A WOMAN WITHIN A WOMAN WITHIN A WOMAN...
Why we MUST keep writing and searching for the right words (despite this chaos). Plus: my waitlist is open! How to work with me 1:1 in FORTRESS.
Hi everyone! A warm welcome to all the new readers, I’m so psyched you’re here, however it works for you. PS, for the writers and writer-curious: I’m opening my waitlist. After the essay, you’ll find details on how to write with me 1:1. I have two spots opening up that will fill fast, let’s hop on a call. And now for this week’s offering…Please keep going, and here’s why… xx Alexa
A woman within a woman within a woman…
Last week, my phone was ringing more than usual. I use Voxer, a voice and messaging app, to support the writers I work with, and just about every single one of them was reaching out with the same question:
What’s the point of writing when everything feels crazy / chaotic / terrible / totally out of control?
I have a lot to say on this, having written through some pretty tough times personally, but I sent along Sean Thomas Doughtery’s much-Instagrammed wisp of a poem instead:
Why Bother?
Because right now there is someone
Out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.
How I love that little poem.
It makes me think of finding a favorite spot alongside your lover in the dark, or how my rescue poodle, Oscar Wilding, chases his tail, spinning in place like a GPS recalculating its route, until he lands in the perfect spot to rest.
The world is spinning. And we are spinning within the spinning.
I’m reminded of those stackable Russian dolls…
A woman within a woman within a woman.
But reader:
This is when we MUST write / make art / do what we do…
To show the crisis, the emergency, that it will neither define nor eclipse us.
And when we can’t find expression, we must straighten our antennae and LOOK for the words / images / sounds we can’t, for the life of us, find ourselves.
THIS is the ultimate form of resistance, of resilience. To just keep going. To find the words.
My phone went silent.
I could feel my writers’ breathing slowing down.
My breathing slowed down, too.
I found the woman within the woman within the woman…
I was still there.
Sometimes, just a few lines can pull us off a cliff, whether they’re our own words or a chance encounter with the words we didn’t know we needed.
It’s hard to wake up some mornings. But what gets me out of bed is the wonder of whether today is the day I might find those words…
And when I do, how could I not share them?
A MEDITATION
May we find the words in the exact shape of our wounds... and may those words reach whoever needs to hear them.
Please share a poem, a lyric, or SOMETHING that touched your heart. It might be your words, or words that found you. Please know that in sharing, you’re being of service. What a win-win, if there ever was one…
Sending love,
xx Alexa
Write with me 1:1 for 3 months in FORTRESS…
Sometimes you need more than a room of your own (if you’re lucky enough to have one!). You need a fortress, and I’ll guard the door…
I’m opening my waitlist, and I have 2 spots available to work with me 1:1. These will fill fast, so let’s hop on a call!
After teaching workshops for years, I decided in 2024 to mentor writers more intimately, as a 'writing doula' of sorts. This work has completely changed my life—and, dare I say, the lives of others, too. I offer a protected space (and bespoke guidance) to help you write that book, poem, or essay, or simply establish a writing practice that sticks. We write, we breathe, we read, we marvel at the world…
I am literally in your pocket.
I’m proud to share that I’ve worked with writers from all over the world and from all walks of life, and that, as of writing this, all of them have continued on after the first three months. (You can read testimonials here).
You can read more about it here, and let’s hop on a free 30-min call to see if this is the right fit. Your reading of these words tells me the answer is probably yes :)
Please share with any one in your life who might be interested, too!
Thank you friends…I’m here if you’re looking to find the words…and reclaim the “I” amidst all this chaos.
May our words, our stories, be of service.
May we remember who we are.
xx Alexa
"More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs – all this resinous, unretractable earth."
A poem by Jane Hirshfield
I always go back to a phrase from Brene’ Brown. “Don’t shrink. Don’t puff up. Stand your sacred ground.” It soothes me, reminds me that I am enough and that my words/thoughts matter.