Customer Reviews

Lifelines

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I'm an avid journaler and aspiring writer, and have become fairly jaded by the seemingly nonstop stream of how-to-be-a-better-writer books and tapes available. But listening to Lifelines has changed everything for me. Though the series focuses on personal writing for insight and healing, the natural clarity with which Christina illustrates the importance of The Story -- and the excellent exercises that are included in the set -- have made it possible to both capture and learn from my own life's stories AND become a better and more courageous writer all around. I set aside a portion of my morning every day for listening to Lifelines and writing. What a wonderful, wonderful thing she has created here.

"Only you can discover exactly why it is that you write. I write to leave evidence that I was here, and to make my life journey as fully conscious as I can." ~Christina Baldwin

Christina Baldwin's beautiful voice leads the listener into a writing journey. She tells stories of her own experience with writing a diary and then explores a variety of exciting possibilities. If you are interested in writing a journal, creating a scrapbook or even writing the story of your life, then this is an excellent starting point. Christina Baldwin uncovers the true reasons we write, why we must write and why we love to write. She introduces "Flow Writing," "Collage Journals," and "Day Books." The main topics include:

Why Do We Write?
A Brief History of Writing
The Types of Writing - online, computer, pen and paper
Writing a Lifeline
Writing our way out of Despair
Writing a Love Letter
Creating Goals
Conversations with your Soul
Creating a Writing Sanctuary
Making Time for Writing
Writing about Relationships
How to Create Journals for Gifts
Bringing Art into the Writing Process
Starting a Writing Group

You may find yourself listening to each CD more than once before moving onto the next CD. The topics are inspiring and there are so many ideas for making writing part of your life.

If you especially enjoy any part of the CDs, there is a way to quickly find the area on the CD by marking it on the sheet of topics. There is also a card set with topics from each CD. On card eleven:

"Consider making special books that hold the best of what you have to say, and giving them as gifts to loved ones."

Christina Baldwin is right when she says that writing organizes life. You may also enjoy her book: One to One: Self-Understanding through Journal Writing. She is an author, educator, speaker and retreat leader who specializes in the process of personal writing. Her teaching style is more than inspiring.

~The Rebecca Review

For many thousands of years, people have been leaving their marks to tell a story. In the caves of Lascaux, pictographs became the first journal entries. "Story is really all we have of ourselves," says Christina Baldwin, the visionary who started (or perhaps we should say restarted) the personal writing movement. Baldwin's own writing story is one that began when she picked out words she knew from the newspaper, something I remember doing myself. Later, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, she buried a metal box of precious objects "to save [her] story," including her own journal and The Diary of Anne Frank.

Recording Lifelines was an opportunity for Baldwin to define and develop her philosophy of writing and life story, which became a gift of inspiration and affirmation for listeners. If you are about to begin a writing practice, you will receive guidance from a wise teacher. If you are already writing, and even if you have been doing so for a long time, you will be reminded of how important a lifeline writing is. The wonder of a recording is it's as if the speaker is talking directly to you. Another benefit to listening to a CD is being able to hear a writing mentor's voice even while driving in the car. I remember particular stories from Lifelines with a memory of the place where I heard them.

When Baldwin published One to One: Self-Understanding through Journal Writing in 1977, the Library of Congress had to create a new category for her pioneering work. It was followed by Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest, which the author wrote because she wanted to find her "tribe." You will find a review of the latter book on this site, and on www.storycirclebookreviews.org. Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture describes the way of council where story is part of the decision-making. "The circle calls us to remember ourselves as carriers of the story," Baldwin says. This is the methodology she and partner Ann Linnea have shared around the world through their business, PeerSpirit, Inc. Baldwin's fourth book published in 2002, The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Times Like These, invites people into exploring their relationship to the Divine. Her most recent book is Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story. See my review elsewhere on this site, and on www.storycirclebookreviews.org

As I describe Baldwin's books, all of which I've read, I recall my story of writing on my own and writing in the circle. We write to organize life, guide ourselves through life's transitions, reveal parts of our unexpressed selves, and to pass stories from generation to generation like a lifeline. But "only you can discover exactly why it is that you write," according to Baldwin. "I write to leave evidence that I was here, and to make my life journey as fully conscious as I can."

Along with the stories and personal experiences the author shares is practical advice and writing exercises. The most inspiring of these are included on thirteen Lifeline cards. One of her suggestions for getting onto the page is a foundational exercise called "flow writing." Close your eyes. When you open them, let the first thing you see be your opening word. Write for five minutes. Baldwin admits her own resistance to writing and advises, "Writing is a relationship that includes our resistance to it." I was so grateful to hear that. Listing her own ten essentials for her writing relationship, the author prompts listeners to create their own. "Look at how you create the time, the space, the environment, the permission that you need. This is likely to be an evolving list as you learn more about what truly supports your writing."

As you respond to life events, you begin the "Spiral of Experience" with a "survivor's tale." Questioning and acknowledging consequences leads to "the story of integration," taking you deeper into understanding how a particular event fits into the larger story of your life. Finally, through compassion and acceptance, you enter new territory--the "story of insight and meaning."

Writing is good for your health. It boosts the immune system. It brings you into focus. And writing can help you learn to love your body, waking up the chakras of the body that is your home. As an embodied writer, you can ask yourself, "What are the five senses I can put on the page?" You can write yourself out of overwhelm and write for social healing as well as for personal healing. Baldwin suggests bringing the world onto the page. Make a collage and write commentary on what is going on in the outside world. It's okay to be opinionated on the page. As you practice on the page, you articulate your life. "Personal writing is a private process that serves as the source of significant change in our journey. We proceed from the story into action."

"Practice certainty of purpose", Baldwin advises. "Articulate your understanding of the covenant you have made with life. Write it down, read it out loud to yourself, edit and refine it, work with it. Place this message where it will guide you again and again."

by Mary Ann Moore
for Story Circle Book Reviews
www.storycirclebookreviewsorg
reviewing books by, for, and about women