Brazen Love

Few rituals in my life are more replenishing and comforting as monthly Tuesday night dinners with my writing group. Five women eating sushi, talking about our work, our families, and writing. I value this group beyond belief. Indulge me if you will on a brief walk back in time...

In 2012, I was working on my dissertation study capturing the experiences of teachers who had attended the NWP Summer Institute at FGCU. After soliciting participants, I formed a couple of focus groups to meet for the study. As fellows of NWP and teachers with a common bond, I enjoyed my data collection with these participants immensely. One of them would later become a good friend who would reach out to me asking if I would like to put together a writing group with her. Helen and I immediately set out to find others we thought might be committed to scheduling devoted writing time in their lives. She was more successful than I, and we organized a brunch meet-up to which she invited three other women who were interested. In June 2013, a group of us met as a Writing Circle to discuss our intentions and our plans. The group was born, and by July we had given ourselves a name, Trail Brazen - a play on the words trailblazing and brazen, which we believed described us.

The group is special. At its inception, it was started to support each of the members in writing pursuits, but it has become so much more. We lift each other up, problem solve our individual and group challenges, celebrate good reading and good writing, and we write, write, write. We have evolved along the way- losing one member, gaining another. But I think they would all agree with me, that we give each other the confidence and the strength to continue writing in various formats and arenas, sticking ourselves out there on occasion and experiencing our way in this world through writing. We write collectively on a blog and started an annual retreat last year in May.

Tonight was our February dinner and something really cool happened. I read an article several months back about a book club exchanging books of poetry for a holiday gift exchange. We decided to do it as a New Years celebration instead, and for various reasons it got put off until this month. We each had to bring in a wrapped book of poetry, with a book marked poem that we picked out as a favorite. Then randomly, each person would pick one up, unwrap it, and read the poem aloud. It really was a wonderful exchange, but the cool part was how much we have begun to know each other as writers and readers- and as women. Natalie started with the book I brought, and Helen took the one Annmarie brought. Since Helen and Annmarie were sitting opposite each other, and Natalie and I were sitting opposite each other, we decided to complete the exchange that way, across the table. Turns out Natalie and I exchanged books of women poets and Helen and Annmarie exchanged Billy Collins collections. We picked similar books when shopping and the exchange just happened in this synchronous way. Strange how that all worked out. Then again, maybe not so strange after all. We're Trail Brazen, ya know.