Courage!

Dear Courageous Ones, courage means with heart. It's a word that fills me with strength. Taking heart, writing from my heart, thinking and acting from my heart during these difficult times... We must consider that while it feels sometimes as if the world could break apart, we also have a remedy. Not for the world and its ills, but for our own hearts. To refuse to give up, to continue to reach out through our work.

When I am truly at the brink of despair, I read. I read writers who inspire me like Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, Susan Sontag, Simone Weil and many more. Or I listen to music. Tori Amos just released a new album. Or I discover playwrights I didn't know before. Moira Buffini is blowing me away.

Why is it that those of us who can write forget that we too have the power to inspire or simply to offer them a hand-up and out of the despair of loneliness, or the feeling that no one ever felt like this or thought this way or ached like this... Put that feeling, thought and ache on the page.

I'm not talking about what you're living through - that's for your therapist and your journal. (You are always welcome to journal in Brave Space too.) But I'm talking about what you've already survived and processed. You have the power to help someone else if you can write it down. Share something of yourself. It helps.

Come be courageous with me in Brave Space!