Word is Bond: Writing as liberation practice // with Tasjha Dixon

Honor both the pain and the possibility of your lived experience.

This six-week course is a healing container for those who use words to make sense of injustice, reclaim voice, and build worlds rooted in freedom.

Through journaling, poetry, somatic practices, and guided meditation, participants will engage writing as a form of resistance and renewal. Rooted in Black feminist thought, trauma recovery, and the oral traditions of spoken word and hip hop, this space honors both the pain and possibility of our lived experience. Whether you're new to writing or deep in your creative journey, this course offers tools for turning your story into strength and your truth into testimony.

Week by Week

Week 1: The Body Remembers

Theme: Writing the Body, Honoring the Nervous System

Focus: We begin by grounding in breath, body, and rhythm. This session sets a trauma-informed foundation for writing, emphasizing safety, consent, and embodiment. Participants will explore how trauma lives in the body and how writing can reconnect us to agency and voice.

Practices:

• Opening meditation: “Arriving in the Body”
• Gentle movement to activate body awareness
• Free write with breath-to-pen rhythm

Writing Prompts:

• “My body carries stories that…”
• “The first time I knew I wasn’t safe was…”
• “What silence feels like in my bones…”

Week 2: Voice Before Verse

Theme: Reclaiming Voice Through Narrative

Focus: This week explores personal storytelling as a liberatory act. We confront internalized silence and shame, and practice honoring our lived experience as sacred source material. Emphasis on truth-telling, not perfection.

Practices:

• Community agreements around listening and witnessing
• Writing circle: “Who were you before they named you?”
• Short lesson: Audre Lorde’s “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”

Writing Prompts:

• “I was taught not to say…”
• “The first time I spoke my truth, the world…”
• “If I wrote it like it really happened…”

Week 3: This Is Not a Drill

Theme: Poetry of Protest, Rage, and Resistance

Focus: Participants write in response to injustice—personal, historical, systemic. This session affirms righteous anger as sacred and necessary. Drawing on traditions of spoken word and political poetry, we explore how the page can be a place of revolt.

Practices:

• Analysis of protest poems by June Jordan and Danez Smith
• Rage writing exercise: timed free-write with no edits
• Guided breathwork for grounding after heavy content

Writing Prompts:

• “You want me to be peaceful, but I remember…”
• “They call it justice, but I call it…”
• “What I would say if I wasn’t afraid…”

Week 4: What We Carry, What We Cast

Theme: Intergenerational Healing and Inherited Story

Focus: We reflect on ancestral memory, inherited trauma, and legacy. This session invites participants to speak to the ones who came before them—and the ones they’re becoming. Emphasis on grief, gratitude, and choosing what to keep.

Practices:

• Guided meditation: “Meeting the Ancestor Within”
• Letter writing: to an ancestor, or to a future descendant
• Writing ritual: burning/shredding the words you choose to release

Writing Prompts:

• “In my family, we never talked about…”
• “The women in my lineage taught me to…”
• “I release the story that…”

Week 5: Soundtrack of Our Struggle

Theme: Music, Movement, and Memory

Focus: This week blends lyrical analysis, music appreciation, and embodied writing. We explore the role of music in our lives—protest songs, gospel, hip-hop, blues—and how rhythm can unlock memory and metaphor. Participants are encouraged to move before they write.

Practices:

• Movement: sway, stomp, dance, or stretch
• Listen + write: songs by Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, Kendrick Lamar
• Collaborative playlist: “Songs That Saved Us”

Writing Prompts:

• “When this song plays, I remember…”
• “The beat of resistance in my body feels like…”
• “If I wrote a verse to my survival anthem, it would go…”

Week 6: From the Page to the People

Theme: Witness, Voice, and Collective Power

Focus: Our final session is a celebration and reflection. Participants will revise, rehearse, and share a selected piece with the group in a supportive, optional open mic format. We'll close with collective intention-setting for how our words will live in the world.

Practices:

• Spoken word circle: Share your liberation piece
• Ritual closing meditation: “Let This Be a Blessing”
• Affirmation crafting: Declare your writing future

Writing Prompts:

• “I no longer write for approval. I write for…”
• “If my words could build something real, they’d become…”
• “This is my truth, and I stand by it…”

Additional Course Elements:

• Weekly Wet Ink Reflections with optional feedback threads
• Weekly Somatic Practices (video/audio guides for grounding)
• Optional Peer Circles for accountability and deeper connection
• Final Zine (optional digital compilation of select work, co-created by participants)

Who Should Take This Class

This course is for creatives, caregivers, and community leaders who write from the margins and dream toward freedom.

It centers voices from BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, veteran, and survivor communities—though all are welcome. No prior writing experience is required—only a desire to tell the truth and transform through it.

Participants will move from silence to storytelling, building bridges of liberation between inner healing and outward action.

If cost is a barrier, we offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

Please note: Registration closes Oct. 18, 2025—five (5) days before the class start date.

What students are saying about learning with Tasjha

“Tasjha creates spaces that feel like home—safe, sacred, and powerful.”

“I’ve never felt more seen or encouraged to write my truth.”

“Her classes heal more than the page—they heal the person.”

“She weaves poetry, prayer, and pedagogy in the most beautiful way.”

Format

This is an online class, hosted both on the online teaching platform, Wet Ink, and through required weekly Zoom sessions on Wednesdays: 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 11/19 (skip 11/27) 12/3/2025 at 2 PM Central time. 

The Wet Ink platform allows students to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to authors’ works. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains an archive of all their content and interactions. Wet Ink is mobile-friendly and there are no browser requirements.

About the Teacher

Tasjha Dixon is a trauma-informed writer, social worker, and Buddhist teacher whose work lives at the intersection of justice, embodiment, and storytelling. A disabled Army veteran, she is the founder of Empowering KC, where she offers writing workshops, yoga, and healing circles for communities in need. She’s an MFA candidate at Naropa University and teaches through a lens of anti-racism, feminism, and collective care.

Website: empoweringkcwithtasjha.com

Instagram: @tasjhadixon | Facebook: facebook.com/tasjhadixon