Writing Through Loss: A Workshop
A flash essay and a four week course
My dear Substack followers,
The following post is unique in that it includes a flash essay along with the details of a four week course on Writing Through Loss that I will be leading this October. I’m opening the course to followers of Claiming Writerhood first, as the community on this Substack has offered me the kind of space and connection that I am hoping to foster with my upcoming class.
The details of the course are below, as is the link to register. I’ll be capping the class at 8 people, and will open up registration to others later this week. If you have any questions about what the course will entail, please reach out. If you have no questions about what the course will entail and just want to chat, please reach out! Talking to you all is the best part of this, and I’m excited for a new space for us to connect.
With love always,
Jessie
A Flash Essay: In Pursuit of Space
Yesterday morning I woke up with the space between my eyes and my eye sockets so full it was close to bursting. The pressure rocked me forward, tugged me to the edge of something vacuous. I wanted to throw up or scream, to alleviate this feeling by pushing it out of me. I needed space, more space in my body, more space behind my eyes. Yesterday morning, this felt like dread. I dug my fingers into my sheets and wished for tears. I laid like that for three hours, and still, I couldn’t deflate.
When it feels like dread, I find it so hard to remember that there are mornings when it feels like love. Mornings when it feels like clarity, closeness, a memory that might last. There are mornings when it feels like the tree outside my window has chosen me as its disciple, graced me with the shadow of its leaves. On those mornings, I like to think that my mama has climbed into the space between my eyes and my eye sockets and granted that space special powers. “Look at that leaf,” I imagine her saying, “can you believe how beautiful a leaf can be?”
There is a cliche about how grief comes in waves. We say “nonlinear,” we say “it doesn’t go away, it just changes.” And these cliches feel so true that they give me hope. Have we all been born anew onto this continuum between dread and love? Have we woken up and found the morning, unpredictably, impossibly, ours? Have we grieved intensely, lost intensity, found numbness, begged for a moment of release? Have we grieved for grief itself? Grieved as the intensity dwindles, and then grieved for those moments that we were hopeful enough to believe the intensity of loss wouldn’t last?
All year, I feel the feelings come and then retroactively I recognize them as grief. The next wave. It is another morning, and I am sitting in the garden of my favorite cafe in Brooklyn and the light is falling through the leaves. I meet the waves here, on the page. My cursor blinks up at me and begs questions and I don’t always find answers, but I do always find space. Blank, white, space.
I write through loss and it isn’t always better, but it is more spacious, which inside grief, is the closest thing to comfort that I’ve known.
Writing Through Loss: A Workshop
I decided to lead a Writing Through Loss workshop because of the comfort that writing has afforded me as I have moved through each wave of grief. Even more so, the conversations I have had about writing have continuously reminded that we are not alone in this experience. The value of connection is something my mama modeled relentlessly while she was alive, and I hope to honor her with the space and connection fostered in this class. Also in her honor, I’ll be donating 50% of the proceeds of this course to the Clearity Foundation, an ovarian cancer nonprofit that supported my family as we anticipated loss and has continued to support us in our grief.
When: Mondays in October (10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28), 7-9PM EST
Where: On Zoom! Join us from anywhere.
Who: We’ll cap the class at 8 people to foster a close-knit environment.
Cost: $150 (50% of which will be donated to the Clearity Foundation)
To Register: Click this link.
More detail: In this four-session generative seminar for writers with all levels of experience, you will be guided through readings from writers like Kathryn Shulz, Lily Dancyger, Cheryl Strayed, and Jill Christman, along with prompts and practices to explore the questions, uncertainties, joys, and pains of grief.
Each class will include a reading, a discussion of the reading, an in class prompt, and a take home prompt. Prompts will explore topics including the nonlinear nature of grief and how we can reflect this on the page, mundanity in grief and how loss can cast new light on every day moments, and words as means to make sense of the nonsensical. Participants are encouraged to view all prompts as suggestions and to follow their intuition on where their words and hearts most need to go.
This is a 4 session seminar. We meet on Zoom, Mondays, 7:00-9:00 EST, starting October 7. The class will be capped at 8 people. The cost of the course is $150 and 50% of the proceeds will be donated to the Clearity Foundation.
A little more about me:
Jessie Petrow-Cohen is a Brooklyn-based creative nonfiction writer. Her essay “On Molting,” was the winner of the 2024 Kenyon Review’s Short Nonfiction Contest judged by Melissa Febos. Her senate testimony on behalf of same-sex marriage was published in The New York Times and Senator Raymond Lesniak’s book, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” Her writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in publications including The Kenyon Review, Brevity, The Washington Post, and her substack, “Claiming Writerhood.” Her work has been supported by The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and The Vermont Studio Center.