A List of Paradoxical Ponderings

By Raelyn Kaplan, TIWP Women’s Writing Program I backpacked alone. solo into the santa cruz redwoods for a single night of solitude. stopping here and there to admire the world through the lens of the forest. pondering as I powered through the towering trees and dark muddy earth beneath my feet. stopping here and there […]

I Want

Thoughts from a 53 year old woman, TIWP Women’s Writing Program I want to figure out my “next” purpose. I want to contribute something. I want to make sure my girls are OK. I want to learn. I want to travel. I want to have fun with my husband. I want our relationship to be […]

If You Let It In

By Elizabeth Kaur, TIWP Women’s Writing Program If you let it in, how bad would it be? Would it hurt too much? Would it remind you of the chocolates they gave you when your dad died? Would it remind you of when they told you he was traveling and that because, they said, you were […]

Guns Suck

By Melissa Quiter, TIWP Women’s Writing Program Reposted from https://momsgottawrite.com/2019/08/12/guns-suck/ I often feel paralyzed by the gun violence plaguing this country, and after last week’s grotesque number of mass shootings – in Gilroy, El Paso, Dayton, Chicago, Brooklyn, and more – I was shocked to arrive at the park to find a dad distributing toy […]

Who Am I?

By Elizabeth Kaur, TIWP Women’s Writing Program My father was born to parents who didn’t know sound, deaf mutes who found each other in the non-hearing community of 1920’s San Francisco. His Jewish father had fled Russia as The Revolution swelled, sheltered with his 16-year-old sister in the bathroom of the Trans-Siberian Express, coins for […]

I Still Stand

By Lauren M. Fahrer, TIWP Women’s Writing Program I am bent, burnt and broken. I rise. I walked this path long before you arrived. I will be here long after you go. If I could tell you all my secrets, it would frighten you. It would give you reason to doubt humanity. But most of […]

The Familiar Path

By Cathy Lambert, TIWP Women’s Writing Program Walking down that oh-so-familiar path, surrounded by familiar sounds, familiar sights and familiar smells, I hear the blue jays and woodpecker’s overhead, boat motors in the distance, the gentle rhythm of the creek whirling over the stones it’s been polishing for hundreds of years, the steady rhythmic snapping […]

The Blue Heron

By Elizabeth Kaur, TIWP Women’s Writing Program We stopped to pick up the blue heron. It was waiting for us in that California-ware shop at Duncan’s Landing, near the end of the road that leaves Guerneville, the road that hugs the Russian River, winds through coastal redwoods, past the tin hut movie house in Monte […]