I am burnt and remade: Women’s Wellness Retreat Poetry

The Female Gaze: Camera as a tool for empathy

I am burnt and remade.

I am a daughter of light and sorrow

I am grief, rivers of pain, joy reclaimed

I am lost in the waters that heal me or drown me, gasping, fighting, succumbing

I am a mama

I am a grieving daughter, existing in a moment of simple connection

I am a whirligig, never stopping

I am a dancer whose feet have felt heavy, concrete hardening around my ankles

I am a walker, forgetting to look up, then remembering to see

I am medusa, gazing back fiercely

I am empty, seeking to fill myself again

I am a bright light

I am emerging

I am rewriting

I am in the world, seeking strength to reshape it in a way that honors me and my people

I facilitated an experimental portraiture & poetry workshop for women at a women's wellness retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains. We quick-wrote "list poems", beginning with the prompt "I Am...", then we ventured to the nearby creek to shoot images that reflected the layers of meaning within our poems. I focused on the theme of "The Female Gaze", using the camera as a tool for building empathy. Portrait photos by Juli Hazlewood of Roots & Routes IC.