Making Stories From Your Life

Feb. 1-3, 2020
Feb. 5-7, 2021
Feb. 4-6, 2022

3 Day Workshop with Judith Black in Marblehead MA

We are a human family. Our experiences, fleshed out, understood, and reshaped for the hearts and minds of others, serves to create a template for that family to join around. Shaping stories from your life is in many ways like re-authoring your own experiences. We often dig little trenches out of parts of our lives, telling and retelling an experience that we find, humorous or wounding. The work of our time together will be to dislodge the experience from the trench, explore it through new eyes, and recreate a tale that speaks to a broader population.

This work will be useful to therapists, social workers, writers and tellers of all stripes who want to mine their own lives for stories that will resonate with a broader audience.
Our work will include:

-Finding a person, place, or specific experience that continues to resonate in your life.
-Exploring it through many modalities, from peer interviews, to visualization, to collage techniques.
-Working on re-authoring the experience through many vantage points.
-Sharing tales in small groups

Friday 4 PM-Sunday 3 PM (with breaks for food, sleep, and fun)

B&B info. available upon request

Cost $350 (includes including Friday dinner and endless snacks……….yes, i love to cook) The workshop is limited to 8 people.

For more info: jb@storiesalive.com or call 781-631-4417 To reserve a space send a deposit of $75 through paypal https://storiesalive.com/the-story-store-cds-dvds-and-classes/ or to: Judith Black 33 Prospect St. Marblehead, MA 01945

Workshop Leader: Judith Black has been shaping and telling tales for over 30 years. Winner of the Oracle, Circle of Excellence, her stories spawn from living have addressed topics as diverse as the traumas of dating, surviving child rearing, aging with and without grace, and dying with Alzheimer’s. You can view a short story, and winner of the MASSMOUTH big 2010 MouthOff at https://storiesalive.com/video.html

This past February, 8 wonderful humans came to Marblehead and dedicated a weekend of their lives to exploring and creating stories born of their experiences. Here is what they and others have to say about the experience:

They meet, they dare, they talk, the tell, they imagine, they work very very hard, together and on their own. They rip through magazines, and pick up glue sticks like pros, get covered in pastels,  eat very very well, all agree, and stand, souls bared, stories amazingly told before these now friends.

And then they leave, with their own stories, and everyone else’s, on their minds, being retold over and over;  how to explain, I say to my date, to my sister, to my kids. I can’t. We learned to tell a story that matters, that we think will matter to others. And they so do.

Jill Kaufman, NPR producer

Can’t begin to say how amazing this experience was…

Deborah Hollingsworth-Elder Care Administrator

She gave us the keys to unlock the truth inside of us. The story of my grandfather’s 99th birthday, of the love between us, of life and death, had been percolating in me for 20 years, and I was finally able to tell it in a way that was satisfying to me and had meaning for others.                                                                                                                         Eric Reines MD

Thanks for your perceptive feedback, your generosity of spirit, sharing your delicious cooking, your massage chair and opening your home.

Cindy Rivka Marshall  Storyteller and Consultant

Thank you, everyone, especially Judith, for an inspiring, productive, and heartfelt weekend. I came away enriched by everyone’s bravely told stories.

Judith, you are wonderfully masterful!

Helena Leet-Pellegrini, PHD Psychologist

Thank you so much for creating such a warm, safe, stimulating learning environment for us all. I came to learn story telling techniques, but come away with tools that will enhance my ability to communicate not only with the public, but to my inner self as well.

Anyone who desires to enrich his or her life experiences should take this class at least once, if not more.

Pei Pei Wishnow, Founder and President of Interceuticals Inc.

Past Students:   “We saw our skills and understanding develop over just one weekend in which we learned how to find and shape our own stories. I appreciate your grounded inspiration, your ability to help us find what was in us and to show us how to birth it. The shared humility before the grandeur of stories was precious to me.”

-Brava!
Roberta Russell, Ph.D., LICSW

“Trust and risk and a damn good teacher pulls the best out of me. To get your story up and running you can work on it by yourself for a decade or take a weekend with Judith Black. Yeah, she’s that good. What Michaelangelo did with marble, Judith Black does with words.”

Tony Toledo Boff, storyteller

“My heart is full.”
Gwen RosemondAdministrator, Salem State University

“You are a gem, every moment of the two and half day workshop was presented with enthusiasm, passion and compassion. It is Monday morning and I feel like a part of me was on vacation while other parts were living for themselves, for once! My heart, my spirit, my creativity and my desire to find out what else is out there for me are all satiated by the experience.”

Susan FaderBusiness Owner, artist and author

“I have known Judith Black to be an amazing story teller, but had never realized what a great teacher she is. Having completed Stories From Life, I am ready to not only to continue working on the story I created at this intensive weekend but to begin creating more. I highly recommend this weekend workshop for anyone wanting to create their own stories.”

Susan Raskin Abrams, Maggid and former Children’s Librarian