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October: Poetry as a Healing Art with Dr. Deborah E. Grayson

Last night was a fabulous kickoff of the Poetry as a Healing Art series that is being sponsored by The Stafford Challenge. These sessions are free, and you can visit this link to register for the remaining sessions if you are interested. Dr. Deborah Grayson led the first session and took us through the many ways that poetry can heal hurts, instill hope, and inspire creativity.

Of the many activities and prompts that she led us through, one of my favorites was making a soundtrack of our lives. The chat thread lit up with so many fabulous songs, and I’ll bet there were 200 songs listed by the entire group of participants in attendance.

Earlier in the day, my daughter sent me a Spotify playlist to enjoy in retirement, particularly while I’m working on creative ventures such as painting our decoupaging. You can click here to listen! She’s so thoughtful and creative, and she knows I love all these songs.

What a treat to have music and those in our lives who share lyrics – which is, of course, poetry – with us to celebrate the moments of our lives. Poetry IS a healing art, and one for which I remain ever so grateful.

For Mallory and everyone reading today, go to YouTube and listen to a song from my playlist just for you:

I Love by Tom T. Hall ~ enjoy it!

take the time today

to create a soundtrack of

your life ~ share a song!

‘

I took a picture right as my daughter shared the playlist, and she replied: perfect timing! She knew I would be in the middle of something creative right at that moment when she sent it.

Whatever you do today, enjoy some music!

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Recalibrating

The cold front rolled into middle Georgia on Friday night, inviting us to watch movies and be lazy with our three dogs for the weekend. It isn’t often that we’re quite this relaxed and lazy all weekend, but we gave in and did not resist the urge to pile up the blankets and fire up Netflix.

So we did.

Recalibrating

lazy dog weekends

piling up and sleeping in

~ recalibrating ~

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October 2026 Open Write Day 4 with Denise Krebs

Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

Denise Krebs of California is our host for the final day of the October 2026 Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can read her full prompt here. She writes:

I invite you today to find a seventh book anywhere and join me in a fun discovery. 

Process

  1. Find the 7th book on a shelf or pile wherever you are, in a library, a bookshop, at home or school (any genre).
  2. Turn to page 7.
  3. Read the seventh line. 
  4. Let that line inspire a 7-line poem. The line can become part of your poem, or just a muse.

I looked to the seventh shelf, seventh book from the left, and plucked Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge by Gladys Taber and Barbara Webster from the bookcase. The seventh sentence: Even when the mortgage reared its ugly head, we never regretted it and now it is fine to know everything is paid for, our forty acres – although how can man own God’s earth? – and the 1690 farmhouse, and the barn, even the pond, and presumably that cricket chirping endlessly on the hearth is also ours.

I chose a tanka for today and can split the last two lines into two more if I decide on having 7.

Merely Caretakers

how can man own God’s

earth? impossible, for we’re

merely caretakers!

and let’s be real ~ we pretty

much suck at that simple task….

For more information on Gladys Taber and her cozy books, check out A Reader’s Almanac with Celeste on YouTube and search for Gladys Taber’s Cozy Seasonal Books episode. I tried to embed the link here, but sharing has been prohibited by the owner of the channel. Gladys Taber’s books are like stepping into a painting by Currier and Ives and living there for a little while in the days before the world went sour.

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October 2026 Day 3 Open Write

Matt Forrest Esenwine is a New Hampshire-based author of a dozen children’s books and our host today for the third day of the October 2026 Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can visit the website and click on Open Write to read his full prompt.

Matt shares his process here:

Here’s all you do: pick an object, any object (most boring object ever – or not!), and begin thinking of ways to describe it. Once you have your list, scan through it and see what words/images/feelings you are drawn to. That’s your basis for your poem.

I’ve been decoupaging candles with pressed wildflowers lately – something my mother taught me how to do, and it keeps her memory close. I decided to write a haiku about the ones I have created. While I’ve been creating some flameless ones for my grandchildren from their birth month flowers to use as nightlights, I think smaller ones placed as seating card holders at a wedding reception would be a lovely wedding favor for guests to take home after gracing the tables with light during the gathering. They look wildly romantic, and the ones with faint pink take my breath away.

Wildflower Candle

decoupaged candle

glowing warmth of wildflowers

emanating light

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October 2026 Day 2 of Open Write


Today’s host of The Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Joel Garza, who inspires us to write a Cherita poem. You can read his full prompt here.

Joel shares, “My studies taught me that many poetic forms winnow down in length as they ramp up in meaning. A sonnet’s couplet, a sestina’s envoi, a haiku’s closing pivot, a villanelle’s quatrain – you get the idea & the impact: As the form gets smaller, the idea feels more potent, more provocative. There are exceptions. Exceptions like the cherita.”

I love narrative poems, and Garza reminds us that these are, essentially, stories in poetic form. He explains the process:

Remember that the cherita is a story. Aim for a tale that you need to tell (or maybe a tale that you’ve never told). Be as direct as possible in welcoming your reader – one line only. 

As you develop the story, be deliberate and succinct. Two lines only for this middle stanza. 

Finally, resolve with a comparatively expansive meditation on the meaning or mystery of this story. Knock yourself out — A whole three lines!

One line. Two lines. Then, three lines.

Jay

I looked to the directions, but I only needed the final stanza to tell my story. So I followed my gut and wrote what was inside.

The Rescue

my heart was heavy with dog loss grief

I contacted the rescue: make a good match

Meet Jay.

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October Open Write Day 1 of 4 with Anna Roseboro

Today is the first day of the October 2026 Open Write at Ethicalela, and Anna Roseboro of Michigan is our host. You can read her full prompt here as she inspires us to write about letter grades in education.

What A Grade Can’t Show

a grade can’t show
all that they know

those boxed-in letters
produce learning fretters

we’re labeling and lumping
praising and dumping

and when grades are the game
learning’s not the same

learners and scholars
wear different collars

there’s no motivation
at most learning stations

we’re the ones who need learning
on tides that need turning

….and now, let’s be real:
AI’s at the wheel…..

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Space X Launch from Williamson, Georgia

This strange shape in the sky yesterday morning had us wondering shortly before 7 a.m. what was happening ~ whether we’d had an alien invasion or were under chemical warfare or something. Turns out, it was the launch of Space X that occurred at 6:33 a.m., and our view at 6:50 looked a lot like a Japanese Koi fish just above the tree line in the southeastern sky. My husband had taken the dogs out and came to get me to come quickly and see the phenomenon. I grabbed my phone so I could take pictures and headed out into the balmy temperatures to check it out.

A quick search online told us we were safe, and we carried on with our day.

in the morning mist

beneath the space jellyfish

the mystery loomed

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Stafford Challenge Workshop Writing with C. Marie Fuhrman

A beautiful thing about The Stafford Challenge is the monthly writing workshops that are part of the program. Last night, I got to attend one with C. Marie Furhman as the leader, and she shared some of the craft moves used by Joy Harjo as part of the workshop she led.

We wrote a letter to a living being that has made a difference in our lives (i.e. my new rescue Schnauzer, Jay), and then listed 15 beings that were random, with their actions (i.e. a scared bunny that crosses the driveway and darts into the woods to avoid the circling hawks). Then, we changed the Dear in the letter to the word Remember, used repetition, and brought in the parallels to the random beings. The idea behind this craft move is to give universality to specificity. Here is what I wrote:

To Jay

Remember, people just suck sometimes.

Remember, you were giving the big dogs hell, charging the fence at the dog park when I first met you.

Would you do this to the coyote who prowls the farm?

Remember, the people who surrendered you had their own challenges.

I’m glad we found each other.

Remember, you came home and licked my hand, flitting about the yard

with the butterfly on the hummingbird feeder, wallowing in the grass on

your back.

And now, you breathe in deep sleep next to me,

unlike the scared bunny crossing the driveway.

You’re safe now,

no longer vulnerable.

You belong with me.

You can still sign up for the Poetry As a Healing Art series, even if you are not part of The Stafford Challenge 2026 Cohort. These are free, but each of the 3 sessions requires its own registration.

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Painting on the Porch

The weekend wasn’t without rain (4 inches, according to our rain gauge) from the hurricane here in middle Georgia, but by Sunday afternoon, the temperatures were too pleasant to stay indoors. I brought my paints outside and enjoyed some time sitting on the porch. It was a wonderful time to get a jump start on painting some postcards for next month’s poetry exchange. Some weekends are largely unproductive in terms of getting things done that need to be done. This was one of those.

And that’s okay.

Seventy degrees

Watercoloring weather

Sunday afternoon