All About Me
This is me as Madonna at age 8. Don’t be fooled by the devilish gleam in my eye. Yes, I liked to dress up in my Mom’s slips and belt “Like A Virgin” in the backyard, imagining audiences screaming my name. But outside of that yard, I was the quiet girl in the library buried in Sweet Valley High. I had a severe stutter and spent my days dodging insults. I never stood up for myself or told the bullies or teachers how I felt. Being vulnerable was out of the question, it would’ve been the same as putting a mark on my heart and yelling: “Aim the arrow here!” And my heart was already in tatters.
When I was seven, my mom gifted me a typewriter and an escape into my imagination. I typed 100 page stories about teen girls in Malibu who were secret Russian spies with brawny boyfriends. I wrote the words I couldn’t say, creating characters free to order pepperoni pizza and eagerly read aloud in class. I kept a daily diary, recording my romantic feelings for Christian Slater, but also documenting the days I got teased. My imagination became my most sacred place, my anchor. I found a refuge in Malibu and the gold-lined pages of my diary. Words, once my worst enemy, had saved my little wrecked soul.
I'd always wanted to act, so when I was eleven, I worked up the nerve to audition for "The Wizard of Oz." I landed the leading role of Dorothy and fell in love with performing. I discovered playing another person I didn’t stutter as much, but most importantly, when I did, I was supported and encouraged by my cast-mates. Theater spaces became safe containers where I talked openly about my feelings and was rewarded by making close friends.
After high school I attended Hollins, a women’s university in Virginia. The women I met at the school didn’t blink when I stuttered. They taught me it was something unique about me, rather than something I should be ashamed of. My creative writing teachers encouraged me to write about my stutter and when I did, I watched as more women opened up to me about the things that shamed them. And our collective shames began to disappear.
For my senior thesis project, I wrote and directed a play that took place entirely in a girls’ high school restroom, inspired by the years I’d spent at the school. Surrounded by pink walls and safe in the female-only space, the characters exchanged their deepest secrets and laughed until their sides ached.
By the time I graduated, I knew: there is power in being vulnerable, but the key to being vulnerable is that it must be done in a safe space.
Now, as a teacher and book coach, my ultimate goal is for a woman to experience being nurtured the way I was over my four years at Hollins, but condensed into a few hours at a workshop or over the weekend at a retreat, or under my weekly care as a book coach.
Through my intuitive ability in my classes to ask just the right questions and prescribe just the right poem, I inspire my students to feel comfortable writing from their rawest places.
I want women to feel held when they are with me. I do this through humor, and a willingness to be imperfect. This approach allows women to create their writings from a pure, honest place where they free themselves from judgment and their own critical eye.
Under my guidance and supported in a safe container, a woman sheds her shame.
She builds community.
She finds her voice.
Why I Do This Work
Do you find yourself staring at the blank page, unable to create because you’re terrified to start or because you can’t get dollar signs or rejection slips out of your mind? Do you long for female community?
This was me in 2015. Even though I’d called myself a professional writer for well over a decade, I felt disconnected from the reason I started in the first place.
I believed there was no solution to the unrelenting fears surrounding my writing. I had completely lost touch with the little girl who scribbled her dreams in a journal every night and published stories in a newsletter she created for her friends. I saw writing only as a way to make money. Words felt like enemies and I constantly compared my writing success to other women's, completely eradicating my creativity and silencing my voice. I was drowning.
Then, my friend Lise invited me to attend a women’s writing retreat in the woods outside of Montreal. This was not a retreat focused on critique. Some of the women were beginners. So at first I was skeptical. How could this possibly be useful? How could my novel and stories improve if people didn’t tell me what was bad about them? And how could I learn from women who hadn’t made writing their vocation? But guided by prompts and exercises that caused me to really meditate on why I love to write, I let myself take risks with my work. I started to remember how kick-ass it felt to put words on the page. The words didn’t have to be perfect or pretty. I let myself be playful. I shared with women who were total strangers, who encouraged me and reminded me how powerful it is when a group of ladies gather together to celebrate the written word. And most of all, I learned just as much from the new writers as I did from the experienced ones.
I returned home with some of the rawest work of my life, work that has ended up becoming a middle grade novel about my biggest secret. Deep in my bones, I knew I’d finally reconnected with the little girl who typed 100 page stories about talking cats simply because she loved to tell a story. When I returned to revising my novel, I felt a surprising reverence toward my work. I felt proud to be a writer, no matter how many accolades I can add to my bio.
Over the past six years, I’ve facilitated many workshops and retreats. Now I have a wonderful cis and trans female-identified community that continues to grow and I make it my mission to connect women. Because the work I do is centered on finding a female writer’s unique voice and shaping it into her story, I found myself naturally wanting to help women write about their lives in the form of memoir. In 2017 I launched my coaching business and it is truly the work I was put here to do. I relish helping a woman zero in on her story and execute it. There is something so inspirational about sharing our experiences on the page. It’s powerful being honest and it makes us braver and more likely to take risks in our lives.
I tell all new clients: If you’re scared to tell your story, that’s a good sign. That means you have something important to say. Right now a woman is waiting to see herself in your story, to finally feel understood. Don’t waste any more time being afraid. Do it afraid. The page is waiting.
My Favorite Poem
the fox came every evening to my door
asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.
at dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.
did she gather her village around her
and sing of the hairless moon face,
the trembling snout, the ignorant eyes?
child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her, the poet and
the terrible stories she could tell.
“Telling Our Stories” by Lucille Clifton
