Autumn: the earth releases its fruits into harvest turning toward the silence and reflection of winter darkness. In this silence, we dig deep into our inner selves, and the poetry within.

Calistoga: steam arises from ancient pools of mineral water inviting busy urban souls to relax into healing waters, to find silence in nature, to spend time with the self that is often forgotten. Join us in this bounteous place for a writing retreat.

Reserve your space now–retreat limited to 10 participants!

Join us November 6th through 8th, 2009

Schedule: Friday from 6:30 PM to Sunday 12:30 PM
28 CEU units
Location: Calistoga, CA
Price: $625

Linda Joy Myers, President of the National Association of Memoir Writers offers a retreat twice a year, an opportunity to work with Linda Joy in person, and at a wonderful location–the heart of the Napa Valley wine country north of San Francisco.

In this retreat you get to immerse yourself in writing from your heart and exploring where your stories come from—memories, dreams, and “moments of being,” as Virginia Woolf calls them. You can think of it as a spiritual retreat, where you get in touch with that “still small voice within” or a way to connect with other writers. Perhaps you would like to write for three days without the distractions of the family, the house, and the world disturbing you.

In this retreat you can write in whatever style you prefer, whether it is a memoir, fiction, or poetry. This special retreat time invites you to focus on yourself and and tune into the inner source of the stories you want to write.

Feedback is supportive, accepting your work, thoughts, and being with full presence and unconditional acceptance.

Visualization, memory exercises, drawing, and group sharing open up your well of stories to draw from. At the end of a weekend that goes all too quickly, you will have several new stories, a timeline, and a writing plan to take home with you.

During the retreat there is time for mud baths and walks, individual writing time, and consultations with Linda about your work.

Give yourself a gift: spend a whole weekend immersed in your stories. You will come away with a sense of wholeness and deep resonance with yourself through writing several new stories and being listened to with full-hearted acceptance. Most women find that taking the time to nurture themselves this way helps them to create a new sense of self and heal the past.

The retreat includes:

• Dozens of handouts with writing exercises for the retreat and to take home for future writing.
• Tips for mining your memories and writing your true and significant stories.
• Suggestions for how to handle family questions about writing a memoir.
• Ideas for creating a writing life that works.
• Learning about using fictional techniques to heal and to create a vibrant story.

For more information, please email info@namw.org or call 510-524-3898.

Linda Joy Myers, retreat leader, is the prize winning author of Don’t Call Me Mother and Becoming Whole: Writing Your Healing Story. Her new book The Power of Memoir is due for release in January from Jossey Bass publishers. Linda has been a therapist for thirty years, and a teacher and mentor for over twenty-two years. She has taught at universities, and has lead writing workshops and coached writers for fifteen years.

Praise for this retreat/workshop:

“There is an intensity to devoting a weekend to this work. Maybe it’s the act of designating a time and place for it, that people take big risks. I was moved to tears and blown away by people’s courage and stories.” —Lily Endlich, Retreat attendee

… a safe, warm writing environment where stories from my heart could be allowed to surface onto paper. Being witnessed to by all the group as I read my stories is one of the most powerful writing methods I’ve ever known. –Allene Hickox

8 sessions *A deposit holds your place for the fall series
When: Saturdays in Berkeley, 10am – 1pm
Dates: September 26, October 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, (November 6-8 writing retreat in Calistoga—no class), November 14, 21, December 5 Pot luck, last class

Regular Price: $375

As a group, we write about the important moments in our lives–childhood memories, careers, love and family, and spiritual quests. Some writers use poetry and prose to capture memories and to explore the richness of life. We write about important turning points–the lighter, humorous moments along with the dark nights of the soul. There is laughter and a few tears, and most of all the witnessing of our stories, an important part of transformational writing. People of every age learn from each other’s experiences and inspires each other to keep writing insightful and thoughtful true stories. You will learn how to choose your scenes, how to use fictional tools, and ways to keep the inner critic at bay. We write during class, and share our work in a supportive atmosphere.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed. ~Muriel Rukeyser

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. ~Pablo Picasso

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
–Wendell Berry