Writing about loss is one of the most powerful ways to move through grief.
Join authors Rebecca Woolf and Claire Bidwell Smith for a 3-week online program centered around writing about grief and loss. This experience is open to people who simply want to write to process and also those who are working towards books and publishing. Writing about loss gives us the opportunity to explore our stories and ourselves in profound ways. This program will teach you how to unlock your story, encourage you to write honestly about yourself and your experience, and provide powerful tools to develop a true and lasting writing practice.
THE LIVING GAZE: WRITING ABOUT GRIEF
A 3-week live, online course with Rebecca Woolf and Claire Bidwell Smith
Wednesdays: March 4, 11, 18
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm PT / 4:00 – 6:00 pm ET
Course Fee: $299
Payment plans may be available via Afterpay. Please proceed to checkout to see individual options.
Optional 2-hour Path to Publishing Add-On Workshop on March 25th (learn more below)
WHAT’S INCLUDED:
+ Three weekly 2-hour sessions where Claire & Rebecca share their in-depth knowledge + time for Q&A
+ A private online community where participants can connect and collaborate outside of class
+ Weekly exercises for self-reflection
+ Access to recordings of all sessions
+ A deeper understanding of yourself and your grief experience
WHO SHOULD JOIN?
Open to all, but here are a few ideas…
+ Seasoned writers working toward a book
+ Creatives seeking a supportive community
+ Anybody wanting to process loss through writing
+ Individuals who understand the pain of loss and want to create an intentional space to write about it
+ Those moving through grief who feel called to make meaning through writing
Registration closes at midnight on Sunday, March 1st.
Join our MAILING LIST to be the first to know when the next course is available.
Please reach out to kelsey@clairebidwellsmith.com with any questions.
“Claire and Rebecca host a smart, cathartic, charming, honest, and empowering virtual hug that is disguised as a class… Each homework assignment gets you to a raw, reflective, and meaningful place that helps you look at yourself with no regrets and eyes wide open. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself… These two are legends, ladies, and rock stars.” – Adrian
“Claire and Rebecca’s personal and professional honesty, their lived experience, writing skill, and tips and tricks for getting to the juiciest part of a story were invaluable for me—they directly addressed some of the specific struggles I was having. I learned a lot about publishing and memoir, and I really enjoyed the sense of sharing and community with the other writers. I would highly recommend this class.” – Sara K.
COURSE CURRICULUM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4TH:
Unlocking Your Story
Why do we feel called to write about our grief and where do we start with our stories? This week, we talk about how grief has informed us as people, as writers and we speak to the need so many of us have to share our stories. We speak to ghosts as muses and we talk about our own journeys toward writing grief memoirs, where we started and what we’ve learned from the experience.
The Living Gaze: How to Write Honestly About Ourselves and the People in Our Lives
The question we get most often is how do you write about people without hurting them? The answer is: you can’t. But it is possible to write honestly about people without judging them. Same goes for you as the memoirist: how do you write about your flaws without judgment? What are the parts of your story – of yourself you’re afraid of writing about? Writing honestly about your experience with others must also center your willingness to write honestly about yourself.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11TH:
Blood, Bones and Details
Everyone has a grief experience. What sets yours apart isn’t the death itself or even your relationship with the person you’re grieving, it’s in the details of who you were before them, who you were with them and who you are now. This week explores everything BUT the death. We explore memory. Love. Shame. Disappointment. We explore the moments in hospitals. In cars. Across rooms.
Exploring Structure & Paradigms
What does your story structure look like and why? Perhaps it ends abruptly, like the death that inspired it did. Or perhaps it’s a slow fade to black. Or perhaps it’s shaped like a house, with multiple bedrooms and an ending that takes us outside. Or perhaps, deeper into the basement… The structures of our stories are not always the same as the structure of our lives, so how do we reconcile that within our pages? In addition we’ll explore options for chapters, sections, lenses and themes.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18TH:
Navigating Tense
Tense in memoir is a powerful device that a memoirist must give thought to. Past or present? Can we mix and match? Must we even choose? If we are writing about grief there is SO MUCH intersection between past, present and future selves.
Developing an Effective Writing Practice
Claire and Rebecca discuss how we make time to write and how, even when we don’t have time to write, we write anyway. (For many of us, finding peace and quiet to write is impossible. Which is why creating space within the war and noise is so important.) We want to impart all the tricks and tools we’ve learned and used ourselves to create space in our lives to write.
Participants are encouraged to share with each other and offer feedback in our online community. Rebecca will be available for hire if anyone wants coaching through their memoir writing following the course.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25TH:
Add-on 2-hour Workshop: Path to Publishing ($99)
Agents, publishers, book proposals, and query letters. We dive into all of it and share every secret we know when it comes to getting a book published! Plus everyone who joins this workshop will receive a sample query letter and proposal template.
MEET THE INSTRUCTORS
Rebecca Woolf has worked as a personal essayist since her teens, contributing to numerous publications, websites and anthologies, most notably her own award-winning personal blog, Girl’s Gone Child, which attracted millions of unique visitors worldwide.
During the height of the mommy blog era, Woolf helped launch Babble.com where she served as one of their original three bloggers, under the title Straight from the Bottle and went on to write weekly columns for Mom.me and Quiet Revolution. Woolf’s essays have appeared on Refinery29, Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post, Parenting and more.
She currently authors the bi-weekly column Sex & the Single Mom on Romper.com and the braid newsletter on substack.She is also the author of Rockabye: From Wild to Child (Seal Press, 2008) and the newly released bestselling memoir, ALL OF THIS: a memoir of death and desire (Harper One, August 2022). She lives in Los Angeles with her son and three daughters. Learn more about Rebecca at RebeccaWoolf.com
Recognized as one of today’s foremost experts on grief, Claire Bidwell Smith, is a licensed therapist, international speaker, and the author of five books published in 22 countries. Led by her own experience in grief and fueled by her work in hospice and private practice, Claire strives to provide support for all kinds of people experiencing all kinds of loss.
Claire has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC, CNN, Scientific American, Goop, Oprah and many more outlets. Her most recent books Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief and Conscious Grieving have provided groundbreaking and transformative approaches to the process of grief. Learn more at ClaireBidwellSmith.com or by following @clairebidwellsmith on social media.
Find Rebecca’s books at RebeccaWoolf.com
Find Claire’s books at ClaireBidwellSmith.com
Refund Policy: Due to the nature of this course and access to recordings, we do not offer refunds once the course has begun. However, we know unexpected situations come up. If you experience a serious or unavoidable circumstance, reach out and we’ll do our best to help, typically by offering credit toward a future cohort.