The Breathing Space Journal is a new wellness journal from the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, created by and for advocates. Inspired by Judy Brown’s Fire Poem, it offers over 100 prompts designed to help helpers build open spaces between the logs of advocacy work. The journal includes writing prompts, open pages, music, and coloring pages, and is available for purchase for yourself or as a gift for fellow advocates.
It finally happened. In a windowless hotel ballroom full of advocates from across the Commonwealth, led by bi-coastal wise women. I followed the instructions for pause, for reflection, for connection with the person next to me and to our shared purpose. When that usually still small voice yelled, “These wisdom-sharers are right,” I finally yielded, leaning in. My future in this work depends on it. Maybe our future in this work depends on it.
We had worried about the weather, the food, and the lack of natural light. And yet, despite those concerns, a moment of clarity. A surprise agreement between my mind, body, and soul, to give into this thing the wise women were inviting us into: a wellness practice beyond (but not exclusive of) retail therapy and gel nails.
The practice? Breathing space. Allowing it, creating it, sharing it. Breathing space. Leaning into it, reflecting in it, letting it be the only agenda item.
As we stood in a circle, reading Fire Poem by Judy Brown (on page 5 of the journal), something clicked that therapists had been pointing toward my whole adult life.
“When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel and the absence of fuel
together, that make fire possible.”
Together, my mind, body, and spirit agreed to give this wellness practice a try. A real try. To apply thoughtfulness and intention to space. And in true form, I turned all of that into the task of creating this journal….so maybe I still have some work to do.
Journaling is powerful; it is that building of open space in our minds and spirits. Journaling allows vital self-reflection, which supports our own resilience as helpers. AND, as I learned from the bi-coastal wise women, journaling doesn’t have to happen on blank pages.
So, I started collecting the prompts that inspired me to journal after a lifetime of resistance. The prompts that resonate with a whole room of advocates. The prompts that create and protect space between the logs of work, advocacy, work/life balance, agendas, to-do lists, and meal planning.
In the creative hands of Kate McCord, artist-activist-advocate-colleague, those prompts lead to this journal. She brought the prompts to life and then helped awaken artistic energy within me that had been buried by tightly packed logs my whole life. True to the work of healing, Kate made space even in the work. May you each be and find such a colleague, one that sees a pile of tightly packed logs and makes space for beauty to emerge.
The Breathing Space Journal is our tribute to you, the advocates in Virginia and beyond who work each day on your pile of logs. We have been conditioned to pile on more logs, but now we must retrain ourselves to also build open spaces to breathe if our fire is to continue burning brightly.
We are at a crossroads that is both unique and yet not unfamiliar. The way we’ve piled logs on ourselves and each other is not sustainable, but it feels recognizable. Changing our approach to this work of healing is scary but vital for our own health and the future of our movement. If we intend to continue advocating for peace, we must do it in a way that is viable for our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls.
It is time for us to lean into Breathing Space, to afford ourselves the same grace and space we afford survivors. This journal, with over 100 prompts, helps us imagine that other path: the path where we “build open spaces in the same way we have learned to pile on the logs.”
We hope each advocate and helper in Virginia will find something here that sparks your joy and curiosity and promotes your well-being. Do you need lines to write? You’ll find those. Do you need open space to explore? You’ll find that, too. Want music? It’s in there. A coloring page? Check out page 28.
And while we’re talking about breathing space, you might notice two spaces after each sentence here. That’s okay. Society wants to move more quickly to the next sentence, the next thing. We can resist that. We can double-space and BREATHE.
Join us on this journey, use this journal in whatever way makes the most sense to you: maybe you write, draw, collage, contemplate, discuss, meditate, sing, or some other magical way. Maybe the practice is one you share with colleagues, friends, or family members. Maybe it is private and sacred. How we practice is less important than the practice itself.
We invite you to purchase a journal for yourself and the other helpers who work alongside you every day (they make fantastic “thank you” and work-iversary gifts, too!).
We hope you enjoy this Breathing Space, and we hope to find you at a retreat or gathering sometime soon so we can practice together.
More information about this project can be found here.
Join us this fall at a gathering and go home with a complimentary journal:
With special thanks to those bi-coastal wisdom-sharers for their vision, their leadership, their patience, and their humor as we learned to build Breathing Space: Nan Stoops, Kelly Miller, Vanessa Timmons, and Kim Flournoy.
Laura Beth Weaver is the Action Alliance’s Director of Advocacy and Member Support. She has spent more than 20 years in the movement to end sexual and domestic violence in Virginia, and through it all, her devotion to survivors, her belief that every person deserves safety, dignity, and a community that believes them the first time, has been the constant. At the end of September, she leaves us to return to her roots at the Women’s Resource Center in Southwest Virginia, where she once served as Executive Director and where she will now serve as Director of Development. It is where her heart is, and we send her off with our whole-hearted blessing.
The Breathing Space Journal was Laura Beth’s passion project long before any of us, including her, knew she would be leaving the Action Alliance. She envisioned it and shepherded it through every stage of its creation, simply because she believed advocates deserved it. Every page reflects two decades of sitting with advocates in their hardest moments and asking what they needed to keep going, because she has always understood that survivors are best served by advocates who are cared for, too. The timing has made it something none of us planned for: a parting gift to the field and a resource that will outlast any one of us in this work, carrying her care for advocates and the survivors they serve into every agency that receives a copy.
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