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WHO? the Women of All Souls
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WHAT? A “Telling Your Story” Workshop Retreat
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WHEN? September 10 – 12, 2010
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WHERE? Valle Crucis Conference Center
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HOW? Sign up and pay $150 to reserve your place now
Check your perfectionism at the door for this year’s retreat. Step back from the familiar “story” of your life and re-cast it, this time from a new place of love and understanding. Laurie Berry Clifford (woman, mother, writer, hypnotherapist) leads us in “deep listening” and “compassionate telling” as we practice hearing and telling our own stories, not from the head but from the heart. For an extended overview and biography of Clifford, please see the online Connection (click Newsletter at the top of the All Souls web page).
Please fill out the registration form and make out a check for $150 to the Cathedral of All Souls for room and board. You may give it to the Cathedral Office or Lisa Sellers.
A Short Overview of “Telling Your Story” Workshop
Facilitated by Laurie Berry Clifford--Woman, Mother, Writer, Hypnotherapist
“Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain wisdom of heart.” Psalm 90:12
You tell yourself your own story, many times a day, and your story has a theme. Usually, it’s a self-critical one about how you could have done better and how if you just try a little more the next time, you can be a new and improved version of you. It’s a theme that runs underneath and through everything you do. And it’s a theme that hardens over time, becoming the voice you hear most often as you go about your day.
Nobody has to tell a woman to be hard on herself, to be critical and judging. In our society, it comes with the air we breathe. But what if you could set aside this theme for a weekend? What if you checked your perfectionism at the door? What if you stood back from the story you’re always creating for yourself and took the role of a talented and compassionate author instead, someone creating a beautiful and loving work of fiction? The main character? You! And what if you had an audience of women, just for this one weekend, who listened to your work of fiction with their whole hearts and not just their heads, allowing you to feel “heard” perhaps as never before? What might change for you when you got back home?
Our theme for the All Souls Women’s Retreat 2010 is “telling your story.” This weekend is not about writing. It’s about deep, compassionate listening and telling—not from the head but from the heart. Using simple techniques of creative writing, you will step back from the familiar “story” of your life and re-cast it, this time from a new place of love and compassion. You also will practice “listening from the heart,” not only to your own story but to the stories of other women who like yourself have spent a lifetime surviving the critical voices in their heads.
Bonus features for the weekend? You’ll have the chance to make warm friendships. You’ll get story times again. You’ll experience Laurie’s super duper hypno central nervous system massage at least once. You’ll stir your own creativity with guided meditations. And on Saturday night, you will be offered an encounter with a deep wisdom that can change your life.
Plus, plus: You’ll go home with your choice of relaxation CDs and an autographed copy of Tales of a Crazy Pastor’s Wife, winner of the 2007 Belly Laughs Award.
What to bring beside yourself and your stuff? Just a pen and notebook, a musical instrument if you have one, a photo of you when you were young, preferably age ten or younger, and lots of magazines with pictures, ones you won’t need back.
Short Biography of Laurie Berry Clifford
Laurie Berry Clifford was born the third of six kids to Don and Phyllis Berry. Her father was a missionary pilot and her mother was an evangelist. She spent her early years in Mexico and Honduras before going to the Philippines for high school. After she returned to the States in the mid sixties, she went to college, dropped out, bummed around, married Wayne, joined a commune, and started birthing things, mostly books and babies. After the kids moved out, Laurie went back to school and trained as a clinical hypnotherapist. This allowed her to combine three life skills--mothering, writing and trancing-- into a hypnotherapy practice that specializes in “waking dreams” therapy. Last year, Wayne retired from his job in California and they moved to Asheville where they now live and work in a big, happy, green house.