Listen: Young Writers Reflect on Chaos, Clarity, Action, Balance - Paperback

by Marjie Bowker (Editor), Leighanne Law (Editor)

At Scriber Lake High School, we believe that listening is one of the loudest forms of kindness, and that healing begins the moment a person feels seen and heard.

For seven years, Scriber students have been writing about deep emotional pain, and for seven years, Scriber staff have been trying to improve how we listen to them. We have processed and shared unimaginable traumas as a community, raised our consciousness, and increased our collective empathy. Over a seven-year period, our school has become a place where all stories are welcome, and many students have chosen to make their stories available to the world with the hope of providing healing to others.

This year, the Nahui Ollin Aztec transformation cycle provided a deeper intentionality and metacognition to our writing process. Each writer was asked the guiding questions; our job was to listen as they analyzed their experiences, then reflect back what we heard. Through this process, they learned to listen to themselves and discovered a wealth of self-knowledge about their own placement within the cycle.

As a result, there's a ton of courage in this book. Courage to heal. Courage to transform. Courage to gain vision.

So, listen, these writers wrote these stories for themselves. They are publishing them for you.