A Celebration To Love

  Celebrating with Ruth Ayres at Discover Play Build.  and linking with others who share their celebrations, too. I am grateful to Ruth for helping us celebrate together!  

from Madeleine L'Engle
       "Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving."

       I spent this past week until Thursday at the Highlights Barn for The Craft and Heart of Writing Poetry for Children workshop with Georgia Heard, Rebecca Kai Dotlich and a group of old friends and also new ones. That old song kept flying through my mind about keeping old friends and making new ones-one silver and the other gold. How in four days such special connections are made is a wonder to me. I wrote with some of the group three years ago and was thrilled to be with them again. I've met some at teacher conventions, but most I know through their blogging, thus, their stories! Today I celebrate stories, and those willing to share them during this oh, so brief, time. They shared them when they shared their poems for response, how the poems came to "be" in their lives, and what they meant to them. They shared at meals, on the paths as we walked and talked, then talked some more, telling about our lives, where and when and how and why.  I heard highs and lows from family and work and struggles still happening, as well as those from the past. Stories make who we are, and I was honored to hear them. 



        I know that many of you celebrate story and I know you through that sharing, too. And, you help your students celebrate them, too. What gifts we give when that sharing happens! Whether happy or sad, the layers of our lives sit in those words.