Today I walked north up the beach and it was bright sunshine. I was up early, but working. The writing part of my day was commenting on the writing from my workshop participants in my online course: How Pictures Heal. So, I had the pleasure of reflecting on their writing while I walked, because the writing, and the pictures they wrote from, stayed with me. What I really appreciate about this way of working with these participants - from around the world, truly; one from Australia, one from England, others from US – is how I am reflecting back to them what I see, feel, notice appreciate about their writing and what they’re sharing. It’s not a craft class, although the writing is good, and I know the questions and comments I’m making do generate their development and creative ideas, opening to new and unseen possibilities for development. Everyone is writing about their own need for healing, and that is at the heart of it. I get to do what I love to do: listen deeply to lived experience and honor someone’s ability to put that lived experience into words - often, rising out of the ashes. To start out my day inside someone’s story, someone’s, sharing, someone’s deep and honest reflection, and to get to see and appreciate the truth and beauty of their expression gives me energy, gives me gratitude, gives me hope and inspiration. It gives me an emotional charge to be trusted with vulnerable offerings and it stirs my compassion and creativity and my own imagination. I walk along the beach this morning, reliving the stories and poems I’ve read from them. There is hot sun and swish of waves and the birds on the shore. An idea comes to me about a new poem I may write this weekend somehow, for Monday night. I am curious to see if I can make something of this idea about a clock that is not ticking. It’s so bright, so warm, so pleasantly comforting in this place I wonder if I can get the traction of concentration necessary. In the dark room where I read the workshop pieces this morning, I found the traction I needed. So, it’s here, somewhere, I trust.