"I Began to Notice" by Jordyn Fitch

I began to notice 

I began to notice the trees

I began to notice the trees and the frost on sloping hills and I learned I needed to pump the brakes and pump the brakes to avoid skidding off the road and into their snowy embrace.

I began to notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the one way roads without street lights as I cruised through the dark abyss, eyes flicking up and down and back and forth as I checked the location of my wife on my phone, wondering if she made it home safe. Was she alive?  Or would I have to drive around on this dark lonely road until I found her lifeless, beaten body discarded in a frost covered ravine? 

I began to notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the dark, dank one way roads and the pick up trucks with thin blue lines that would beam me into oblivion with their high beams as they speed around and past me too quickly to notice I could barely see the road through my tears. 

I began to notice how often I think about death. Dying. I am dying. I am dying here in this place. I am afraid and unsafe and perhaps I am already gone. Will this be the day my body swallows AR bullets at the queer dance night at Babes Bar? Will today be the day I rush my whole world to the ER with oozing, gaping wounds imbued by a stranger with fists full of hatred? Fists and kicks and punches and lunges full of the politicized rhetoric gleaned from endless news cycles where our bodies– freed of the binary, are their favourite subject. Their dirty little obsession.

I can’t help but notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the pumping of the brakes and how awful it feels to live in this idyllic northeast kingdom.

— This piece is dedicated to Nex Benedict 2008-2024 

Gary MillerComment
"It Was a Substitute" by Anonymous

It was a substitute
For compassion
For empathy
For tolerance
For love
For reality
It was a substitute
For happiness
For contentment
For friendship
For connection
It was a substitute
For doing the work
For getting it together
For looking in the mirror
It was a substitute
And now it’s gone
Someone please
Recommend a substitute for my substitute
Because i need one now more than ever

Gary MillerComment
"When It's Going Right," by Anonymous

When it’s going right Write
When it’s going well, Write
When it’s going wrong, Write
When you've got it all figured out, Write
When you just can’t take it anymore, Write
When you hate him, Write
When you love him, Write
When you wish he was here, Write
When you want to scream, Write
When you want to cry, Write
When you want to die, Write
When you want her to die, Write
When you regret everything, Write
When you regret nothing, Write
When you couldn’t be happier, Write
When you couldn’t be angrier, Write
When you don’t know what you feel, Write
When it’s going just right, Just Write.

Gary MillerComment
"How to Solve It" by Rover

I mean all problems have solutions right?

All theories should be falsifiable.

But do all problems have solutions?

Does a problem with no observer behave differently in the absence of observation?

Is there an answer to every question?

You see,

I’ve been chipping away at my shoulder for a long time, my baggage ripping rotator cuffs.

When I hear the city speak it shows its true intentions, but it speaks in the cadence of family. Each time I try to find a way to get this curse out of my blood I’m left bloodied and bereft. The indignities an addict suffers on a minute to minute basis is enough to want to keep one’s head down, cap peak held low, hood up in a don’t speak to me, just let me die in peace, don’t watch me kill myself, avert your eves unless it’s to give a passing hello, just let me be alone in public because I can’t stand to be alone, alone.

Gary MillerComment
"It Came Out of Nowhere," by Anonymous

It came out of nowhere, My Rage
that’s what I always say, afterwards
and I believe it
it certainly SEEMS true
when I explode over the smallest things
did it REALLY come out of nowhere?
or has it been brewing?
truth is, it’s always brewing
I'm on a hair trigger
and I don’t know how to take my finger off of it
I wish I could unload the gun
but it appears I have infinite ammo
I need a reverse cheat code
down down up up right left right left A B start
nope, that didn’t work
as expected
nothing works
“just choose to be happy”, they say
“they” always being someone who’s never had an angry thought in their life
sure, thanks Becky
why didn’t I think of that simplistic and unrealistic solution?
empty advice from a vapid mind
always something that’s been suggested a million previous times
and never works
yet that all think they’re saying something groundbreaking
“why don’t you just”
the rally cry of the heartless

Gary MillerComment
"Nowhere?" by Desiree

It came out of nowhere. 
What was it this time? 
It hasn’t been so fair.
Also ended feeling confined. 
Or maybe it’s just this time,
That is the source I find. 
I’m still not sure of where,
Or who, or what or how. 
Though I struggle with the insincere
I’m bracing for what’s coming now. 
Come out of nowhere already, 
Come out and seek what you find. 
I wouldn’t say yet that I’m ready,
But yet I still showed up somehow.
Are you going to show up? 

Shit! Ya, no - 

I wasn’t ready after all. 

Not at all.

Gary MillerComment
"What Happened ... Michigan Ocean" by Nick

One second I’m standing in the musk of the basement dropping a shirt into the dirty pile, as it snaps…This is not the me, I want anymore… instantly my bare feet are in cold wet grass then slapping leaf covered pavement. All the way to the sticky sand littering the beach. The cold of the water rushes around me. It's rough. I turn to push against the waves.  Fighting the waves to get where my feet no longer touch, beyond where I can touch and feel…this.

Cold lake water fills my mouth as the waves spin me over and over and over… Blacking Out I feel the sharpness of the breakwater’s rocks beating me. Flogging me… I guess the ocean didn’t want me today. … Bloodied I lay there… Well I guess that happened.

Gary MillerComment
"Untitled" by Jeffrey Morse

Place the embers

cooled and ready

Ring the quiet in

List the ways you need and wany

and yes

I will listen to you

dear one

Wonder from the clothed fortress

naked on the inside

Sing the wandering feather’s

promise

Just reach out from the

kitchen table

set for a hopeful two

Bless me and bring Amen

Gary MillerComment
Lullaby Project Concert September 22!!

Hi, Everyone!

For the past year, WFR has been working with Scrag Mountain Music and Vermont Network to help new moms write amazing lullabies for their children and grandchildren. Now it’s showtime! Please join us on September 22 at 5:30 PM at the Capital City Grange in Berlin, Vermont for a community art project and lullaby concert. All the details are below. Don’t miss this amazing FREE concert. Advance reservations are encouraged at www.scragmountainmusic.org.

Gary

    

Friday, September 22, 2023

Capital City Grange

6612 VT Route 12 Berlin, VT 05602

5:30 – 6:30 pm & post-concert: Community Art Project

6:30 pm~: Concert

(Marshfield, VT, August 14, 2022) – Scrag Mountain Music, together with Healing Together, a project of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and Writers for Recovery present Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert, a program of beautiful and heartwarming songs created with moms and caretakers in our community through the Lullaby Project. The celebratory event also includes a special community art project for all ages. This concert marks the culmination of four Lullaby Project workshops held this year together with Vermont Network advocacy partners Umbrella, Inc., Voices Against Violence,

Outright Vermont, Kids-A-Part (a program of LUND), and DIVAS (a program of The Network). Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert is on Friday, September 22 at 5:30 pm (community art project) and 6:30 pm (concert) at the Capital City Grange 6612 VT Route 12 Berlin, VT 05602. . This concert is free of charge with advanced reservations encouraged at www.scragmountainmusic.org.

Healing Together: A Lullaby Project Celebration Concert showcases a dozen or more new lullabies created in our community this year, performed by a band of esteemed musicians including: Mary Bonhag (soprano), Evan Premo (double bass), Marianne Donahue Perchlik (guitar, Celtic harp, vocals), David Ruffin (vocals), Colin McCaffrey (guitar, mandolin, fiddle), and Andric Severance (piano). Before and immediately following the concert, audience members will have the opportunity to participate in a special community art project inspired by the original lyrics of these lullabies.

Gary MillerComment
T.W. Wood Gallery Features Works by Incarcerated Artists

“Self Portrait” by Idle

Montpelier was seriously knocked down by the July flood. But if you travel there now through September 22, 2023, you can view a wonderful exhibit of art created by incarcerated people in the West Virginia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Inside Out: IncARceraTion features drawings, paintings sculptures and other art created by incarcerated folks, along with audio narration by a young man (and current Goddard College student) who was formerly incarcerated there. Beautiful, emotion, and stark in their truth, the pieces presented provide an often lacking insight into the nature of incarceration and the people who live it, as well as the ability of creative expression to improve incarcerated peoples’s circumstances.

Be sure to see this important exhibit if you can. And stay tuned for collaboration between WFR and the folks who organized the exhibit!

For about the exhibit, click here.

Gary MillerComment
"Shifting," by Desiree

With every step that we all take something shifts. 

In me. In them. In you. 
Sometimes we feel it. Some of us don’t. 
But every person is impacted, and something shifts in the world and in each world each person lives. 
Whether or not they feel it. 
I’m tuning in. 
I’m reconnecting and with every step, I connect deeper with myself, 
I step away and disconnect more from what I thought was important. 
And it is, in a very different way than I felt it was important. 
It’s like unconditional love that doesn’t mean unconditional tolerance, nor unconditional capacity...
Every step has taught me everything comes with limits. 
Although my love can shift with everything else, it’s a weird place to have that remain unconditional, 
but what does it really matter when it’s all dependent on the definition? 
Up to the interpretation of each and every person. 
So as I said, every step shifts something. 
Do you feel it? 
Do you even care? 
Maybe that’s what matters more. 
What do you care about? 
What’s most important? 

Gary MillerComment
In Memory of Leslie Bonnette

We are sad to share the news of the passing of longtime WFR participant Leslie Bonnette, who died on June 29, 2023 at the home she shared with her husband Thomas in Shelburne, VT.

I’m not sure, but it’s quite possible that Leslie attended our first ever official WFR workshop session at the old Turning Point in Burlington. If she didn’t, she showed up soon after, bringing a wonderful writing style, a fearless approach to the written word, and a lovely sense of kindness. Leslie participated in our very first public reading at Burlington’s ECHO center on Recovery Day in September, 2014. The people who were lucky enough to hear her were undoubtedly stunned by the beauty and intensity of work like “What I Have Recovered,” which I include below.

Leslie was a proud child of the 60s and a huge music fan. Later on, she shared some of her drawings, and I learned that she was a talented artist as well. That she did so many things so well is a testament to her personal strength; she successfully escaped an abusive relationship in her early years, and fought mightily for her recovery through a number of setbacks.

If there is one thing I will remember Leslie for, it was her crows. She told great stories about the birds who visited her and brought her gifts, no doubt because she fed them so well. Every time I saw her, I was sure to ask about the crows, and it always made her smile. I hope wherever she is now, they can find her and brighten her day. We send our condolences to Thomas and the rest of Leslie’s friends and family.

“What I Have Recovered,” by Leslie Bonnette

I have recovered

A shattering of shards

Spiritual pieces of myself

Recovered from compulsion,

Never knowing what it was

That hole so deep it was unfillable

No matter how and what I tried

I tried to recover

From the digging of that hole

I tried again and again and again

And now I feel full of awe and joy fleetingly

But I feel.

That’s what I’ve recovered.

Gary MillerComment
"Currently," by Desiree

The current took me. 
The current conditions were turbulent rapids that thrashed and splashed. 
Saturating everything in its wake.
Eroding just for eroding sake. 
Meaningless reasoning considering the substantial damage.
Waiting and braving the storm all around me. 
All these forces exerting their power over me. 
So of course I let the current take me. 
Take me away. 
Take me anywhere else but here. 

Gary MillerComment
"Safely Silent Screaming" by Desiree

I had it locked away. 
I couldn’t use it. 
I couldn’t even access it anymore. 
It was buried and covered so deeply. 
There are still subtle vibrations and echoes, 
   when things get really still. 
But it just feels like an earthquake. 
Rumbling underneath me. 
My feet shifting and destabilizing me,
   more than I already have been,
   stumbling around from this already uneven ground. 
I shake and stir and rebalance
   in whatever contorted position is required to keep a level perspective. 
Can’t slip up. 
Not allowed to react or be affected by all of the injustices everywhere. 
It’s not safe to fix. 
It’s not safe to resolve. 
It’s not even safe to make it known or shed light on it. 
And that’s exactly why it’s been long locked away. 
                                                                                                My voice. 
She wants to change this for everyone, but it would kill us - 
   before we could truly deliver any of this healing she’s screaming for. 

Gary MillerComment
"I got distracted..." and "It happens all the time," two poems by Nick

“I got distracted…”

 It was raining hard as we drove through the early winter night to the show. She could barely see the lane markers as she has terrible night vision. I said she should pull over so I can drive since my eyes are ridiculously sensitive to light. As we continued on down the soaked and cold highway she put her hand on my right arm as it gripped the shifter. I could feel her warmth through the thin fabric of my hoodie. The way she rubbed my arm, gripped my thigh. We were soon pulled over on a farming back road. Collapsed upon each other. In the cramped back seat of her coupe, I wanted to stay there forever. As we held each other, I never wanted to let her go. She felt like the answer to my every physical need. I got distracted.



“It happens all the time…”

 Heart beating, nostrils flared, I could feel the warmth of my blood throughout my body, her body, welcome to now. Is this it? All you get is now. I wanted to stay in this moment with her forever, I never was one before this. Is this like singularity or something…? Happens all the time I guess.

 

Gary MillerComment
"Closer to Myself," by Yoda Olinyk

I'm getting closer 

to good health,

to financial freedom, 

to all the promises—

 

but somehow I don't feel 

sane. My addiction

counselor says I'm in 

the maintenance stage 

and doesn't she know 

that maintaining my sobriety 

is scarier than literally anything 

I've ever done and I've done 

some crazy scary shit. I heard 

 

in a meeting last week 

that in sobriety, we have to find 

a way to feel comfortable 

with the middle ground—

when we are just a regular human 

waiting patiently in line 

at the grocery store 

to buy our 12-seed-bread

and not hiding out 

in the back seat of a stranger's 

car after stealing someone's 

wallet from a party we weren't 

even invited to. It's in the middle 

 

where we find serenity— not in the ups

or downs of the roller coaster life we knew.

In that middle, that maintenance stage,

it feels like 

I've flatlined.

I can barely remember the rush 

that used to keep me alive. 

I'm getting farther from that 

old version which means 

 

I'm getting closer to everything else.

Closer to myself 

and can you think of anything 

more terrifying?

 

Gary MillerComment
"Dear heart" and "I Still," two poems by Desiree

Dear heart, 
I’m sorry. And thank you. For everything. For withstanding all of the heartache you’ve endured. For the weight you’ve carried and felt. For the neglect you experienced and withstood it all and stayed kind. You stayed warm when you were thrown nothing but shards of ice. I’ve wanted you to get hard. I’ve wanted to you turn cold. I’ve wanted to build up walls for you and guard you because we can both feel the toll you’ve taken in this life. Yet your strength is profound. You have melted everything I’ve ever started because you’ve known what I could never be sure of. You knew love was the key. The answer. The way. You know that kindness and compassion and love and support and care is what will heal us all, even if we specifically won’t live to see it all the way through. We’ve lived it enough to know it’s true, yet I still doubt it. You never have doubted it. And I appreciate you for staying true whenever I falter. You’ve saved me in all of the senses that exist. I will work with you best I can and we will save whatever we can of this mess called life. 
xo

-Desiree

__________

I Still

I still expected to hurt. I still expected to bleed. As long as I expect to keep breathing, I still expect to keep aching. I’ve ridden most expectations I’ve held of others, after falling accustomed to them falling short. That’s not what hurts me. That’s not what makes it hard to breathe. So much so it's as if every particle of oxygen instantly evaporates from all around me. 
Internally. Externally. Suddenly. Just as any spark and hope and life evaporates right along with it. Poof. Gone. Even then, the will sometimes goes away too and I’m left - not even gasping for air. No longer fighting for a chance. 

It’s a lifeless gaze with an empty stillness and a full-bodied but fragmented frozen nothingness. 

And it all just sits in this momentary wasteland. My pulse becoming the only sensation, movement, and existence that remains. The body’s rendition of the tick tock of a clock, a metaphorical timer with it’s own innate pressure and pace.
Counting itself down to breaking point. Pushing until my body kicks back in, as I learned I could expect it to. But it’s still subtle. Almost unnoticeable. 

Giving only the bare minimum because it’s already been given away and taken from. 

I’ve done so much that I can’t expect myself to be able to do it all. I’ve resuscitated so many others not so that I could expect it back. 
I can’t expect perfection. I can’t expect reciprocation. I still can't even expect respect. 

Realistically, I can’t expect much. So I still expect to hurt. 

Gary MillerComment
"Listen" by Desiree

Will you listen to me? I’m going to propose that question again. Will you listen to me? What more do I have to do? What more do I need to prove? Why can’t it be enough? Why can’t I be heard? Is it about not understanding? Is it about my tone or word choice or timing? 

You won’t listen to me so maybe if I just keep asking questions, I’ll eventually get enough answers to be able to communicate your way, and maybe, just maybe – we might be able to get somewhere with all of this. It’s getting old staying stuck here in all of this. I’m getting tired of working so hard for all of this when you don’t at all. 

Why did I want you to listen to me so badly? Not a single idea anymore, so instead, I will listen to myself. I will listen to my will to leave this behind. 

Gary MillerComment
WFR Honored with the Jack Barry Award

Bess and Gary are pleased and proud to announce that they and Writers for Recovery have been honored with the 2023 Jack Barry Award! The award is given at Vermont’s statewide Recovery Day each year by Recovery Vermont for excellence in recovery communication and advocacy, And the fact that the reward was presented by our friend Ed Baker, an amazing communicator and advocate (and a former winner of the Jack Barry Award) made our day doubly thrilling. Thanks so much to Recovery Vermont and everyone who has made WFR possible, including everyone who’s ever joined a group, shared a story, or support WFR through their donations. THANK YOU!!

Gary MillerComment
In Memory of Pat Murray

It is with great sadness that I learned about the passing of longtime friend of WFR Pat Murray. If I remember right, Pat and her lovely wife Jen showed up at the very first WFR session at the Turning Point Recovery Center. Like everyone else, Pat was new to this writing process. But like I suspect she did throughout her life, she jumped in with enthusiasm, good humor, and kindness.

From that first session, Pat gave generously with her time, her comments on other people’s work, and by sharing her story for the benefit of others working their recoveries. Like many in recovery, she had a hard story to tell, but she also wrote lovingly about her childhood, her life with Jen, and the crazy world we all live in. She shared her work in public readings, and proved every bit as charming and good-natured onstage as she was off. And throughout her long illness, she exuded the positive outlook and the care for others that she was known for.

Pat had many friends in the recovery community, who I’m sure will miss her greatly. Bess, Deb, and I are thinking fondly of Pat, and sending our love to Jen in this hard time. Pat, thanks for making our lives better.

Here’s Pat’s “I Am From” poem, which I have shared at countless opening workshops sessions. People always enjoy it, and I hope you will, too.

I Am From

by Pat Murray

I am from Italian streets, baked bread with a hard crust and a soft center.


I am from a breezy shore, sand and sun, endless days and nights of summer. 

I am from a thousand heartaches and a hundred tears, searching for a place called home.


I am from laughter and joy and sorrow and pain and back again.


I am from a town called old fashioned and a city called wild.


I am from a long lost time forgotten in memory,

too hard to remember, too painful to forget.

Gary Miller Comment