From Lockdown to Lifeline: How the Wild Writing Family Found Its Voice

by 27 Powers Support | May 27, 2025 | Blog | 21 comments

Last week was the five year anniversary of the Wild Writing Family, the community of writers that I assembled during the early days of Covid, and which is still alive and well.

Back in May of 2020 we entered the great spin, the whoosh away of everything we assumed about our lives and how we lived.

One day we were meeting friends for coffee and grocery shopping, the next day we were veering away from one another on the sidewalk, asking delivery people to leave things on the porch as we watched from our windows. My daughter was about to buy a plane ticket to a friend’s wedding a few months away, but she wasn’t sure if she should. “They’ll figure it out by then,” I told her.

Well, there was no they – we learned that fast. No scientist, no politician, no leadership, no big daddy nowhere who had answers for us. For me, it was a huge awakening; In my naiveté I kept thinking that someone was going to save us.

Maybe that’s why so many people took their pens to the page – alone and in online communities – to write – to seek connection with themselves and others at a time when so much had fallen away.

The quest for they, became a connection to we, and in my world, that we became The Wild Writing Family, a group of people from all over the planet who got together three times a week to show up, to write as poorly as possible, to un-do the top button of their jeans so that their bellies could hang, so that they could relax and breathe – which makes writing really helpful.

We lowered the bar, tried to tell the truth, found solace in the smallest things; the smell of coffee, the tinkle of a wind chime, notes from a dream the night before. We practiced wanting what we had instead of what we didn’t have.

The poet Billy Collins said, “finally the world had slowed down to the speed of poetry.”

Five years ago I had no idea where this Wild Family would go. I’d been teaching Wild Writing for the prior 20 years, but mostly at dining room tables here in California and around the country. It was an intimate, grounding practice where we learned to listen for the sound of our own voice – our home voice – and to trust it enough to put it down on the page. It was a life changing practice, and now many more people had access to it.

Five years ago we went from dining room tables to Zoom rooms with hundreds of people – some who lived in far flung places like the Alaskan outback, small seaside villages in Scotland, in cottages along the Camino de Santiago. Some people like Patricia, tuned in from carpool lines in Portugal as they waited for their kids to get out of school. Some people tuned in from hospital rooms. One friend brought it to 2000 doctors in Canada.

If someone had told me at that time that in five years I would have created 900 small videos of me reading poetry to people all over the world, and inviting them to write from those poems, I couldn’t have imagined it.

But, in the spirit of big anniversaries, I did the math. In the last five years it’s true, I have made 900 short videos where I warmed the Wild Writing waters, read people a poem, and invited them to write for 15 minutes.

I’ve made these videos from nunneries in Nepal, from my porch in Alameda, from art barns in the desolate landscape of New Mexico – videos I made dirty and stinky because I was staying with my ex husband who doesn’t have running water, and so I hadn’t had a shower in days. I’ve made videos from courtyards in Mexico where if you listen closely you can hear barking dogs from neighboring rooftops. I made videos when I was sad, videos when I doubted myself, videos from days I worried about my children, videos from moments when I felt bright and alive.

And of course, those videos would be nothing if not for some of the best poets that I know:

Maya Stein, Alison Luterman, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, James Crews, Danusha Lameris, Ellen Bass, Marie Howe, Mark Nepo, Julia Fehrenbacher – and many others.

Poets that helped us to anchor and know ourselves when we felt lost or confused. Poems that pointed the way.

In the last five years I’ve showed up live 130 times in Zoom rooms – some with hundreds of people – so we could write together. I’ve lit a million sticks of sage to steady my nerves when I was too afraid to get on these calls, uncurled myself from a ball on the couch minutes before a zoom call of 400 people because I was afraid I didn’t know how to be myself with so many people in boxes staring back at me. I created mantras to settle my nerves, put Lobo’s magic centering potion on my wrists before class, lit candles, and always had Rescue Remedy and CBD at the ready.

For years I have been navigating presence over performance. It was easy to feel like myself sitting at a table of 8 women, but five years ago I had to connect to whatever I called my essential self and stretch it like putty. I had to learn to breathe.

When I say teaching has been a path, I mean it. Every hard thing, every doubt, every stumble, every true word, everything that didn’t work out, and everything that was more incredible than I had imagined has helped to to grow into myself.

I couldn’t have done any of this without the steady and patient hand of Amber Kinney, and her team for the last 10 plus years. Amber not only encouraged me when I was afraid, but has always just wanted me to be myself. I remember what Amber said to me a few years ago, “You teach and create,” we’ll do the rest. Amber is a genius of the backend.

Today 500 people from around the world sit down three times a week to listen to poetry and write, making a connection with themselves and others on the page. Sometimes when I don’t think I’m doing enough to make this world a better place, I think about those writers trying to find something true to say, trying to find their home voice. That’s not nothing.

I thought celebration was going to look a little more like lighting a fire, and popping something open, but instead I’m on my porch, sitting in my dad’s old rocking chair, reading poems, listening to some old Jethro Tull, doing my job. I honestly wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Thank you to all the writers who have been with us these last five years, and to all my writer friends and poets who have walked this walk with me since the start, 25 years ago. These friendships alone are worth the entire celebration.