music to my ears

The woman who comes to the writing workshop at the shelter… reluctant and angry and aggressive. There’s always one. Today it’s J. She’s all that and contrary too. Every question is met with a NO. Or a “What do you mean by that?” She’s a brick wall, doesn’t want to be there, that much is obvious. Also not a surprise. Most people don’t want to be there. But we plod on. We write about honey and curtains and beaches and how somebody’s grandfather offered them a cigarette at the age of four and somebody else who remembers a coat given to them as a gift when they first came to Canada and had no idea how cold it would get and how this leads to conversation and connection between the women that would never have happened otherwise, not the same way, and somewhere near the end of the workshop J says, out of the blue, “I’m really glad I came to this. There’s a lot I don’t want to think about right now, but this made me think stuff I haven’t thought about in a long time, and it was okay… it makes me want to write again,” and this is music to my ears. When someone discovers that writing doesn’t mean ‘writing about pain’… that we’re all so much more than that. So much more.