On Birthdays, Grief, and Gratitude
a writing prompt for you
It’s a birthday week in our family.
We’ve been gratefully celebrating the birthday of our remarkable first-born language-loving, banjo-playing June-baby for 29 whole years. The birth day itself is always one of joy, and it will be again this year.
And then.
It is always followed four days later by the anniversary of the death of June’s twin, our Jack. We remember Jack’s birth and death on what we call Jack’s Day.
I’ve written before about the rollercoaster of this week in which I learned how to hold joy and sorrow both.
in 2023 about this week and my body Head, Heart, Gut, Lungs, Body
in 2024 about the shoes I bought for Jack’s funeral Worn Once.
in 2025 about another possibility Check-In from Another Timeline
Really, all my writing here stems from this one week—from who I am because of birth and death and love and loss—and then from what I learned later about how writing in the midst of grief can lead to healing.
If you’ve taken a workshop with me, or read my posts for awhile, you have heard me tell about the one-day writing workshop for bereaved mothers that changed everything for me (and for all my writing sisters.) That workshop was the brainchild of my friend and writing mentor Carol Henderson. But Carol would not have led that workshop without the gifts she learned from her friend and writing mentor Pat Schneider.
This week is also Pat’s birthday. The organization she founded, Amherst Writers & Artists, trained Carol to lead workshops, and later trained me. This week AWA sent out an email inviting those of us who have been grateful recipients of Pat’s wisdom to give thanks for what we learned from her.
For so many of us, Pat changed not only the way we write, but the way we listen, witness, and understand ourselves and one another.
“If only Pat were here to see this,” is a phrase often heard in gatherings of longtime AWA leaders and writers. And in many ways, she is. She’s here when a writer sits down unsure if they belong and discovers they do. She’s here when someone risks telling the story they thought they could never tell. She’s here when a circle gathers and someone says,
Take the time you need. Write what wants to be written.
We remember Pat often. And today especially, we feel gratitude for the life she lived, the wisdom she shared, and the countless voices she helped usher into the world.
If you have ever written in a workshop with me, or to one of my prompts shared here, yours has been a voice that Pat Schneider helped usher into the world.
As I walk through another wonderful and complicated birthday week with the mix of joy, sorrow, grief, and gratitude that comes along with it, I continue to give thanks for the legacy of Pat Schneider, whose work showed me a way through. I hope you will too.
a writing prompt
Following AWA’s suggestion, choose a line from one of Pat’s poems, below, as a way to begin. Keep your pen moving and write what wants to be written.
I won’t go back there this time…
Rain moves over the garden…
Here I cross a river…
I am still a long way from home…
Blessing for a Writer —Pat Schneider May you hear in your own stories the moan of wind around the corners of half-forgotten houses and the silence in rooms you remember. May you hear in your own poems the rhythms of the cosmos, the sun, the moon and the stars rising out of the sea and returning to it. May you, too, pull darkness out of light and light out of darkness. May you hear in your own voice the laughter of water falling over stones. May you hear in your own writing the strangeness, the surprise of mystery, the presence of ancestors, spirits, voices buried in the cells of your body. May you have the courage to honour your own first language, the music of those whose lives inhabit your own. May you tell the truth and do no harm. May you dare in your own words to touch the broken heart of the world. May your passion for peace and justice be wise: remember – No one can argue with story. May you study your craft as you would study a new friend or a long time, much loved lover. And all the while, lost though you may be in the forest, drop your own words on the path like pebbles and write your way home.
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Welcome to Writing in Company! This is a community for you, whatever your experience with writing. It’s an invitation to write about what matters—grief, gratitude, grace, and more. In an off-kilter world, using our words can help us stay centered and move toward healing and wholeness. Writing in company with others saved me once. Let’s keep writing now, alone and together, and trust our words to help us see and say what matters.
Each week I share some ideas and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft a writing project, as prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. If this one doesn’t resonate, look back through the archive for more. Clicking the heart to like this post helps keep my writing prompts visible and my own writer’s heart grateful.
Thank you so much, Julie.