Writing the Garden of Your Life
An Online Class Feb. 11 - Mar. 23
Come write about the garden of your life: what you've lived, created, nurtured, and discovered throughout your years and seasons. The garden -- as well as the river and the road -- are universal symbols that help us understand who and where we are. Gardens especially speak to our capacity to plant, tend, and harvest what brings us and others purpose, beauty, nourishment, and sustenance.
In this fertile workshop, we'll create a community garden of writing and creativity while feeding our own writing practice (all genres welcome) through online lessons, reflections, sources and resources, and lots of vibrant writing prompts and discussion you can do on your time each week. You'll find ample support and guidance through encouraging responses to your writing from Caryn and peers, two Zoom sessions, and a mini-coaching session with Caryn.
We'll also bring new perspective to the wild weather and upheavals of creating meaning on and beyond the page. Through the magic and practice of writing, we'll explore what's ready, ripe, and verdant in our lives and how best to tend the writing and life we're called to live.
The Garden of Our Lives
“The garden is one of the two great metaphors [along with the river] for humanity. The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things. The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe.....And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is. Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time. And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph. And then everything dies anyway, right? But you just keep doing it.”
~ Anne Lamott, from Bird by Bird
Who Is This Class For?
This workshop meets you where you are, whether you're just getting started, returning to writing after a stretch, or looking for renewed inspiration to generate new writing. It's also open to people wanting to create poetry or creative non-fiction (such as memoir, essays, etc.). Feel free to write poems or stories about what you're perceiving in and around you. This class is a springboard for writers of all stripes and spots looking for new ways into their words. If you have questions, please email me here.
Week by Week
Feb. 10-16: Week 1: Preparing the Ground: Understanding the ground of our lives -- where we started, how we evolved, and what conditions and forces of nature shaped us -- gives us great capacity to draw strength and stories from our roots. We'll write about our roots and what we need to prepare the ground of our writing and resilience. Note: Our introductory Zoom session (an opportunity to get to know each other and do a little writing together) is Tues., Feb. 11 for an hour beginning at 8 p.m. ET/ 7 p.m. CT/ 6 p.m. MT/ 5 p.m. PT.
Feb. 17-23: Week 2: Starting Seeds: Seeds hold the energy of our callings and visions, sometimes in the form of the yearnings, drives, and pulls toward what we want to both write and live. This week, we'll explore how we've held space for ourselves and others and how others held space for us to find our way to send out taproots. We'll experience with ways to generate seeds of ideas, lines, stories, and more.
Feb. 24 - Mar. 2: Week 3: Planting: By considering what we've created, nurtured, and discovered in our lives, we can better attune to what we're called to plant now. We'll write about the astute, uncertain, wild, and surprising choices we made or that were made for us and what grew out of all this. We'll look at what conditions best allowed us to to find our way home to our true nature, and we'll play with strategies for planting words on the page.
Mar. 3-9: Week 4: Composting & Weeding: We often find growth and life through the compost of life (the disgards that actually engender new life) as well as discerning what to let go out and how to weed out what no longer serves us, especially when it comes to our own stories about ourselves. We'll also look at how to compost and weed our own writing.
Mar. 10-16: Week 5: Fending Off Pests & Storms: Life and writing are highly vulnerable to pests (bothersome or invasive others, often in human form, who hinder us) and storms (upheavals that culminate in throwing us out or changing of the story we thought we were living). This week, we'll investigate what we can learn about protecting our creative lives and imaginative selves as well as occasional wonders and courageous learnings in surrendering to what's next. We'll also discuss how and when to protect our writing while surrendering to the what the writing wants to be.
Mar. 17-23: Week 6: Harvesting & Putting the Garden to Bed: Let's celebrate the harvest of what flowers and fruit our lives and writing have given to us and to others and what we're looking to harves tin the future. We'll also talk about putting the garden to bed: taking breaks, letting our fields go fallow, and finding restful replenishment. Note: Our concluding Zoom session (a chance to celebrate each other and what we created) is Tues., Mar. 25 for an hour beginning at 8 p.m. ET/ 7 p.m. CT/ 6 p.m. MT/ 5 p.m. PT.
Class Ingredients
Each week, we'll engage online on a very accessible site called Wet Ink (a platform especially designed for writing classes), where you will read, listen, reflect, then share your new writing inspired by weekly prompts and your positive responses to each others' writing. Each week online includes:
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Introduction to This Week's Focus
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The Writer in the Field: Read a little essay followed by a discussion question
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Weekly Prompts: Choose from 4-5 writing prompts to spark new writing.
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Visiting Writer: Read, watch, and listen to a featured writer who explores home and homecoming.
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The Care & Feeding of the Writer: Self-care to help you nourish your creative soul.
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Sources and Resources: Craft lessons and resources to further develop your writing.
The class includes two hour-long Zoom sessions from on Tuesdays Feb. 11 and Mar. 25, 7-8 p.m. CT/ 8-9 p.m. ET/ 6-7 p.m. MT/ 5-6 p.m.
You'll also have a one-on-one 20-minute coaching session with Caryn.
Registration
Early Bird rate: $290 until 1/15/25 (regular price: $320).
You can register by:
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Venmo (Caryn-Goldberg-2, and please email Caryn so she has your contract info.),
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Check (email Caryn for details), or through
Cancellation Policy: Full refund minus $30 handling fee for all cancellations six weeks before start of the class. One-half refund for cancellations three weeks before the class begins. No refunds within three weeks of the class, but if there are extenuating circumstances (hospitalization, death in the family, etc.), please contact me about a credit for future classes.
Testimonials About Caryn's Classes
I have fallen in love with your writing instruction within the last year. You make us all feel fulfilled and artistic in our striving to express ourselves. Your class has, indeed, saved some lives! ~ Georgia Copeland
As a once upon a time educator before my disability, I recognize superlative teaching. And I just want to say that your handout, the poems you chose, the prompts, the way you hold space for your students, and the rhythm of the workshop you offered all demonstrated that you are a top-notch teacher. Your kindness and understanding were like a salve to my hurting and struggling writer self. And I just want to say that aside from your mastery of teaching, who you are shines loving kindness into the dark and difficult spaces. ~ Marya Summers
Caryn’s skill, talent, wit, and wisdom have shown me the way to begin writing again, which is a restorative healing process. Caryn has taught me to reach deep within and unabashedly, without apology or shame, to tell my own story. ~ Julie Flora
After each class I recognize the peaceful place the class creates in me. My response to listening to others and hearing your responses to our work fills me with contentment, joy ,and satisfaction. The level of trust that we experience opens us to heartfelt honesty even as deeply painful experiences are shared. Thank you for the sparks your words create. ~ Patricia Durkin
You are truly one of the best facilitators I’ve ever seen, and your ability to create a safe space for all of us is so magical. ~ Beverly Stewart
Having taken several classes with Caryn, I find her expertise and thoughtful critique helpful to my writing. She is a teacher I want to continue studying with, and I am grateful for her work. ~ Jan Stanton
I have taken three online classes with Caryn and have enjoyed them very much. She encourages a very positive online community atmosphere, provides an inspirational variety of readings and writing prompts, and gives useful and supportive feedback on student writing. ~ Anne Marvin
Caryn’s workshops provides both hope and a distraction from the issues of those suffering. ~ John L. Swainston
I found the course to be a gentle invitation to probe one’s life experiences and bring them to the present in a nurturing and kindly way. I especially liked how the course was structured from the immediate to the universal and opportunities for growth. Readings were relevant and inspiring, and it was refreshing to interact with the other participants. ~ Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Caryn provides a wealth of material for her students, introducing us to a variety of poets and poems. Her teaching style is generous and nurturing. ~ Ruth McArthur
I was not expecting your course to change my life, but I was very eager to have the immersion now in more poetry, as well as a structure (which I need) to start up writing again. I also appreciated your very inclusive approach to teaching online, including acknowledgement that people could engage with the material at any level they wished, up what you called “living in it.” ~ Jan Hitchcock
