It came out of nowhere. 
What was it this time? 
It hasn’t been so fair.
Also ended feeling confined. 
Or maybe it’s just this time,
That is the source I find. 
I’m still not sure of where,
Or who, or what or how. 
Though I struggle with the insincere
I’m bracing for what’s coming now. 
Come out of nowhere already, 
Come out and seek what you find. 
I wouldn’t say yet that I’m ready,
But yet I still showed up somehow.
Are you going to show up? 

Shit! Ya, no - 

I wasn’t ready after all. 

Not at all.

One second I’m standing in the musk of the basement dropping a shirt into the dirty pile, as it snaps…This is not the me, I want anymore… instantly my bare feet are in cold wet grass then slapping leaf covered pavement. All the way to the sticky sand littering the beach. The cold of the water rushes around me. It's rough. I turn to push against the waves.  Fighting the waves to get where my feet no longer touch, beyond where I can touch and feel…this.

Cold lake water fills my mouth as the waves spin me over and over and over… Blacking Out I feel the sharpness of the breakwater’s rocks beating me. Flogging me… I guess the ocean didn’t want me today. … Bloodied I lay there… Well I guess that happened.

Place the embers

cooled and ready

Ring the quiet in

List the ways you need and wany

and yes

I will listen to you

dear one

Wonder from the clothed fortress

naked on the inside

Sing the wandering feather’s

promise

Just reach out from the

kitchen table

set for a hopeful two

Bless me and bring Amen

Hi, Everyone!

For the past year, WFR has been working with Scrag Mountain Music and Vermont Network to help new moms write amazing lullabies for their children and grandchildren. Now it’s showtime! Please join us on September 22 at 5:30 PM at the Capital City Grange in Berlin, Vermont for a community art project and lullaby concert. All the details are below. Don’t miss this amazing FREE concert. Advance reservations are encouraged at www.scragmountainmusic.org.

Gary

Friday, September 22, 2023

Capital City Grange

6612 VT Route 12 Berlin, VT 05602

5:30 – 6:30 pm & post-concert: Community Art Project

6:30 pm~: Concert

(Marshfield, VT, August 14, 2022) – Scrag Mountain Music, together with Healing Together, a project of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and Writers for Recovery present Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert, a program of beautiful and heartwarming songs created with moms and caretakers in our community through the Lullaby Project. The celebratory event also includes a special community art project for all ages. This concert marks the culmination of four Lullaby Project workshops held this year together with Vermont Network advocacy partners Umbrella, Inc., Voices Against Violence,

Outright Vermont, Kids-A-Part (a program of LUND), and DIVAS (a program of The Network). Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert is on Friday, September 22 at 5:30 pm (community art project) and 6:30 pm (concert) at the Capital City Grange 6612 VT Route 12 Berlin, VT 05602. . This concert is free of charge with advanced reservations encouraged at www.scragmountainmusic.org.

Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert showcases a dozen or more new lullabies created in our community this year, performed by a band of esteemed musicians including: Mary Bonhag (soprano), Evan Premo (double bass), Marianne Donahue Perchlik (guitar, Celtic harp, vocals), David Ruffin (vocals), Colin McCaffrey (guitar, mandolin, fiddle), and Andric Severance (piano). Before and immediately following the concert, audience members will have the opportunity to participate in a special community art project inspired by the original lyrics of these lullabies.

“Self Portrait” by Idle

Montpelier was seriously knocked down by the July flood. But if you travel there now through September 22, 2023, you can view a wonderful exhibit of art created by incarcerated people in the West Virginia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Inside Out: IncARceraTion features drawings, paintings sculptures and other art created by incarcerated folks, along with audio narration by a young man (and current Goddard College student) who was formerly incarcerated there. Beautiful, emotion, and stark in their truth, the pieces presented provide an often lacking insight into the nature of incarceration and the people who live it, as well as the ability of creative expression to improve incarcerated peoples’s circumstances.

Be sure to see this important exhibit if you can. And stay tuned for collaboration between WFR and the folks who organized the exhibit!

For about the exhibit, click here.

With every step that we all take something shifts. 

In me. In them. In you. 
Sometimes we feel it. Some of us don’t. 
But every person is impacted, and something shifts in the world and in each world each person lives. 
Whether or not they feel it. 
I’m tuning in. 
I’m reconnecting and with every step, I connect deeper with myself, 
I step away and disconnect more from what I thought was important. 
And it is, in a very different way than I felt it was important. 
It’s like unconditional love that doesn’t mean unconditional tolerance, nor unconditional capacity...
Every step has taught me everything comes with limits. 
Although my love can shift with everything else, it’s a weird place to have that remain unconditional, 
but what does it really matter when it’s all dependent on the definition? 
Up to the interpretation of each and every person. 
So as I said, every step shifts something. 
Do you feel it? 
Do you even care? 
Maybe that’s what matters more. 
What do you care about? 
What’s most important? 

We are sad to share the news of the passing of longtime WFR participant Leslie Bonnette, who died on June 29, 2023 at the home she shared with her husband Thomas in Shelburne, VT.

I’m not sure, but it’s quite possible that Leslie attended our first ever official WFR workshop session at the old Turning Point in Burlington. If she didn’t, she showed up soon after, bringing a wonderful writing style, a fearless approach to the written word, and a lovely sense of kindness. Leslie participated in our very first public reading at Burlington’s ECHO center on Recovery Day in September, 2014. The people who were lucky enough to hear her were undoubtedly stunned by the beauty and intensity of work like “What I Have Recovered,” which I include below.

Leslie was a proud child of the 60s and a huge music fan. Later on, she shared some of her drawings, and I learned that she was a talented artist as well. That she did so many things so well is a testament to her personal strength; she successfully escaped an abusive relationship in her early years, and fought mightily for her recovery through a number of setbacks.

If there is one thing I will remember Leslie for, it was her crows. She told great stories about the birds who visited her and brought her gifts, no doubt because she fed them so well. Every time I saw her, I was sure to ask about the crows, and it always made her smile. I hope wherever she is now, they can find her and brighten her day. We send our condolences to Thomas and the rest of Leslie’s friends and family.

“What I Have Recovered,” by Leslie Bonnette

I have recovered

A shattering of shards

Spiritual pieces of myself

Recovered from compulsion,

Never knowing what it was

That hole so deep it was unfillable

No matter how and what I tried

I tried to recover

From the digging of that hole

I tried again and again and again

And now I feel full of awe and joy fleetingly

But I feel.

That’s what I’ve recovered.

The current took me. 
The current conditions were turbulent rapids that thrashed and splashed. 
Saturating everything in its wake.
Eroding just for eroding sake. 
Meaningless reasoning considering the substantial damage.
Waiting and braving the storm all around me. 
All these forces exerting their power over me. 
So of course I let the current take me. 
Take me away. 
Take me anywhere else but here. 

I had it locked away. 
I couldn’t use it. 
I couldn’t even access it anymore. 
It was buried and covered so deeply. 
There are still subtle vibrations and echoes, 
   when things get really still. 
But it just feels like an earthquake. 
Rumbling underneath me. 
My feet shifting and destabilizing me,
   more than I already have been,
   stumbling around from this already uneven ground. 
I shake and stir and rebalance
   in whatever contorted position is required to keep a level perspective. 
Can’t slip up. 
Not allowed to react or be affected by all of the injustices everywhere. 
It’s not safe to fix. 
It’s not safe to resolve. 
It’s not even safe to make it known or shed light on it. 
And that’s exactly why it’s been long locked away. 
                                                                                                My voice. 
She wants to change this for everyone, but it would kill us - 
   before we could truly deliver any of this healing she’s screaming for. 

“I got distracted…”

 It was raining hard as we drove through the early winter night to the show. She could barely see the lane markers as she has terrible night vision. I said she should pull over so I can drive since my eyes are ridiculously sensitive to light. As we continued on down the soaked and cold highway she put her hand on my right arm as it gripped the shifter. I could feel her warmth through the thin fabric of my hoodie. The way she rubbed my arm, gripped my thigh. We were soon pulled over on a farming back road. Collapsed upon each other. In the cramped back seat of her coupe, I wanted to stay there forever. As we held each other, I never wanted to let her go. She felt like the answer to my every physical need. I got distracted.

“It happens all the time…”

 Heart beating, nostrils flared, I could feel the warmth of my blood throughout my body, her body, welcome to now. Is this it? All you get is now. I wanted to stay in this moment with her forever, I never was one before this. Is this like singularity or something…? Happens all the time I guess.

I'm getting closer 

to good health,

to financial freedom, 

to all the promises—

but somehow I don't feel 

sane. My addiction

counselor says I'm in 

the maintenance stage 

and doesn't she know 

that maintaining my sobriety 

is scarier than literally anything 

I've ever done and I've done 

some crazy scary shit. I heard 

in a meeting last week 

that in sobriety, we have to find 

a way to feel comfortable 

with the middle ground—

when we are just a regular human 

waiting patiently in line 

at the grocery store 

to buy our 12-seed-bread

and not hiding out 

in the back seat of a stranger's 

car after stealing someone's 

wallet from a party we weren't 

even invited to. It's in the middle 

where we find serenity— not in the ups

or downs of the roller coaster life we knew.

In that middle, that maintenance stage,

it feels like 

I've flatlined.

I can barely remember the rush 

that used to keep me alive. 

I'm getting farther from that 

old version which means 

I'm getting closer to everything else.

Closer to myself 

and can you think of anything 

more terrifying?

Dear heart, 
I’m sorry. And thank you. For everything. For withstanding all of the heartache you’ve endured. For the weight you’ve carried and felt. For the neglect you experienced and withstood it all and stayed kind. You stayed warm when you were thrown nothing but shards of ice. I’ve wanted you to get hard. I’ve wanted to you turn cold. I’ve wanted to build up walls for you and guard you because we can both feel the toll you’ve taken in this life. Yet your strength is profound. You have melted everything I’ve ever started because you’ve known what I could never be sure of. You knew love was the key. The answer. The way. You know that kindness and compassion and love and support and care is what will heal us all, even if we specifically won’t live to see it all the way through. We’ve lived it enough to know it’s true, yet I still doubt it. You never have doubted it. And I appreciate you for staying true whenever I falter. You’ve saved me in all of the senses that exist. I will work with you best I can and we will save whatever we can of this mess called life. 
xo

-Desiree

__________

I Still

I still expected to hurt. I still expected to bleed. As long as I expect to keep breathing, I still expect to keep aching. I’ve ridden most expectations I’ve held of others, after falling accustomed to them falling short. That’s not what hurts me. That’s not what makes it hard to breathe. So much so it's as if every particle of oxygen instantly evaporates from all around me. 
Internally. Externally. Suddenly. Just as any spark and hope and life evaporates right along with it. Poof. Gone. Even then, the will sometimes goes away too and I’m left - not even gasping for air. No longer fighting for a chance. 

It’s a lifeless gaze with an empty stillness and a full-bodied but fragmented frozen nothingness. 

And it all just sits in this momentary wasteland. My pulse becoming the only sensation, movement, and existence that remains. The body’s rendition of the tick tock of a clock, a metaphorical timer with it’s own innate pressure and pace.
Counting itself down to breaking point. Pushing until my body kicks back in, as I learned I could expect it to. But it’s still subtle. Almost unnoticeable. 

Giving only the bare minimum because it’s already been given away and taken from. 

I’ve done so much that I can’t expect myself to be able to do it all. I’ve resuscitated so many others not so that I could expect it back. 
I can’t expect perfection. I can’t expect reciprocation. I still can't even expect respect. 

Realistically, I can’t expect much. So I still expect to hurt. 

Will you listen to me? I’m going to propose that question again. Will you listen to me? What more do I have to do? What more do I need to prove? Why can’t it be enough? Why can’t I be heard? Is it about not understanding? Is it about my tone or word choice or timing? 

You won’t listen to me so maybe if I just keep asking questions, I’ll eventually get enough answers to be able to communicate your way, and maybe, just maybe – we might be able to get somewhere with all of this. It’s getting old staying stuck here in all of this. I’m getting tired of working so hard for all of this when you don’t at all. 

Why did I want you to listen to me so badly? Not a single idea anymore, so instead, I will listen to myself. I will listen to my will to leave this behind. 

Bess and Gary are pleased and proud to announce that they and Writers for Recovery have been honored with the 2023 Jack Barry Award! The award is given at Vermont’s statewide Recovery Day each year by Recovery Vermont for excellence in recovery communication and advocacy, And the fact that the reward was presented by our friend Ed Baker, an amazing communicator and advocate (and a former winner of the Jack Barry Award) made our day doubly thrilling. Thanks so much to Recovery Vermont and everyone who has made WFR possible, including everyone who’s ever joined a group, shared a story, or support WFR through their donations. THANK YOU!!

It is with great sadness that I learned about the passing of longtime friend of WFR Pat Murray. If I remember right, Pat and her lovely wife Jen showed up at the very first WFR session at the Turning Point Recovery Center. Like everyone else, Pat was new to this writing process. But like I suspect she did throughout her life, she jumped in with enthusiasm, good humor, and kindness.

From that first session, Pat gave generously with her time, her comments on other people’s work, and by sharing her story for the benefit of others working their recoveries. Like many in recovery, she had a hard story to tell, but she also wrote lovingly about her childhood, her life with Jen, and the crazy world we all live in. She shared her work in public readings, and proved every bit as charming and good-natured onstage as she was off. And throughout her long illness, she exuded the positive outlook and the care for others that she was known for.

Pat had many friends in the recovery community, who I’m sure will miss her greatly. Bess, Deb, and I are thinking fondly of Pat, and sending our love to Jen in this hard time. Pat, thanks for making our lives better.

Here’s Pat’s “I Am From” poem, which I have shared at countless opening workshops sessions. People always enjoy it, and I hope you will, too.

I Am From

by Pat Murray

I am from Italian streets, baked bread with a hard crust and a soft center.


I am from a breezy shore, sand and sun, endless days and nights of summer. 

I am from a thousand heartaches and a hundred tears, searching for a place called home.


I am from laughter and joy and sorrow and pain and back again.


I am from a town called old fashioned and a city called wild.


I am from a long lost time forgotten in memory,

too hard to remember, too painful to forget.

Alco-logic … how my view of the world get skewed when I’m under the influence and remains into sobriety. If nothing else, jail is teaching me patience to stay present in the moment, which can be very challenging in this particular jail with three to a cell and thirty to a unit. But with the clarity of sobriety, I realize I’m very negative & angry mostly with myself and I take it out on the people closest to me. I’m furious my mom won’t bail me out. I’m furious with myself for creating such a legal mess through the use/abuse of drugs and alcohol, and yet I still want to use and think about it all the time. How could any reasonable person think that using could be a good idea in light of the consequences of what happens? And I know I would probably go use today if I got out. How fucked is that?

I’ve been thinking about when I’ll be getting out of this facility and going back home to my family. These last 2 months have been the longest 2 months of my life and I cannot wait for it to come to an end. This is also the longest time I’ve been incarcerated at a time. It feels like a nightmare that won’t come to an end. Learning how to survive in here has been the strangest thing I have had to learn. Surviving in a facility compared to surviving at home is completely fucked up and definitely different than anything I’ve had to learn as an adult.

Here and now

Free for all

Let’s come together

Join in bliss

Dessert first questions last

Why ask what kind of mask

Task in hand creating plans

We will only succeed in bringing

Ears ringing every time

Is it a sign or a trick

Which one do I stick with

Ideas short and long

It’s a power and a shower

Spittin’ facts

It’s dynamite watch me

Xplode

Well to start off, my life in jail sucks.

Nobody helping me on the outside

Makes matters so much harder

To deal with.

When I start thinking the worst in life,

I go to my kids

For support.

The always help me get through the

Tough times.

Life is an abstraction of what you

Want it to be

And if you do good, you’ll be good and the latter.

What I been thinking about is also the

Fact of the matter that

I got myself into this mess in the

First place

And you know what?

That really pisses me off.

The world is all that you make of it.

My eyes see barbed wire

But my brain sees home

That is wrong on so many levels

That is when I knew I needed

To change

I am from the wood and the water, the wind and the stars.

I am from the dim lights and the cracking balls on the slate table.

I am from the cat and mouse as playful as they may be.

I am from who’s who and invitations for dinner.

I am from broken hearts and lustful worlds.

The warnings of wrongs and the prick of a needle.

I am from family and friends and the many road signs that pass me by.

I am from the mysteries either underground or in the sky.

I am from my Mom and Dad who always helped me get by.

I am from the collection of thoughts and ideas I use to form the personality I have

That ultimately I use to explore who I am.