Workshops with Partner Organizations
I offer writing workshops through partner organizations like Amherst Writers & Artists and CancerCare Manitoba.
Learn more about my work with Amherst Writers & Artists’ Power of Story, CancerCare Manitoba, and health professionals and medical learners.
Register for current offerings through the partner organization website.
The Art of Loss
SERIES: The Art of Loss (4 Weeks)
(with Susan Wingert & Karen Rosenberg)
Thursdays
1:00 pm to 3:00 pm Eastern Time
October 1, 8, 15, & 22
Zoom
Cost: $80 USD
Grief touches every life, yet it can be difficult to speak about. Our daily social interactions may not have a place where talking about what is so present for us feels welcome.
But when we write about our losses in an AWA method workshop, we begin to uncover the strength, wisdom, and tenderness that live within those losses. This workshop is an invitation to turn toward your grief with curiosity and courage, to find words for what matters most, and to discover how your stories can bring comfort and connection. Together, we will create a community where each voice is valued and where writing becomes a powerful path toward recovery and renewal.
Workshops in the AWA method have been demonstrated to reduce isolation and loneliness through capturing and sharing stories with an affinity group of writers who share similar challenges.
In these workshops, participants will have a chance to deepen their writing in community.
For 2 hours, we will write to prompts with invitations to share, listen, and give strengths-based feedback on what has been shared.
Need-Based Assistance:
No one will be turned away because of financial challenges. If you cannot afford the workshop fee, this event does have a limited number of bursary-supported registrations available. You are invited to move forward with registration by selecting the "Bursary" ticket level; if all slots have already filled, please search for an alternate event with bursary slots available, or email powerofstory@amherstwriters.org if you still have questions.
What Time Has Given: Exploring the Gifts and Challenges of Aging
What Time Has Given: Exploring the Gifts and Challenges of Aging
with Brenda L. Johnson & Susan Wingert
When: Monday, October 19, from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm EDT
Cost: $20 USD
About the Workshop
What has your body learned that your younger self could not have imagined?
What have you lost—and what have you quietly gained?
Where have you become invisible, and where have you never been more yourself?
What truths are asking to be spoken now, before they harden into silence?
This writing workshop invites women to write into the tender, complicated territory of aging—not as a problem to solve, but as a landscape to enter.
Through carefully shaped prompts and unhurried writing time, we’ll explore the textures of this age: the griefs that arrive without ceremony, the freedoms that come when certain expectations finally loosen their grip, the ways time sharpens both longing and clarity.
We will write:
About the body as it is now.
About memory, inheritance, anger, tenderness, and relief.
About what no longer fits—and what, at last, does.
You don’t need polished stories or answers.
You don’t need to be brave in advance.
You only need to be willing to listen for what this season of life is asking you to tell.
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Health professionals and learners often confess that they were really nervous going into the workshop. Afterward, they report that the supportive and encouraging environment and complete control over their creative expression gave them the courage to open up and write. In the end, they say the workshop was something they really needed. As one family physician said, “We should create more opportunities to get together and only say nice things about each other.” Some use the writing time to explore the difficult things they have carried for a long time. Some write to reconnect with the reasons they went into healthcare and the ways in which they derive meaning and satisfaction from their practice. Some connect with their (often neglected) life and identity outside of healthcare. Experienced writers will often use their writing time to make headway on their works-in-progress. Through the practice of writing, important clinical skills related to observation, interpretation, point-of-view, verbal and non-verbal communication, empathy, and stress management are strengthened.
I have created workshops for courses, academic half days, wellness and appreciation days, and professional development seminars. Each workshop is customized to the group and their needs and goals.
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This writing group is open to current and former patients of CancerCare Manitoba. The workshops gave those who had experienced cancer a place to share their story, rewrite or recast it, and begin new chapters as they moved through and out of treatment.
The next session begins October 2, 2026.
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The Power of Story is an initiative of Amherst Writers & Artists that brings the power of creative writing to groups whose voices are too often unheard or discounted. There are workshops for people experiencing grief and loss, living with invisible disabilities and chronic illness, who are or have been caregivers, teachers, and women going through the joys and challenges of aging.
Learn more about the Power of Story.