Friday Dispatch: Why We Gather
Basking in our first co-created retreat, plus deadlines for two upcoming writing groups!
Friday greetings,
Before I tell you about yesterday’s Summer’s End Retreat (and share my freewrite from under an apple tree), I want to alert you to two upcoming opportunities to feed your writing practice in community. As always, feel free to contact me with any questions!
KATAVTI: The Sound of Jewish Life Happening
Monday August 25 - Friday, September 5
Do you identify as Jewish and longs for both a daily practice and a soft place to land?
Feeling activated, disconnected, overwhelmed, confused, lonely, wrecked, numb, or some combination of these?
This group will offer you a kind and simple way to connect with your Jewish self and community.
Each morning for two weeks (except the weekend), you will receive a special prompt in your inbox from me, with an invitation to write for 10 minutes and come share your words in our private Facebook group. Note that this is NOT a political group but rather one where, as Jews, we can set down the constant pressure to articulate, explain, defend, minimize, or otherwise feel pressure to address our opinions, beliefs, and values. Come write and be seen, heard, and supported.
~ REGISTER HERE by SUNDAY EVENING ~
EBB & FLOW: A School-Year of Writing Practice
Tuesdays, September 2, 2025 - June 16, 2025
Do you long to create a steady rhythm for your writing life, rather than the stopping and starting that happens on your own?
Would you love to be part of a small, committed cohort who look forward to seeing you each week, knowing your words will be received with care and encouragement?
Are you curious what might happen if you stuck with your practice over the course of an entire “school” year?
If these questions resonate for you, this is your chance to be part of a very special, intimate 10-month experience.
We’ll meet on Tuesdays (with every fourth week off). You’ll develop a relationship with writing “11s” as a generative tool, deepen your comfort level with drafting new material without having to polish or perfect anything, and enjoy “real-time” writing in a low-stakes, high-kindness container.
More details are all on my website, and if you want to chat further about how it works or whether this is a good fit for you, please contact me!
~ REGISTER HERE BY FRIDAY, AUGUST 29 ~
Yesterday, M.J. and I led our inaugural retreat together, and it was everything we had hoped for and more! This basket of peaches represents so completely how I felt at the end of the day: Abundant, nourished, sun-kissed, complete.
We spent the afternoon writing, sharing, and practicing mindfulness at the Woolman Hill Retreat Center in Deerfield, Massachusetts. We were blessed by flawless weather and a lovely group of six women who ventured from the world of responsibilities, obligations, commitments, and concerns to join us (a seventh had to cancel at the last minute – we missed you, Kate!),
Taking the time to reconnect with one’s own inner landscape is always as available to us as the next breath. But the reality is often so much more fraught than that. Having a container, returning to presence, really taking in who, what, and where you are right now, requires slowing down. Without practice, that can feel downright elusive.
Thus, the power of gathering. We’re talking well-worn armchairs and creaky rockers, a cozy living room in an old farmhouse, and the kind of spectacular late-summer beauty that tickles your soul and whispers hello. Time to be alone, but in a shared container of togetherness.
We are collecting feedback from participants. Here are a couple of responses we’ve received so far:
“I highly recommend the Summer’s End Retreat. The location, mindfulness practice, writing, and self-care encouragement were on point! Jena and M.J. are a synergistic duo— caring, bright, funny, and highly competent facilitators who are entirely genuine. Nothing felt rushed or contrived. I’m still aglow.” ~ Lisa Burns, Grand Junction, CO
“The Summer's End Retreat was a delightful chance to settle into a cozy circle of women where I had the chance to reflect and write and share, and to take some much-needed breaths through meditation, too. Jena and M.J. are great together and are able to create a safe place for connection to happen.” ~ Suzi T., Amherst, MA
M.J. and I have dreamed of co-creating something like this. Now we are not only dreaming, but excited to plan the next retreat(s), full of gratitude and wonder at the way life unfolds.
Here’s what I scrawled in a notebook during our solo writing time:
The clouds drifting, the sound of the breeze, a gunshot so unexpected, then another and another, and the goldenrod and daisies swaying. Summer’s end is also hunting season, maybe – or is it target practice? – so at odds with how perfect and bucolic this place is, this day is.
I take in what’s already here and feel the grasping of wanting more, as if this wasn’t enough. As if life landing me here wasn’t enough. This hum of daytime cicadas sings through the hours, and if I really, really listen, I can hear a train somewhere distant.
The pond is my life. The pond is my life. I take that line (from The Pond at Sunset by James Crews) and want to wrap it around myself the way this ring of trees embraces the meadow, green, green, green, but not for long; we saw leaves turning on the way here this morning.
I want to live like this always, but life won’t stand still. I wonder when the next bliss will come, and all but weep when I realize I nearly missed the current one. A gray catbird cries, a bee buzzes, I remember my mom schooling me to stay very still, like a flower, and I am distracted by the shots that keep ringing out, reminding me that we may retreat, but someone is always shooting a gun.
Now I look up and I learn something new about my surroundings: I am sitting beneath an apple tree in late summer. As I scan the branches, I spot more and more apples, mostly green and camouflaged by leaves, the hints of red like a sneak preview of an imminent season.
I know I am writing my way towards Elul, which begins tomorrow at sundown and invites reflection and introspection, a turning inward to begin a process known as חשבון הנפש, cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul, in preparation for the High Holidays. I know I am straining to hear something in the breeze that will channel itself into whatever it is I’m sure I’m missing. But I know I am not missing a thing. This is simply a habit, an all too familiar refrain, old like this house is old, though not as old as the land and the turning of seasons and the impulse to look within and search one’s being for blind spots and missteps, ever intent on repair, ever aiming for healing.
But the shots make it impossible to get into any kind of flow. I laugh a little out loud because it’s silly that I’m struggling to write. What I am coming to understand about myself is that I am much more entranced these days by watching the clouds, jumping into the (actual) pond, listening to the sounds – yellow goldfinch, Eastern bluebird – than in this monumental effort to write something from nothing. Nothing in my own head seems terribly interesting.
I want this soft air on my cheek, the dappled light dancing. I want more of this, more and more. “This” being space, meadow, silence, a smile. But “this” isn’t only these; it’s also target practice. It’s ridiculous, really! So I follow my own instructions and keep my hand moving, swatting away self-consciousness, putting performance to bed like a garden at the end of the growing season.
I dread winter.
It’s so lovely here.
Moving my hand because life is movement, so said my father, but really it was Aristotle.
Give me greens and blues. Give me water and sunlight. Like the houseplants I’ll carry inside before long, I will continue breathing and growing even as the days shorten and the chill falls. Fall is coming. That’s what the breeze says.
Finally, an offering of peace, as we move into the weekend:
Shabbat Shalom and love,
Jena