WHY SPEAK NOW?
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~ Maya Angelou
In the unrelenting media downpour of worsening forecasts and lives lost in meaningless violence, we lose motivation. We do all we can to keep going, every day. It takes everything we have, it seems, to fulfill the mundane demands that make it possible for us to eat, parent, care for our loved ones, and keep things clean and functional.
Our stories fade in importance. We don’t see their relevance.
It is hard to imagine how one person’s writing, one person’s investigation into the meaning of their own life, could make a difference. We belittle ourselves and undermine our capacities. The effort to craft something of value from the morass of memory feels insurmountable. We can’t get started and we can’t find the time.
Have you heard Maya Angelou’s recollection of how she was mute as a child? This woman whose articulations live on with such resonance, was once speechless. I was like that too. My mother remembers me as a very quiet child. Children who are quiet on the outside are harboring worlds upon worlds within themselves.
What draws our voices out and into the world?
A portion of the answer rests in timing. Another portion rests in mirroring, the welcoming reflection that our voices are wanted and needed; that they serve a purpose. This is the function of Crone Speak.
Crone Speak is the Mother Voice, grateful to hear your words and wanting more of them, always more of them.
Don’t hold back. This is our time. Crones and Wizards are the magnetizers, drawing out the stories that will light the fires of the future.
In the paragraphs below you meet the leading figure in a novel I have been writing for over a decade, and that I am now returning to, just as I ask you to return to your own stories. Take a look at her. Her name is Sarianna Secreto. Does she remind you of anyone?
Sarianna decided to do something she had not done in a long time. She bought herself a notebook and pen at the grocery store and unkempt as she was, she set off to discover a café with the idea of finding a place to write. She had been thinking for some time of returning to her writing. It was synonymous with returning to herself.
Glancing in the mirror of the car visor before getting out of the car, Sarianna grinned. Her hair was wild with the electricity of the changing season. Her clothes were rumpled and she wore one of her daughter’s old hoodies to fend off the damp cold. “Radical Grandma Chic,” she said out loud. Moving with a “I don’t care what I look like” bravado, Sarianna walked briskly towards a downtown café-bookstore. She flashed again on her San Francisco heydays, but this time the memory was in her flesh and joints. She felt as if she were 24 or 25, setting out to wander freely in the rainforest of her internal jungle.
Crone Speak sessions are hour-long conversations that revolve around your voice and how to develop it. I am not referring to being a presenter. What I mean is crafting your novel statement to the world in your own dialect. In Crone Speak sessions, I respond to you about the writing you have either prepared or that you want to begin. We jam together to stir the soup of your creativity. I meet you where you are, and together we go to a new, previously undiscovered place of succulent creativity that then becomes unstoppable. After a Crone Speak session, you will find it impossible to NOT prioritize your writing. You will be compelled from within to let your stories out of their cages.
If you need a mentor, a mirror, a magnetizer, turn to Crone Speak. Schedule a session that focuses on you. Stand in the mirroring light.
Contact Stephanie Mines by commenting here or writing to her directly at: