A comment regarding "Welcome to A Write to Heal, Inc....", an entry at Power in Words, was written at 5/21/2008 1:40:47 PM.
Hello All, First I would like to introduce myself before I start my blog. My name is Georgia Dougherty and I have been working with victims of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault for 5 years. I attended a training given by Lisa at NJCBW. Lisa had asked us to write something. I honestly thought I was going to write about my own personal story but than she made a comment and said I want you to "Just Be" and as a person who is always in her head I thought that was going to be hard for me, but I gave it a try and I was very surprised what came out. I actually did not write about DV or any of my experiences with DV. Than I realized that I was just being. I was not a social worker, I was not a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a victim or even a survivor I was just being Georgia. So I thought I would share my writing. Now many of you may find my topic funny considering how I am sharing it with you but I hope you enjoy it. And remember as Lisa says "Just BE". "Well I have never been a person that can "just Be" as Lisa Regina said in her instructions. This is actually strange to sit here and write because in this day and age who takes a pen to a piece of paper and writes down how they are feeling or even to do a to do list. We use our keyboards and we blog about it or we text. We have blackberry's to take our schedule and reminders on our phones. I just thought about something "Oh my God what about spell check!" I never even kept a diary or journal as a kid. I kept all my feelings inside and than would explode with emotion in some heated argument with one of my sisters or my mother. It is very weird that you have us doing this exercise because before I left the office to attend this training I was speaking with a co-worker who had asked me about the price increase in stamps and when I said I had no idea she was very surprised because the joke in the office is that I know everything, guess I proved them wrong. Anyway I continued to talk to her and told her that my generation knows nothing about letter writing. We are the generation of the Jetson's and our communication is through the digital highway. We both laughed but I could not believe it she was actually sending letters and birthday cards. Who does that anymore? You can just go to e-card and send any kind of card you want and even go to evite and invite people to party and even weddings. God my hands hurt if I had been typing I would have been done by now. Now, I do type like 60wpm, but I can say what I am writing does feel more personal. I am bent over my desk and writing my thoughts where if I was sitting in front of the computer I would be more than an arm length away. I think that will be my message for this piece. That even though technology has made life much easier, I think we have lost the personal touch of writing and maybe as a society we should realize that just because we blog it the message will not be as personal as picking up your pen and putting it to the paper.
Additional comments about the presentation:
This was by far the best training session I’ve attended since I began my certification as a writer and performer myself, I was truly inspired; Excellent Presentation!!; Powerful and empowering to see someone who suffered and to bring her story to others; Excellent presentation. I loved it!!; The training was excellent!! Just excellent!; Great writing exercise; In general I would appreciate if there is a training that will involve us getting very personal to have some kind of advance “warning” so I could be prepared for it; Very inspiring and touching; This presentation was so moving. Thank-you; Thank you for sharing such a powerful tool for the work we do; More practical instruction on journal writing process would be helpful. Thanks for sharing your story; I very much enjoyed the presentation; Excellent – the best so far. I learned so much she is a true advocate. Will use the writing tool with my groups; It was good to see how the writing is incorporated into the field of DV; Would prefer more exercise for audience participation type exercises; She made a point in the beginning about everyone knows how to read and write and that is not the time but I think you could still do the exercise with people with limited literacy skills;
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