Each week, a group of ACAs meet to use creative writing as a pathway to recovery. All are welcome. Our meeting information is below. Our format is to read a poem that speaks to our program, write in any form for 20 minutes in response, and share our writing in small groups, with loving and affirming feedback.
I want to share both how creative writing can be a tool in recovery and offer a prayer we use to clear our writing space to receive the spirit of creative writing.
Here are some of the ways creative writing helps our recovery:
- Recover buried memories
- Come out of isolation
- Gain support
- Play with words and have fun
- Overcome our fear of authority figures and being judged
- Overcome our fear of not being good enough
- Find our voice and become our authentic selves
- Find a safe place to process trauma.
Many Recovery Writers have posted their creative writing on this ACA blog under the category ACA and the Arts. And many more have expressed how reading these posts had helped their recovery. Take a look.
I offer this prayer, adapted from other recovery resources, as a way to set aside anything that stands in the way of your creative process:
Higher Power, help me set aside everything I think I know about writing, creative writing, about how writing relates to recovery, and everything I think I know about how recovery works.
Help me set aside my desire to be admired, my judgments of others, my judgments of myself, my insecurities and fears
Help me set aside the worries of the day, all those people, places and things that take up space in my mind. Remind me I can give them to you just for this precious time.
Help me set aside anything that stands in the way of my being fully present to you and your spirit as I seek to connect my experience with healing in recovery
So that I may have an open heart and an open mind and see what you would have me see.
Remind me there is nowhere else I need to be and nothing else I need to be doing.
Consider joining one of our meetings:
Fridays at 11am -12:30pm EST
Zoom 882 3623 7748
Passcode: writers
Prompt sent prior Wednesday; email [email protected] to get on list
Tuesdays 8pm-9pm EST
873 9296 9950
Passcode: 062017
Prompts for following week posted at end of meeting.
Christine B