Creative Writing Group – Using the Body’s Wisdom to Uncover Stories about what Love Requires of us

Bonnie leads this creative workshop. Please email qancreativewriting@gmail.com to book your free place as numbers are limited.

Every stage of our lives offers fresh opportunities. Responding to divine guidance, try to discern the right time to undertake or relinquish responsibilities without undue pride or guilt. Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness. Advices and queries 28.

When attempting to discern a way forward, Quakers often ask, ‘What does Love require of me?’ For this workshop, I want to suggest we look inward, through our bodies, to see what wisdom lies there as embodied stories.

Using techniques developed during nearly fifty years of practice in Dance Movement Psychotherapy, we will focus first on our hands, which hold many stories of love in action. I will not expect you to dance. This is a chair or standing exercise. We will follow this exercise with some writing (which might take the form of prose, poetry, or a hybrid).

In the second phase of the workshop, we will focus on our hearts. Here, we might encounter more complex stories about love. There may be pain and soaring ecstasy. Again, we will follow this exercise with some writing.

We will discuss how to take care of ourselves, but if you have recently experienced loss or if you have significant unresolved pain regarding love and being loved, or regarding the body parts mentioned, this workshop might not be suitable for you. You hold the right to take part to whatever extent feels right for you.

You will have an opportunity, without pressure, to read and share some of your writing with the group. I hope we might also reflect on what these stories teach us about what Love requires of us now.

Bonnie Meekums
Bonnie is a registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist with nearly fifty years’ experience, a retired member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, and a published writer of poetry, memoir and fiction. She is a member of the Society of Authors, and of Manchester and Warrington Area Meeting.