October 2021: A Picture Book
How do you see the world? How do you move in the world? Is it different now than from when you were around Milo’s age?
Write about a time from when you were a child.
Describe a moment/conversation/memory that changed how you viewed the world or yourself or someone else.
November & December 2021
Because children can innate offer affection or respond to affectionate care by returning it, it is often assumed that they know how to love and therefore do not need to learn the art of loving. While the will to love is present in very young children, they still need guidance in the ways of love. Grown-ups provide that guidance.� Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to give children love. WHen we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights--that we respect and uphold their rights.� Without justice there can be no love.�
--bell hooks, all about love: new visions
Respond to this prompt in any genre you prefer.
If these words are not speaking to you, then you are welcome to write about anything that is on your mind.
January 2022
“There was an inevitability about the road towards each other which encouraged meandering along the route.”
-Zadie Smith
How do you meander? Is there anything in your life that you have taken a meandering route to get to/accomplish? How did that feel? Did you learn anything from it.
February 2022: Carrie Mae Weems & Joy Harjo Prompt
Joy Harjo reading her poem "Perhaps the World Ends Here"��Text of Joy Harjo's poem "Perhaps the World Ends Here"
What do these images and/or words help you see/understand/imagine? What do you notice? Do you have rituals and/or strong memories that are connected to the kitchen table?
March 2022: The Art of Faith Ringgold
We Came to America from the American Collection Series,
1997
The Art of Faith Ringgold
The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles,
1996
The Art of Faith Ringgold
Part of the “Tar Beach” quilt,
1990
April 2022: The Words of Ross Gay
A selection from “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay
Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things—the trees and the mushrooms have shown me this—joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.
How does nature show up in your life? Does nature have any connections to your feelings/emotions/choices? How does nature connect to transformations that you experience in your own life?
May 2022
The Isolation Journals was founded on the idea that life’s
interruptions are invitations to deepen our creative practice. It was founded by Suleika Jaouad.�
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Viktor Frankl
Write about the space between stimulus and response. About a time you recognized it–or you didn’t–and how that impacted your life.
June 2022
Things to Look Forward To: 52 Large and Small Joys for Today and Every Day is a book by Sophie Blackall. In it, she shares different joys like drawing faces on eggs, taking a hot shower, and relishing in the magic of the clock turning to 11:11.
What are you looking forward to?
Make a list, or any kind of writing, about some of the things you have to look forward to. Include big things if you’d like, but also the small everyday things that buoy your spirits, make you laugh, make you feel alive.