October days in Nashville can be surprisingly toasty but forthcoming winter breezes whisk away the humidity. It was such a day nearly eight years ago. I stood in line at an author's booth at our city's annual beloved and acclaimed Southern Festival of Books. I turned around and looked into interesting face of the woman standing behind me. The breeze whipped her then long hair into the air. We began talking and I felt a connection. She was a writer, too. She was writing about her own grief experience as well. It would be at least three years before I'd see her again. She is an age and professional contemporary and I have loved watching how she has taken her gift to enlighten and teach. Here, read about the unique offering of Nashville-based writer Amy Lyles Wilson who frequently leads writers' groups and also retreats on grief writing:
“I believe it is the sharing of our stories that saves us. And in no area do I feel this more strongly than I do with regard to grief.” –Amy Lyles Wilson
She continues: "Burying a loved one, being downsized at work, growing old, feeling abandoned by God, letting go of a dream…any one of life’s losses can leave us speechless. All of a sudden, the language we’ve relied on for years no longer has the power to get us through the day, much less express our anger and confusion about our circumstances. 'Tell me about despair, yours,' says the poet Mary Oliver, 'and I will tell you mine.'"
Lyles Wilson invites others to "Come to the mountain (St. Mary's Swannee). We’ll talk about loss, and language, and the grace that must surely come in-between," she says. "Together we’ll find the words for those times when mere words just won’t do.[…]Participants need not consider themselves a 'writer' to attend. […] This is not a therapy group; but often when we begin to 'give sorrow words' we enhance our healing," says Lyles Wilson.
This Mississippi native has found solace in words for as long as she can remember, and she has been doing so as a professional writer and editor for more than 25 years. After burying her father—the first love of her life—in 2000, and while earning a master’s degree in theology from Vanderbilt University Divinity School in her early 40's, Wilson became interested in how we grieve. More specifically, Lyles Wilson says she became frustrated by "the ways our culture, and sometimes our churches, attempt to mandate how we mourn or even ask us to ignore our sadness." She has combined that passion with her academic degrees in English, journalism, and theology and her two decades of publishing experience to encourage and equip others to write their hearts out.
Lyles Wilson is a trained affiliate of Amherst Writers and Artists. In 2003, she was the Patrick Henry Writing Fellow at the Earlham School of Religion, a Quaker seminary in Indiana. She is a columnist and blogger for Her Nashville magazine. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, as well as on National Public Radio’s “This I Believe.” Her essay “The Guts to Keep Going” is included in This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies from Remarkable Men and Women.
For more details, contact Lyles Wilson @ AmyLylesWilson.com. [Go, Amy!]
