Hi everyone! Technical glitch—if you'd like to join Lauren for the free-writing oracle session happening NOW, please use this link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87855038036?pwd=WELzLklmBYAfp0UaplVo1s0zJLByzW.1

I was recently introduced to the book "Your Word Is Your Wand" by Florence Skovel Shinn written in 1928. How perfect for us spellcasters and storytellers at Writing Fire---especially since my latest passion is collecting vines and sticks from the woods for making magic wands!! “Your word is your wand. The words you speak create your own destiny," writes FSS. I believe this to be true 100% even though I forget at least once nearly every single day 😂! Today I will use my words as my wand to say: All of the pain, suffering, and struggles of my past are absorbed and composted into the earth to bloom into powerful stories and a beautiful future. What words are you using as your wand today?? (Photo below of some of the Spirit Sticks + Magic Wands I've been making recently-- my Dad made the wand with the circle on top for me in my early 20's💘 💘)

The Vietnam War changed my life, not that I went. Jeff Green was an early casualty. He was the son of my mother's close friend, Ann Green, and older brother of my friend, Marty Green. Jeff went into a bunker that had been tear-gassed. He had an allergic reaction and died. The bunker had been empty. I did not understand why he was there. Why was anyone there? It was barely in the news when I became disillusioned. I wore an anti-war button on my pea jacket. I was 19 and a sophomore in college. During those years my father worked for the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army. My father told me that the war was never discussed over lunch at Army Mess No.1. The leadership in Saigon was full of corruption, Vietnamese generals who had been educated in France, even after it was no longer a colony. I was disillusioned with what was accepted as truth, with the unfairness of a military draft that could be avoided by going to college or failing the physical with bogus ailments. My college was half an hour from Grand Central Station. We went to Washington. We went to Draft Boards. We picketed and chanted. I was familiar with the Establishment because I had been brought up within it. When others went on about conspiracies and secret groups I knew that such they were unnecessary. Conspiracy is not needed when everyone agrees. I did not agree. I was disgusted. How could my father and his friends let so many young men go off to a war they had no business fighting. Our family was split over this. The wives in Washington hated the war, the fathers went to work. I repudiated the rationalizing. I wanted nothing to do with a life that accepted such moral compromise. Perhaps without the war I would have become a lawyer. My family is overflowing with them. Maybe I would have gone into politics. I had grown up among adults who wanted to serve their country. I saw how they ended up. I wanted to be a revolutionary. I had the critique down pat. I joined SDS when some Columbia students came to my college recruiting members.

Right now, I am thinking of language - how I use it, what I mean, what power words can work when applied in various ways. There are the inward meanings - what I'm feeling or thinking that spurs the invocation, and outward meanings, what I verbalize to others, sincerely or sometimes veiled. Words came to me early, easily. I was an early reader and speller. Could spell ENCYCLOPEDIA before kindergarten, I was proud of it: I created and performed a dance about that in the living room. there was a lot of jumping on the couch, more of a cheer than a dance. lots of shouting. I got swatted. Adults often told me to cheer, dance, and speak LESS. One time I was in the car with my parents and I read every street sign aloud to drown out the sound of their arguing. Going down the road, there was NO PARKING ANYTIME, NO PARKING ANYTIME, over and over. It became a kind of rhythmic chant, I couldn't stop, i just kept saying it. I must have been on the 20th noparkinganytime before I got yelled at. My frequent repetitive verbalizations were a calming mechanism for me. Now I know that is called "stimming." I like to think of it as an incantation, a spell, a way to nullify anxiety, agitation, unsettledness. Words are spells, spells take back control, putting the power in our breath, in our bodies, and in the air around us. i still cast spells. I will cast spells in traffic, on other drivers, loudly and colorfully. There are also secret words I say sometimes to myself, silently or just under my breath, for calm or strength when I need it. Every now and then one comes out loud. If anyone asks what I said, I say nevermind.

(from about 2015) I am wearing the last of my mother's nightgowns. When I brought them home, I could hold the pile up to my face and breathe deeply of her lingering presence. They were the only nighties I wore for years, until one by one, they became ragged and torn beyond use. I don't know why the blue one lasted longest despite fraying cuffs and thinning fabric. These night gowns were my mother's final wardrobe.Her everyday wear when she had grown too frail to do more than walk with help from the pink recliner where she slept to the swivel chair by the table and television. She called it her command post, where she greeted her stream of caregivers and visitors, watched Jeopardy and cheered the UConn Lady Huskies basketball team. She reminded me of a baby bird the way her short silky hair stood up like pin feathers and her mouth would stay open from her attempts to breathe naturally.