“Narrative journaling helps to rewrite your stories with compassion, while sending positive affirmations and goodwill to the person or situation.” - Dr. Chris Lipat
ABOUT
Family trauma often feels isolating. Expressing these stories with the support of a compassionate witness can help with the healing process. This workshop uses personal writing to express difficult family experiences and then to reframe them with new perspectives through gentle guidance and compassionate community witnessing. Processing through writing can improve vagal tone, help us better manage stress, and improve mental well-being by fostering a more balanced autonomic nervous system. We will use brainstorming, narrative journaling, and freewriting; No formal writing experience necessary.
Through an interactive and experiential format, this workshop will provide:
- A container with guides and other fellow community members to explore a challenging experience around family
- An opportunity to release the charge of the story by bringing in a new perspective through guided writing prompts
- Ways to dive into an emotionally-charged writing session while being grounded, informed by MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) and vagal tone understanding
- A foundation for a grounding and healing writing routine to take into other practices
DETAILS
This 2.5-hour workshop is a guided writing journey to help unearth and process our stories.
- Date: Thurs, May 7th
- Time: 5:00-7:30pm PST
- Form: Online via Zoom
- Cost: $30-70 sliding scale (more info below)
OUR SHARED COMMITMENT
Though this workshop is open to people of all identities, please know that this is a liberation space, a container built on the values of justice, accountability, and collective care. We center and hold precious the voices, experiences, and wisdom of communities who have been historically oppressed, marginalized, and invisibilized, including BIPOC and people of the global majority, queer and trans people, neurodivergent people, disabled people, adoptees, and all those navigating the intersections of multiple identities. In this space, we are committed to actively practicing inclusion, challenging harm when it arises, and creating an environment where every participant can show up fully and safely. If you share these values and are ready to contribute to a container of mutual respect and liberation, you are welcome here.
WORKSHOP GUIDES
Miro Jooyoung Oh (she/they) has been supporting communities of color / people of the global majority through Mugwort Counseling since 2017 as a therapist. She integrates Process Work, mindfulness, somatic practices, ancestral wisdom, and Buddhist practices through a social justice lens. She is also a co-founder of StudioYellow, a social design consulting group rooted in Revolutionary Love and Racial Justice. Outside her work, she loves foraging, dancing, and writing. Learn more at mugwortcounseling.com.
Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka (she/they) is a Korean adoptee writer, educator, and community organizer. She is the founder of Ajumama Workshop, a liberation-based writing coaching practice in addition to a cofounder of the Constellation Reading Series and VOICES, a BIPOC Adoptee Community. She is a lucky recipient of numerous honors, including a recent Oregon Humanities storytelling fellowship and an Asian American Journalists Association award. Her work has been published here and there over the years – and she’s incredibly thankful people have cared about the things she writes about. Learn more at ajumamaworkshop.com.