Writing the Liminal Body

Writing the Liminal Body comes to Local Economy in Oakland on Thursday, August 27, from 6 to 8 pm.

This one is for parents living through a very specific kind of weather. Your kid is changing fast. Your own body may be changing too. Puberty on one side, perimenopause on the other, with dinner, schedules, moods, laundry, and life still rolling along.

Ali Lawrence of Four Chambers Writing will guide the evening, using poetry and hand written prompts to open up the stuff that does not always make it into normal conversation. You do not need to call yourself a writer. You just need a pen, paper, and a little willingness to be honest on the page.

Local Economy feels like a good fit for this kind of gathering. It has that Oakland community room energy, more personal than polished, with space for people to sit down, slow down, and actually hear each other. The vibe should be warm, a little raw, and probably funny in the way real life is funny when people stop pretending everything is tidy.

Expect writing, listening, and a room full of people dealing with bodies that keep changing the plan. There may be laughter. There may be tears. There will almost certainly be a few lines on the page that surprise the person who wrote them.

If parenting has felt strange, tender, ridiculous, or hard to explain lately, this could be a good Thursday night in Oakland.

Parenting a pubescent body while your own is shifting beneath you is complicated, surprising, humbling, frustrating, soft, rugged, potent, poetic, and yes, sometimes absurd territory. Both of you are changing, think, same storm, different seasons. And somehow you’re expected to hold it all together.

This is an invitation to stop holding it together, just for a couple of hours.

Ali Lawrence of Four Chambers Writing invites you to come as you are and let those unruly bodies unlock some unruly words — to write, listen, connect, and create at the untamed intersection of puberty and perimenopause. We use poetry as a doorway and the creative unconscious as our guide. Expect laughs, tears, and a brave space to let it rip.

You don’t need to be a writer. You just need a pen, some paper, and something you haven’t said out loud yet.

(Yes, we write with our actual hands.)