Muscle Memory
a writing prompt for you
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. 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.
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.
One of my current roles is helping with post-hurricane disaster relief in our presbytery—the regional body of churches in my denomination. Recently we gathered written reflections from clergy and lay members and put together a Lenten devotional for our area called Lament & Hope after Helene. Here’s the reflection I added, hoping that others will try out writing as a spiritual practice.
“Muscle Memory”
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High. —Psalm 92:1
My 92-year-old dad likes to print out photos and tape the letter-sized memories to various surfaces in his Florida home. On a recent trip there, I spotted a new one of my daughter and me, arms around each other, taken less than a week after Hurricane Helene. I felt a familiar squeeze of bittersweet—a tangle of grief and gratitude—and knew what to do with it. For over twenty years, I’ve been writing with a group of bereaved mothers, using our words to carry loss and the remaining threads of love, weaving them into something new. In my parents’ apartment, I began with a writing prompt my group has used with photos over the years: “In this one, you are….”
In this one, you are in my arms in the driveway. Both of us with unwashed hair, not-so-fresh clothes, and brimming eyes. It’s been six days since the hurricane. No power or water since then for either of us, but with you here, something is restored. We went 36 hours without being in touch—less than many wondering about loved ones—but too many all the same. Hugging you, I offer a silent prayer for those still waiting. Your apartment in Asheville is dry, but neighbors two buildings over lost everything. Your car is packed with clothes and supplies. You don’t know it yet, but you won’t move back for weeks, and you won’t work for months.
Your young adulthood so far has been bookended by disaster. A pandemic in college sent you home for a year. Now your first real job is on hold, the town you’ve made home is hurting, and everything again feels uncertain. Remember how we coped during that Covid year? We cooked complicated vegan food together. You shared funny memes after dinner. We hiked trails in the mountains. None of that is available a week after the storm. Cooking means opening cans and firing up the camp stove with our dwindling supply of propane. Memes will have to wait until we can charge our phones. The trails are all closed.
But we have muscle memory of resilience. We know how to grieve and grow at the same time. We know what it means to be resurrection people. When we let go of each other, you will tell me about meeting your neighbors. How everyone pulled out their thawing food and shared it in the parking lot. How you played games with children from a few doors down, and exchanged stories and contact info with people you’d only nodded to before. I’ll tell you about the neighbors who cleared the trees on our road, and the messages already coming from churches wanting to help. We will stretch our resilience muscles again. But right now….right now….I hold you tighter, and just give thanks.
a writing prompt
Try writing your own reflection, using a photo of someone you love. In the context of Lent—with both lament and hope—consider using a photo that carries a little bittersweet with it.
Begin with the words: “In this one, you are…”.
See where the muscle memory of writing takes you.
Note: I’ve suggested this photo prompt before, using it often in my workshops, and online including here, here, and here. It’s what you might call an evergreen writing prompt: always relevant and can be used over and over again. It’s from Pat Schneider’s Writing Alone and With Others.
Some of you are carrying your own lament and hope—struggles with illness, mortality, despair, and grief into this season of Lent. We can move farther along, developing our own muscle memory together. You are welcome to join the Writing in Company writing hour on Zoom. See the invitation here: Writing Hours
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Beautiful writing Julie!
A so-simple and so-effective prompt...thank you, Julie.