During this 2-hour workshop, we’ll use prompts to access the wonder, creativity, and imagination of the child within. With compassionate awareness, we’ll also tend to the wounded inner child, allowing whatever arises when we are free to write expressively. Exercises in this gentle practice may include handwriting with the non-dominant hand, letter writing to and from the inner child, and using affirmations.

As a recovering Codependent and ACA (Adult Child of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families), I draw from material such as The Loving Parent Guidebook and John Bradshaw’s HomeComing: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child.

Nicole R. Zimmerman (she/her) is a queer Jewish American writer born in Brazil and living with her wife in Northern California. Since 2020 she has led Writing From Memory or Imagination, a workshop series on Zoom for women and nonbinary writers using the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco and was a recipient of Creative Sonoma’s Discovered Awards for Emerging Literary Artists. Her writing appears in numerous publications including Longreads, Sonora Review, The Rumpus, Creative Nonfiction, and Litro Magazine. She is working on a memoir-in-essays about denial and family dysfunction entitled Just Some Things We Can’t Talk About.