by Stephanie Dale | Feb 12, 2024 | Longing, Slow Burn Exile, Un/silencing, Wellbeing-through-writing
There’s an enormous elephant in the room at the start of writing workshops for people who do not identify as writers. The elephant has a name. Her name is Secret. As the workshop opens, Secret pretends she’s not there. A woman might say: ‘I’m...
by Stephanie Dale | Nov 20, 2023 | Slow Burn Exile, Un/silencing, Wellbeing-through-writing
A word on the lost words … a deep sea diving acquaintance was lamenting the absence of interest friends showed in her underwater videos. Where she was looking for awe, in our digitised world we’ve seen it all before. “Great,” they say. “Awesome.” Yay. I...
by Stephanie Dale | Sep 30, 2023 | Ageing, Motherline, Slow Burn Exile, Un/silencing, Wellbeing-through-writing
A while back I was invited to attend a friend’s family celebration. It was her mother’s 90th birthday. Many generations were settled into a round of couches on a large, open verandah as cake was shared around. I was sitting beside my friend, on the other side of the...
by Stephanie Dale | Sep 23, 2023 | Ageing, Motherline, Slow Burn Exile, Un/silencing, Wellbeing-through-writing
I know why old people tell repetitive stories, over and over, to people they know have heard them before and are not interested in hearing them again. I learned this from my mother, who told repetitive family stories, over and over to a daughter she knew had heard...
by Stephanie Dale | Jul 27, 2023 | Slow Burn Exile, Wellbeing-through-writing
In all the years I spent traveling through rural and remote areas on The Write Road, there was a refrain, a silent sub-text, a lingering whisper in our workshops and retreats: it’s not about you.Sometimes the whisper shapeshifted into a flood, most commonly in...
