Walking with Crutches

An Invitation to the Practice Integrative Writing

Each month, on the first Sunday evening, I host a small gathering on Zoom called Integrative Writing Practice. It’s free to all of my Substack subscribers. It’s not a class or a workshop. It’s a space.

We write to a series of simple prompts—four or five in a session—responding in real time, without overthinking or editing. Ten minutes of stream-of-consciousness writing. Just the raw truth, as it wants to come through the pen.

Then, after a bit of gentle teaching on compassionate listening, we break into pairs and share whatever we feel comfortable sharing. No feedback. No fixing. Just presence. Just being heard.

There’s something quietly transformative about it: writing vulnerably, and then speaking those words aloud in the safety of another’s care.

Sometimes, when I want to do integrative writing but don’t have a group or a partner, I simply read my writing aloud to my phone right after writing. There’s something about the act of reading aloud that consecrates the moment.

The recording below is one of mine—one I’ve returned to often over the last few years. It’s a ten-minute response to the prompt “I am walking with…” read aloud immediately after it was written. Unfiltered. Unpolished.

Not a performance. A practice.

I am walking with… crutches, i wibble wobble, you see? Like a dancer, or maybe a drunk, I stumble. I am walking with crutches, but they are too hard for you to see. I flip and flop, like a medicine man, but do you know what is holding me up? Amanda, my Beloved, is under my right arm, speaking sweetly as I move. She reminds me of who I am, when and where I have heard the truth. Many other friends have gathered, and I can lean to the left too. They offer strength and motivation; they fuel this body to move. My crutches are my most valuable things, I know, most dear to my heart. They not only help me move, they take the pieces, scattered apart. They help to mend them, or just hang on to them for awhile…until I have rested, and can hold myself again, and lean, and move, and sleep. I live with my crutches. I keep them in my heart. I sure do love flying, ever since the start. I am working on walking. Flying is coming soon I know. I’ve tasted it in my dreams, or when I ride my bike, or look out of a window. It's in the sky. I guess I can already fly…cause that bike, that window, that plane, why?They are crutches too! These crutches are lovely. They are true. There’s no knowing where I am going if I embrace this need to use them. Just a need, no shame, no abuse of them. Just walking, and living, and flying again.

If this kind of space speaks to you, please subscribe and join the next session on August 3rd