Hedgebrook - A Writing Retreat
Hedgebrook is a retreat for women-identified writers from around the world. I was honored to have an opportunity to spend a week on the 48-acre peaceful country property in a beautiful handcrafted cabin. I and two other writers were tucked away on Whidbey Island experiencing Radical Hospitality - a term that Hedgebrook coined and has a corner on the market. In addition to offering a secluded location for each of us to work on our projects, they also nourished our bodies through the lovingly prepared meals and attention to every last detail which felt honoring in every way - most notably for me, the care of the staff from the application process up until the final moment before I drove off site allowed me to settle into writing fearlessly.
Folks like Gloria Steinem, Alicia Garza, Ijeoma Oluo and Janet Mock have all enjoyed Hedgebrook - quite intimidating company! The other two writers in residence were no less intimidating, however and sense of Do I belong here? melted away as we settled into our routines, which included nightly dinners together and conversation around the fire. Tessa Hulls is a graphic artist who had already been on site for two weeks before I arrived. She is working on a graphic memoir entitled Feeding Ghosts. Her grandmother Sun Yi was a journalist in Shanghai and in 1949, the year of the Communist takeover, she had an affair with a Swiss diplomat and ended up a single mother raising a mixed-race bastard child while being persecuted by the Communist government. For those of you who are familiar with my life’s work, you can probably imagine that our conversations dove head first into topics of home, identity and belonging. My other residency-mate was Elmaz Abinador, the co-founder of VONA Voices and author of Children of the Roojme, A Family’s Journey from Lebanon, a book of poetry that chronicles three generations of immigrants battling dislocation and tradition.
As the eagles soared above, I wrote, then fed a couple drafts to the fire (that I built!) read My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem and napped to my hearts content. It was an experience that I will not soon forget.