Healing Through the Arts

Are you experiencing emotional pain related to trauma, loss, grief, divorce, low self-concept, lack of intimacy, domestic abuse, the experience of mental illness, or loss of a loved one due to suicide? Many people cannot process and release guilt, shame, failure, loneliness, negativity, and other intense feelings associated with these. These experiences and emotions can hold us back from fulfilling our full potential and flourishing as individuals. Our intense experiences need expression, purging, and releasing. This workshop gives you the opportunity for your voice to be heard. This 5-week workshop will provide you with the structure, creative prompts, and group-workshop environment to share your work with others in weekly live meetings on Zoom. This directed workshop is for people desiring to gain meaning, clarity, and healing. This workshop is for the novice, aspiring, and seasoned writers, who want to grow through the expressive arts. All you need is interest and motivation. You will also need a pen, paper, access to a computer, an internet connection, and download ZOOM. Come share what's true for you without fear of correction, judgment, or false comfort. Acknowledgment of your authentic truth is real release – and it heals something in you. During the workshop series, I encourage you to write only within your comfort zone.

Your creative work is about you. Since you are the author of your own story, it is thus empowering. Your accounts resist and push back against stories others tell about and impose upon you. Perhaps you write to recreate yourself and to leave the old self behind. The purpose of these workshops is to help you gain more control of your life, freely expressing how you think and feel. You will also begin to learn to carve your thoughts and purposes from your own story. Your voice matters most. Weekly writing prompts are assigned that are designed to bring you to new and unexpected insights.

Types of writing you might try in my workshop: Poetry, short story, journaling, memoir, essays, vignettes, letters, song lyrics, freewriting, reporting, speeches, blogs, video essays, vlogs.

WHEN: 5 Weeks, Tuesdays 11a-1p, beginning March 23, 2021 (Bonus! 6th week add-on free individual live 30-minute conference to discuss your work).

Objectives:

1. Gain insight into your pain and learn to effectively use expressive arts to cope with painful experiences and emotions.
2. Create your narrative surrounding your pain to empower you.
3. Express and tell your own story freely and without criticism in an open and accepting expressive artists workshop environment.
4. Learn the elements of story structure, poetry, blog, and essay writing.
5. Improve on your use of figurative language to express yourself more profoundly. 
6. Improve on the technical and grammatical aspects of your writing. 
7. Learn how audience impacts your writing.

Learn more about your facilitator/instructor Jim Stoner (here).

                                       See past reviews here

Role of Facilitator/Instructor (Jim Stoner): This workshop will be conducted much like a university creative writing workshop. The instructor facilitates the presentation and the safe "critique" of writing. Students may only validate and affirm the experience of writers. Still, these meetings' primary purpose is to give constructive feedback to help the writer better express their pain creatively.  

Disclaimer: This workshop series is not intended as either individual or group therapy. Mr. Stoner is not properly licensed to provide individual or group therapy—only licensed professionals may do this. His specific purpose is group facilitation to write a critique and NOT to help you work through particular therapeutic issues. However, this is a future goal once he obtains his degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2022. This course is mostly a self-guided, self-help workshop series meant for you to work through your particular therapeutic issues on your own using your imagination and creative forms. It also provides you with access to others who share similar experiences and goals.  

Confidentiality Disclosure. First or pen names will be used when sharing work with others. At times, you are be asked to place your weekly work in a Dropbox for others to view, if you want, for feedback. Jim Stoner Artistry exercises reasonable diligence in maintaining your artistic expression's confidentiality and does not willingly, knowingly, or intentionally disclose your identity or contents of your work to a third party without your consent. No live workshops are recorded, and written work will be deleted from our Dropbox within seven days following each workshop series. HOWEVER, if Jim Stoner Artistry genuinely believes that disclosure is required to 1) prevent harm to yourself or others, 2) as a result of a court order or search warrant, or 3) to protect Jim Stoner Artistry against claims or threat of lawsuits, then we reserve the right to do so to the extent needed. Please keep in mind that there is no legal privilege between a participant and Jim Stoner Artistry the way there is between doctor/patient, client/therapist, lawyer/client.