Writing Our Way Back to Each Other

We need each other.

These days it seems like words like loneliness and community are everywhere. Many of us find ourselves with fewer moments of social connection in a day or in a week than we crave… Or that we feel we should crave.

While some debate how we got there (Screens? Social media? Pandemic?), this workshop asks another question — how can writing help us find our way back?

Creative work, especially in community, helps us hear our voices, connect to our visions, and find our own ways to join the conversation. It also helps us to be gentle with ourselves as we face our own “belonging wounds” and find our paths within the big divides of our time.

Join us for this small group exploration into community, care, human connection, and the way creativity can weave through it all.

Here’s how it works:

Over five sessions, we’ll gather in person to write around a table. We’ll write about histories of belonging and isolation, ways this changed when Covid arrived, and the visions we carry for what community could look like in our lifetimes.

This class will explore material that may be tender — there will be tissues, and lots of room for feelings. We’ll leave each session with optional “social connection challenges” to push us just outside our comfort zones, and with resources (articles, podcasts, documentaries) by the teachers who inspired this work, including Mia Birdsong, Vivek Murthy, and Robert Putnam.

Importantly, this program won’t present a single vision of what “community” is, or a romanticized view of what it was in the past. Each participant will be invited to explore what this means to them today. For one person, it might mean feeling closer to friends. For another, it might mean contributing to a culture of belonging in their apartment building. For another, it might be all about meeting new people, dating or hooking up. Big or small, local or global, every vision will be treated as equal, sacred, and full of creativity.

We’ll work together to create a culture of openness and curiosity about what community means, and what all of our writing can teach us.