JoCoWrites

By Maggie Mosher

Writing gave me a treasured family and helped me reach an age I was told I'd never reach. Countless doctors' appointments, hospital stays, and surgeries later- I’m still here. Through this journey, writing brought me to Turning Point, the Center for Hope and Healing, where I met people who knew what it was like to never know what tomorrow would bring. At Turning Point, I met friends that became family and changed my life.

We are all going through something difficult, something that is hard to express, and even harder to live. Going through it with someone and sharing this journey through poetry, plays, and children's books has given me a hope to hold onto that I didn't even know I needed. Hearing the writings of others helped me feel less alone in the struggle.

I started writing before I started talking. I was shy, so, until I was 6, my sister spoke for me. The first poem I wrote was in Kindergarten. I remember my teacher reading my poetry and crying, and I still remember thinking I couldn't tell her how she made me feel, but I could show her in my writing. It was a fantastic feeling to know you could speak to someone else's heart. I had forgotten about the power writing had until it led me to my Turning Point family. They helped me see I had something important to say and that my words could carry on a conversation with the world- allow my heart to embrace another's. I am forever grateful to writing for this blessing.

By Alice Carroll

Writing years later in a fictionalized play I was able to examine a heart wrenching ego destroying divorce in a humorous scenario. After 25 years as a wife I was cast aside. Rejected and harshly evaluated by my husband. My two children were in college. I was alone, but not for long.The Greek tragedy opened an entire new world, it was gradual. I found my new self when I wasn't looking. My play, “ Marsha's Mess” was my break out look at personalities in a wacky fantasy. It had a dramatic reading by Rockhurst students once it won the workshop. It was a play of 30 minutes. I was urged to add more and did. Perhpas it's time to return.

By Shannon Janssen

Plain and simple, writing (specifically poetry) has helped me through alot the best descriptor though is a comparison look at two completley different poems I have written. The first, Toy Robot, was written in 2017. I was struggling with a lot of different things and my mental health was not the best and writing gave me a voice that I often felt I didn't have or at least didn't use properly. This is Toy Robot:

I am sick of needing this fuel Drop the coins in And watch me come to life Playing the rehearsed lines That I have spent years of my time Memorizing and adapting Word by word Line by line I am just a little puppet Playing a role in the show called life Being held up by a single string I am tired of needing this life support Choke them down Then brighten up And you’ll be feeling quite new Just tossed around, maybe you’ll be found By another handful of coins

Because I am just a little toy robot Wind me up Watch me smile and wave Then watch as I fade away Just as fast as I shut down You go and wind me up again I prance around with that fake smile Why don’t you watch me And this time just stay for a while

I am shutting down And closing up My breath cannot escape me My eyes are shut My hands unclutch And now my breath is fading But there you go again Winding me up I open up But this time I am not there

My mind has gone away And this time it will stay that way You try to communicate But all I see is a smile waving Colors fading to gray You keep trying By twisting me Adding a few coins But now your voice is just a sound No words can save me now I am too far lost to see What effect this has on me

Nothing worth keeping can stay I will just destroy it in my haze While you keep trying With different coins and tokens Big and small Bronze and gold But nothing seems to work

It is because I am sick and tired If being spoonfed this life Of having to rely On these coins To stay alive That’s why my mind is gone It doesn’t want to be A well-oiled, Coin-fed and operated Machine It doesn’t want to be another puppet In the show

My mind wants to be A self-functioning independant thing That can make it’s own Choices of when to start and stop You keep saying that part of me Isn’t me But what isn’t me Are the coins you keep dropping in

Fast forward to a few days ago, I was feeling extremely happy and I am really content with life right now. I wrote this untitled poem about feeling in the moment, something I would have never ever thought I would feel back in 2017.

I'm not broken anymore I can see some light and all of the stars But here's what's tearing me apart This way of living life I don't want it anymore I've seen the pain I've seen the laughs The smiles and the sad But that's not my motivation anymore I don't want it anymore I don't WANT that anymore That crawling feeling up my skin That realization of I don't know what's what Who's who And where I've been But let me try and begin They always say What's new and how's life been But like I said that motivation Isn't working anymore It's not what i am searching for But thats okay Because my questions They find answers in ways That I didn't even know Were tangible Reachable Thinkable Touchable No I didn't know that any of this was possible and i'm sure that shows But now I know the gears are turning My brain is finally working And if you don't know what im saying then I don't know what you're thinking Because everything seems close now Like I could reach out And touch the clouds And as far-fetched as that may seem The only thing I have to tell you is I've got all the questions But don't need all of the answers now Because they're all around And lets just say it's crazy how You say an idea and then it is made Guaranteed to be saved And time seems frozen Like the minute doesn’t matter because it's all happening right here right now

You can really see the change between the poems not only in writing style but tone and mood too. Writing gave me a way to express myself in a safe space and it shows me continually how I have grown.

By Marcia Hurlow

I don't write with the intent to deal with something in my life. Instead, an image or a phrase or a sound calls me to write. Then in the process of writing, I discover an idea or event that I wanted to understand will emerge. Writing freely lets me make discoveries and associations that often surprise me, and sometimes those discoveries are about concerns that I was trying to avoid. An example I mentioned last year at the conference was the poem that won one of the library's contests, “Maps”. When my mother was in the last stages of Alzheimer's, she told me that on the way to France, she and Dad had stopped at Heathrow, just to be able to say she had been in England. The phrase that she had landed just to say she'd been there stuck with me. The little phrase had its own music. Also, she had never travelled outside of North America, which developed into the poem in a spare hour I had in a coffee shop to avoid thinking about being her caretaker.

By Becky Carleton

I was able to heal from the trauma of childhood sexual abuse by writing a blog about my experiences. What was once a shameful secret became something that empowered me to connect with other people who read my blog and shared their #metoo stories with me. Writing, and sharing what I've written with others, has helped my mental health far more than any costly long-term psychotherapy, and it has taught me that I am not alone in the world.

By Andy Rowe

How Has Writing Helped You Through Difficult Times?

I can't actually say that writing has helped me through difficult times. I've had my share of difficult times: a too-long and fractious marriage; financial hardship; cancer; starting over too many times—you know, the kind of life-dumps that life picks and chooses for us from that cosmic Menu o’ Trials And Tribulations.

But writing never helped me through it. I mean, it did in the sense that through most of those troubles I made my living as a business writer and instructional designer (training manuals, curricula, software documentation, knowledge base management, that kind of thing) but it certainly wasn’t the kind of soul-saving process that I think this prompt is supposed to be about. It was a job, a craft: one I learned well, but really, just something I was good at that paid the bills.

But I had a problem. I had always wanted to write fiction. Science fiction. I wanted to write just like those guys that wrote the stories that thrilled me and brought me so much pleasure.

So I tried to write just like those guys, but damn! if it wasn’t hard. Really, really hard. It was like shoveling snow; you start easy, sliding the broad shovel through the feathery flakes, but as those lovely little flakes pile up the shovel gets harder and harder to push, until finally it’s just too much and you stop, panting, cursing, and wondering why you didn’t pay that kid who needed the money and would’ve done it for ten bucks. I've got better things to do.

Like shoveling snow, starting a story was easy, but as the words piled up they too got harder and harder to push, until finally I had an unworkable pile of meaninglessness and I would give up before I gave myself a metaphorical heart attack (panting and cursing sometimes included). The only thing to do with those bad false starts was the same as I did with the snow—heave ‘em over to the side and forget about the whole thing. I've got better things to do. And I got on with my life, difficult times and all.

Then, I retired. I have never for one minute wished I hadn't—retirement is terrific and I highly recommend it. It’s terrific because while I am just as busy in retirement as I was as a working stiff, I’m busy doing pretty much what I want to do, when I want to do it. Which means, among other things, that now I have time to figure out what to with those dirty snowbanks of ugly, iced-over, exhaust-smeared, half-melted-into-solidified-muck piles of useless words; hack away at them and keep hacking away at them until I have something someone might actually want to read.

It’s still hard, just as hard as it always has been. The difference in retirement, though, is that now I have time, time to push through the pile, take a deep breath, pant and curse but get the words on the damn page. That’s the hard part, I discovered (me and only about a billion other wannabe writers). Just get the words on the page. Just write.

Once I did get the words on the page, though, I found that 25 years as an instructional designer is exactly the kind of training I needed to push and shove and polish those words. It’s called re-writing and it’s hard too but not as hard as writing, and it works! I actually finished a couple of stories. I won a writing contest at the library. I got some good feedback from some good writers.

I became a writing tutor at Cowley County Community College and then Johnson County Community College. I volunteer at the library, helping others with grammar and punctuation, and now a big part of my life revolves around writing, and writers, and readers, and teachers, and artists, and art, and it’s really kind of great.

I found, after half a century of trying to write something worth reading that I have something to say. I really do have better things to do.

So writing hasn’t really helped me through difficult times (except to pay the bills). Writing has instead done something for me that’s just as valuable, I think. It has made this new (and probably last) chapter of my life something…something really good. I’m not a Writer, with a capital W, not yet, and I may never be. But after all those decades, I can see it as a possibility; it could happen, someday. Maybe it won't, but it could.

And surprisingly enough, that’s enough.

By Laurel Morgan

Going Home

We had been going to the doctors a long time. It seemed there was always a different problem and always another medication, but something was not right. I would wake up sore and tired. I hadn't peed on my myself, but it had seemed like I had a seizure. It was lonely. I felt entirely alone trying to convince my doctors that there was something more wrong with me than what they were trying to address which was depression and panic attacks. I knew there was something more wrong because I felt so sore even when I had not been working out. It was mainly my entire hips and butt were so sore. I felt uneasy because my life revolved around going to the doctors. Fortunately, I was writing. I was journaling and writing poetry. Now I was trying to get the doctors to believe I was having seizures. Writing seemed to help me put my social situations into place. I wrote about all the things my family tried to help me with and how I frequently faced social discriminatory situations. I wrote about my diet and side-effects to medications. We were also doing art classes together.

I had also tried to bring family members who had remembered I had had seizures when I was a baby. While we were in St. Louis and I was about three to six months old my mother found me bluish and not breathing and taken me to the ER in downtown St. Louis at St. Mary’s Hospital. My Mother was an RN. Many years later, I had had a roommate tell me she had seen me shaking in my sleep. I had told my doctors who gave me a seizure test. Apparently, the doctor did not see any sign of seizures. I was taking medications which were anti-convulsant, but for mood disorder. But those medications had changed which was helpful to not be on unnecessary medications. It was years later; I had found myself waking up soaking wet. I was fully clothed. I often slept in my exercise clothes, but I had gone to sleep in my jeans and top. Then, I woke up the following morning with burns on my face and chipped teeth. This was all disturbing. What was going on? (Epilepsy.) I had no memory of what had happened. I pieced together there was a Bic lighter and I was a light smoker. I had apparently tried to light a cigarette in a sleep walking state. We went to the doctors in hopes of finding some answers and solutions. The doctors wanted a full interview with several family members and me. We decided to set-up a time where I would go into the hospital and do a sleep study for six days. After the six days, the videos showed I had been sleeping walking and talking and experiencing seizures in deep sleep states. I was diagnosed with epilepsy. This was relief because now we could treat the problem. My doctors prescribed medications and strictly warned me no driving for six months. I always followed their advice. Writing about diet and side-effects was important. I also found supplements to help my bones because anti-convulsant medications can be hard on the skeletal system. Years earlier I had been on several different kinds of anti-convulsant used to treat mood disorder which is a different dosage. I found I needed to learn more about my own seizures and Epilepsy to be able to tell my doctors important information for my help. Writing helped me while working with a psychologist where I shared my journal work. It helped me while I went through a difficult period. Journaling and writing are a great form of therapy and helped gain clarity.

During the six months of no driving, I worked on artwork. I painted and drew pictures and did writing. It was a time for therapy and writing and artwork were tools I thought of as precious as medications. I did not have a dog, but I walked to the local park. Gradually the loneliness faded. As I continued to work with art and writing, I found higher.Edu and networking. Disability is hard work. Writing about my experience with disability helped me get healthier and see what I wanted to change.

By Annie Newcomer

Annie Newcomer

When I was seventeen my brilliant father who I had always seen as omnipotent had an accident. Life changed for my large family in ways none of us had ever anticipated. I guess that we didn’t consider that kryptonite actually existed. So at a rather young age, Life became for me a series of lessons in survival. Writing or reading poetry was unfortunately the last thing on my list. Working a string of jobs and dealing with the mundane reality of day-to-day needs occupied the full of me.

Ten years ago, I lost another incredible member of my family too soon. He was a professor at University College London, beloved by his students and his academic community. He, not I, understood and loved poetry. Since I never imagined that I would have the literary chops to pen a book, and as I remembered a very short poem by Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” I determined that I would write a poem in my brother’s honor. After all, how difficult could it be to write a simple “short” poem?

Anyone could do that, I reasoned. A hard fact I encountered was this: anyone can, indeed, write a poem but not everyone can write a “good” poem.

I find myself, searching for ways to learn the craft of poetry and a longing to feel competent in the writers’ world. Since now I live in Kansas, I liken my experience to the famous children’s story, The Wizard of Oz. I have met some wonderful poets on my yellow brick road. However, I have also bumped into the Wicked Witch of the West a time or two.

The unexpected pleasure of writing for me has been the way a poem can resolve certain aspects of my past as well as help me to be curious for the future. At the school Cristo Rey, the motto the students say each day before they began classes is “Look forward to the good that is yet to be.” I think this is how I like to see poetry, a melding of my hands and mind creating words that help me to become my best self.

By Sue Maden

Sometimes you just need to imagine your life could be different. Sometimes you need to rewrite a traumatic experience to put yourself back in the driver’s seat. This is what writing has done for me. For years I’d been hobby writing a novel about a young woman experiencing near-crippling self-doubt. Though I loved the theme, the draft was full of first-time writer mistakes: too many characters, too much description, more telling than showing. Writing it was fun though. More than that, writing became the thing I did to escape for an hour at a time from a relationship that had become strained.

There had been signs for years that things weren’t right. I ignored them. I dismissed them. I stuffed them. I excused them. Then, after coming home from work on a cold day in February and finding our home turned into what can best be described as something akin to a scene from Homeland or A Beautiful Mind, I could no longer ignore it. What I’d been doing was coping; not seeing what was in front of me until that day. It was how I got myself to work every day and supported my family and friends as best I could.

Cut to late March. The trees were in bud, the days were milder, and I was living in an apartment on my own. I hadn’t written a word in months. I’d spent the time learning to focus on my needs and caring for myself. One day I opened my laptop and started journaling. It was a way to process my feelings that felt productive. It felt great so I kept up a regular journaling habit.

A couple months later while sitting in a coffee shop, I was struck with a thought of writing a character that was going through what I’d been through. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I changed the names of the husband and wife and wrote in the third person, but it was my story. It was the events that rocked and reshaped my world. It felt great. While writing I felt powerful. Though in real life I couldn’t change what had already happened, on the page I was in control of what happened next.

In July I found myself rereading the draft of my novel. I still loved the main character. I still identified with her struggles in self-doubt and thought her story worth sharing. I’m looking forward to learning more about the craft of writing, finding a group I can connect with, get feedback from, and to finally finishing writing this in a way that will do the story justice.

Writing has given me my voice back. Through this difficult, traumatic time, it’s given me a way to reimagine what could be, and for that I’m grateful.

By Linda A. Powell

A Purpose by Linda A. Powell

We carelessly squander and aimlessly ponder the significance of life as it passes us by. With scant concentration and meek motivation we search for fulfillment but find nothing there. What good are our choices, our vision, our voices, if we don’t use them but lock them away? A purpose! That’s the key to joy and sanity or darkness swoops in and the sun doesn’t shine.

That’s why I write… I’m a little afraid of the dark!