This is a website for women (and staff working with women) in rehabs, shelters, hospitals, and prisons, who want to have a writing group and need simple, free information about how to have a group wherever you are right now. We all have stories and poems in us. We are born to story and song and we live our lives through them. You can start a group today with a few simple guidelines and exercises. Some writings are about kindness, some are about pain, some are simply a way to play or express anger, truth, and/or joy. Writing can help with healing, recovery, empowerment, education, and self knowledge.

In the menu, find tips for starting and running a group, ideas for keeping a writing notebook, and, an eight-week long set of exercises for your meetings. This is a free kit.  Feel free to download and to share. Not a cent is required. We only ask that if you have the time, you tell us a little bit about what worked and didn’t work for you (submit on the form below).  And, if you have any exercises of your own to suggest, let us know and we’ll include them. Writing lets you think about your stories in a different way, and it can help release pain that you hold inside. A person does not need to be educated or experienced to get things on a page and share them. Stories can be told through pictures, speaking, singing, or dancing as well (you’ll find most of the exercises here can be used for discussion or performance). Adapt what’s here to your uses. Don’t have funding for a journal?  Or a computer?  Write on scrap paper, paper towels, napkins. Write together. Encourage each other.

Be. Write. Thrive.