simply put, Nature Writing has found its time and place as our planet experiences unprecedented change and we as humans learn how to best maintain our home – for everyone because we are all on this planet as one. By recording your observations, researching the facts, and gathering up your enthusiasm, you generate writing pieces that can influence your readers. Nature Writing is necessary to save the planet. If we don’t share our experiences and assist our next generation in understanding the precious elements of our world, then we could find ourselves in a worse situation than we currently find ourselves in.
Your words can awaken change.
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This is an arena that is as wide open as a grassy patch of land by the side of any roadside or on top of any mountain. Our environment is changing, and our voices need to be read.
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Join us. We are a group of writers who take note of our first birds, clouds, flowers, and trees viewed daily. We are writing to save the world – literally. We are writing the new next.

Laurie Scheer

New Nature Writers Writing Ranger
laurie@newnaturewriters.com
www.newnaturewriters.com

Write about a time you were forgotten.

Take a story or scene or essay that you are writing on and turn it into a poem. 

When you go on your writer's walk today (in search of an idea or to make contact with the natural world), notice three new images or encounters that you have not noticed in the past.  Write about these.  

Throw out, donate or recycle something today that you find you have been moving around the house but really it's just clutter.   Write about this object and its journey with you.  (Or write from the objects perspective).  

Write about how COVID intersects with your writer's life.  Use the images found on your walk. 

Write about an assumption you hold about someone you don't like.  And about someone you love. 

Write about an assumption you hold of the world or others that holds you back or makes you want to give up.

As in all my writing prompts, let them take you where they will.  My writing prompts come from an intuitive place that invites us to explore and discover what it is we truly want to write about.  Let go of expectations and assumptions you hold of yourself or your writing.  And notice the pilgrimage itself and where you arrive.

Join me and other writers for FIRST FRIDAY WRITING RETREATS.  This coming March 5th, Friday we will explore more on the theme of Vulnerability through and in our writing. On the First Friday in April we will have a wonderful day of writing and yoga with me and Molly Chanson! Send me an email, and hold the dates.  julie@julietallardjohnson.com.  These will be live through ZOOM until we can safely meet up in person!❤️ 

​The Clue of The Red Thread is now available on Amazon.🌈

​I am currently reading a biography called Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius written by A. Scott Berg. It depicts the life and career of Max Perkins of Scribner’s publishing house who brought forth the works of powerhouse authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Wolfe, and others.
Perkins was not a writer himself, but as an editor he had nearly inexhaustible sympathy, respect, and dedication to the craft. He coached, encouraged, bolstered, and supported his authors when they stumbled and despaired, which was often.
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He well understood that the writing life was plagued by solitude, toil, and self-doubt. Then, if a work of great art (or even just okay art) was successfully printed and critically esteemed, the writer was sentenced to the depression and struggle of producing another work of equal or greater value, as was the case with Fitzgerald following The Great Gatsby. Tom Wolfe scrawled reams of pages of description and character sketches while standing beside a refrigerator which he used as his preferred writing surface. He produced prolifically--and had no idea what to do next with his material. Marjorie Rawlings, author of the perennially beloved novel The Yearling toiled for a year on the project, then threw the manuscript out.

In each of these cases, Max Perkins pleaded with and implored the authors to continue, to not give up. To one author he wrote, “Just get it all down on paper and then we’ll see what to do with it.” And ultimately, the authors muddled their way through mess, muck, and morass to create something that was publishable and could be put into the hands and minds of readers forever after.
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So, I take heart in the familiar struggle of some of the greatest writers of the 20th century. They were both brilliant and fragile, brimming with both insight and uncertainty. They were like us. Let us, then, find our own Max Perkins--someone, something to cheer us on and force us to continue the painful effort. The end makes the means possible, even when the means feel impossible. Or, as Perkins himself put it so well, “I feel certain that it will end very well indeed, if you can endure the struggle. The struggle is part of the process.”
 
Camilia Cenek is a writer, consultant, and editor. She delights in working with both emerging and experienced writers to bring their stories to life. In 2020, she won first place for nonfiction in the Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring contest. Contact Camilia at camiliacenekediting@gmail.com

an instagram post by Holly Whittaker:

"We do not speak or create or share for our shit to be understood, liked, loved by all. We do these things as an offering. Our art isn’t our own, our words aren’t our own; they are borrowed things that choose us, that knock at our door and ask to pass through the portal of our hands, lips, brains. And then they are gone, no longer ours, out there, someone else’s. We are the faucets, we are not the water. And the pain comes when we confuse ourselves with being the water.

It took me a long time to get this. I still struggle with it. Just not even close to how much I used to.
We speak not to convert the masses into our belief systems; we speak our truth so that others can find theirs. And people find their truth often by absolutely hating and disagreeing with our truth."

So, once the water flows out from the page to the world, it is no longer yours. Let it go. Let it nourish, entertain, make good trouble.  Water like sunshine knows where to go.

My intention now with my latest book is to let it go. Not so much direct it's flow but to help it reach those it may benefit.  

How is your writing, your words a borrowed thing?  Write about that.
What does it mean to you to be a faucet,  your words the water?  Write about that.
What or whom do you need to release to write?   Write about that.
Who are you hoping to entertain, reach, nourish?  Write about that.
Write a poem about water and how it moves.
Write a piece on shadow and light. 

And just like a bird can't always be in flight, a faucet can't always be on.  Take time to rest and pause. 

join the yogi and the writer tonight for a free hour and a half of writing and yoga.  email me to join.

I am offering another FREE FIRST FRIDAY retreat in March. March 5th.  Hold the date.