About a week ago I received an email from our Women Rowing North Alumni Writing Group facilitator, Helen. It outlines our writing pathway for the newest session that will begin in September and run until June. On Helen’s website, Ageless Possibilities, she explains that the framework of our sessions are “based on Guided Autobiography (GAB), an evidence-based method for helping people document their life stories. Women Rowing North: Writing Our Life Stories explores weekly themes and offers activities and writing prompts to help you write your life stories.”  That’s what we do. We write stories, women’s stories that spring from joy, pain, curiosity, uncertainty, and strength.

This time around I notice there are more familiar names on the participant list that Helen shared in the email. It seems a bit odd to call these women my “friends,” since I have never met any of them in person. But friends they are to me, nonetheless. Well, maybe more than friends – there is a kind of sisterhood that forms among women who write about their lives then read their stories aloud to each other openly, vulnerably, bravely. I cannot wait to reconvene in September. Twice a month as we gather, we transform from squares on a screen to a kindred community, joining together in the Keeping Room. 

You know what it’s like when something in your inbox feels like it came to save your life? I don’t think that email could’ve come at a better time. Since our last alumni session in June, I have been so lost without the writing routines with this group of women and the sound of their voices – voices with sonorous Canadian accents, voices as delicate as wind chimes, voices that sound like conversation over coffee. In our sessions, we chat and catch up, then we read our pieces out loud. The voices of these women are voices of strong conviction. They are voices that sometimes crack with sadness and pain and sometimes the emotion is just a whisper. These are also voices of triumph and joy. These voices provoke laughter and sometimes they unleash unexpected tears. These are women’s voices that speak their prose like poetry. Their voices are at times prayers of atonement and of thanksgiving, and sometimes celebrations of awe and wonder. Our story ideas come to us in different ways, yet they still bond us together as women. They may come while we’re watering the garden, putting a grandchild to bed, reading a novel, reliving painful memories before falling asleep, perusing old journals, listening to a podcast, painting a watercolor, having conversations over coffee or wine, or during an evening stroll when a breeze hits just the right way. 

These women I have come to know over time through their writing voices have found each other through Helen and via diverse pathways and even international routes. Some are still working, some are retired, some are world travelers, and some occupy the space of their backyard gardens or wander the forest. Some are artists, some are grandmothers, and all of them are my teachers in that I have learned so much from their stories.

When I first met some of these women a few years ago, I worried I wouldn’t fit in. Some of them were friends who had written together in some of Helen’s previous groups.  Perhaps some of them wrote together and then became friends; that was my hope. And that is what happened for me. Yes, I will call these women my friends. 

In her book, The Writing Life, Annie Dillard wrote, “When you write, you lay out a line of words.” When we are fortunate enough to write in a community of women’s voices, we lay down a lifeline. We write about ourselves in stories that begin with us as the mature female lead characters, examining varied experiences in our lives, reflecting, exploring the significance of certain events, and analyzing fleeting back pages. Sometimes we are stopped cold and confronted by buried emotions and blinding insights. The feelings are often bigger than we thought they’d be. Helen reminds us that “guided autobiography is not therapy, but it can feel therapeutic.”  It certainly has been for me, and I suspect for all the women in the group. 

The voices of the women who read aloud their deeply personal stories bring laughter, tears, questions, kudos, and often a silence that is understood by us all. Together, we welcome joy, endure pain, and look forward to a time in the future when we will once again hear each other’s voice. And ultimately, we will more deeply understand and appreciate the universality of women’s voices as they give testament to the immeasurable value of women’s life stories.