Broad Street is a nonprofit magazine featuring great true stories told in many different ways. At Broad Street, we hope to create an engaging platform where writing, poetry, and artwork can come together in one space to be enjoyed both by longtime fans of creative nonfiction and by those who are new to this exciting form. We are always looking for more talent to feature in the magazine, so if you have an interesting piece of writing or art please feel free to submit through Tell it Slant.
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Broad Street hopes to create engaging platforms. . .
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Write about a gift. . . Prompt #119
Part 1: Write about a gift someone gave you that you didn’t like, didn’t know what to do with or had no use for.Part 2: What does this gift say about the person who gave it to you?
Whenever there is a prompt like this, you can also write about the opposite.Part 1A: Write about a gift you loved, a gift that was a surprise in a good way, a gift that worked really well.
Part 1B: What does this gift say about the person who gave it to you?
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Guest Blogger Ted A. Moreno . . . and the jewels deep within.
Today’s Guest Blogger, hypnotherapist Ted A. Moreno, writes about reflection and the passage of time . . .We’re still enjoying 80 degree temps here in Southern California. But it’s obvious that fall has arrived and that summer is on its way south.
Can you feel it? The morning chill, the early darkness, the long shadows of late afternoon. Leaves releasing themselves for the slow descent to the ground.
Autumn has always been my favorite time of year. Something about the shorter days and chillier nights make me pensive, perhaps because I was a winter baby.
For me, this is a time of introspection, of going within. It’s as if the fading fall light casts a different perspective that makes me take a step back to examine my life.
I’m getting more present to the fading away of a younger me. Remembrances of younger days seem to be visiting me lately. Not only the good times but the tough times.
At this stage of the game, they show up now only as fleeting images that seem to have no relevance anymore. They are dead, and increasingly, less useful to me.
Maybe the reason they come is to be released, to say goodbye.
(You may know that the title of today’s post is from the movie, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” You may also know that November 1st is Dia de Los Muertos, Day of the Dead.)
Like the fall and regrowth of the leaves every year, a human life is a cycle of bringing in and letting go, taking in and releasing, expansion and contraction.
Perhaps one of the more powerful things one can do at this time of transition is to see what no longer has life, bless it, and release it on its way.
Whether the dead are memories, beliefs, or ways of being that are no longer vital to who we are today, we can trust that letting them go is part of the very process of life, even if that letting go forces us to feel.
Let the passage of time wash away what needs to be cleansed. Weep if you must for what is dead and passed but let it go, you can’t hold the tide.
Stay awake and present during this time of coming darkness. The light of your awareness can allow you to see what the receding tide of time leaves uncovered: the jewels deep within.
Like the tide, feelings will also come and go. The happiness or sadness you felt back then is gone and dead. Why try to revive it?
What we can do is stand, fully rooted in our awareness and aliveness, and watch as the swirl of time and circumstance and people and feelings flow around us.
Note from Marlene: If you want to work on an aspect of your life that you think hypnotherapy might help . . . writer’s block? can’t sleep? anxiety? fears? . . . Ted A. Moreno is your hypnotherapy-guy-to-go-to. (Whoa. . . Say that three times!). He lives and works in Southern California and does extraordinary hypnotherapy over the phone.
Ted A. Moreno is a hypnotherapist, success performance coach, published author, educator and sought-after speaker who helps his clients become free from fear and anxiety, procrastination and bad habits such as smoking.
He is a Certified Hypnotherapist, Certified NLP Practitioner, and holds the Master Certification as a Therapeutic Imagery Facilitator. Ted is an Honors Graduate of the Hypnosis Motivation Institute and a recipient of the Director’s Award from HMI, awarded for exceptional professional achievement during clinical residency. Ted’s book, “The Ultimate Guide to Letting Go of Negativity and Fear and Loving Life” is available on Amazon.com.
Originally content from Ted A. Moreno’s October 28, 2014 newsletter.
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Challenging situation. . . Prompt #118
Sometimes you don’t know how you will act when faced with a difficult or a life threatening situation . . . until you are in the throes of it. Write about a time you were in a challenging situation. Use sensory detail.
OR: Write about one of your fears. . . from a fictional character’s point of view. . . write about “the worst thing that can happen” . . . then, have your hero or heroine conquer the problem. Ready? Set? Okay. . . think about one of your fears that just won’t go away. Bring your character to life with those fearful thoughts and emotions. Now write. Just write!This is similar to Prompt #47. . . only this time, have your character kick butt.
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“The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer . . .”
“The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting. . . . Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.” — Sol Stein -
The Christian Science Monitor accepts personal essay, poems and more . . .
The Christian Science Monitor is an independent international news organization that delivers thoughtful, global coverage. “We want to inspire people to think about what they’ve read long after they’ve left the page. To share what they’ve learned with others. And to do something that makes a difference.”
The Home Forum section of The Christian Science Monitor is looking for upbeat, personal essays from 400 to 800 words. “We also welcome short poems. All material must be original and previously unpublished. For seasonal material, be aware that if you submit something that is about a particular month, holiday, event (back to school, graduation), or season, we need to receive it a minimum of six weeks ahead.”
Essays:
These are first-person, nonfiction explorations of how you responded to a place, a person, a situation, an event, or happenings in everyday life. Tell a story; share a funny true tale. The humor should be gentle.
Essays are accepted on a wide variety of subjects.
CS is always looking for essays on travel, parenting (your experiences with children), home, family, gardening, neighborhood, and community.
Poetry:
Poetry that appears in The Home Forum explores and celebrates life. It provides a respite from the bleakness that appears in so much contemporary verse. Of particular interest: poetry that has an international flavor or that offers some global or cultural insights. Short poems are more likely to be accepted (because of space constraints) than poems that are more than 18 lines long.
Submissions are accepted only by e-mail, one poem per e-mail; no more than 5 poems submitted at one time. In order to preserve line breaks and indents, you may want to consider using a Microsoft Word attachment. (We are not able to open any other attachments. If you don’t use Word, please paste the text into the e-mail.)
Click here for Contributor Guidelines.Click here for copyright and terms of acceptance.
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An epiphany . . . Prompt #117
* “An epiphany is a sudden realization of a significant event. At that special moment, a life meaning becomes clear to you —an insight into your personality, a discovery of something you value or believe in, an acute sense of where you are in life.
Here’s an Epiphany Tale one elder told to her family:
I must have been around seven or eight. It was summer, and we were visiting my aunt Clara up at Crystal Lake. I was alone, lying on my back by the banks of the lake, looking up at the sky, and I had my harmonica in my mouth. I was just breathing through it, in and out, not playing a melody, simply breathing. And suddenly, I was overcome with this wonderful feeling of connection to everything in the world. I’d say now it was a spiritual feeling. I listened to the sound my breathing made through that harmonica, and I thought, I am part of the noise of the world. I am part of everything . . . I’ve had that feeling again, from time to time, throughout my life — a certainty that I am part of the universe —but that was my first time. I think that knowledge is one reason I’ve never found the idea of dying very frightening.”Your turn: Write about an epiphany you or your fictional character has had.
* Excerpt: From Family Tales, Family Wisdom — How to gather the stories of a lifetime and share them with your family, by Dr. Robert U. Akeret with Daniel Klein
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Guest Blogger Jean Grant-Sutton and glorious messy imperfections
Guest Blogger Jean Grant-Sutton writes:This time of year I am reminded so pertinently of the glorious messy imperfection of life.
I see it in an amass of leaves on the ground that are so exquisitely beautiful in their array of color, but they make for a lot of clean up and clutter in the yard.
Great in the compost to make nutritious soil — glad for that.
I take comfort in reality.
Life is made up of much glorious messy imperfection.
I feel like I’m one of them
And I continue to practice acceptance for that.
It takes courage to be imperfect.
Click here for a great article by Roger Allen on this topic. I hope you enjoy it.
Integrative Yoga Therapist, Jean Grant-Sutton loves to share writings that stem from an understanding of life based on the ancient art and science of Yoga. She writes to connect and relate with others about the journey of being a human being.
Jean Grant-Sutton ERYT/1000, CMT is a teacher and educator of yoga. She is currently the Yoga Program Director at P.O.S.T. Wellness by Design in Petaluma Ca. Her many years of practice and experience as a retreat leader, studio owner and director of teacher trainings award her the talent to construct transformative experiences in her classes. She skillfully brings depth, clarity, ease, and joy to this ancient bodywork practice. Click here for more information about Jean Grant-Sutton and yoga integrative therapy.
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Art connects us.
“It’s a very deep experience for so many people to read ‘Wild’ and feel what they feel, because of course they’re not feeling it about my life, but about their own. And that’s what art does. It reminds us that we are more alike than different and that our common humanity connects us really profoundly.” — Cheryl Strayed, author of “Wild.”
