Reframe, Reclaim: Poetry as a Healing Path to a Happier Heart // with Kiesa Kay

"This workshop heals hearts and forges friendships."

Reframe, Reclaim: Poetry as a Healing Path to a Happier Heart is a two-hour workshop exploring poetry as a means to healing. 

Following an ice-breaker, meditation and a short stretching (yoga) exercise, we’ll discuss how focusing specifically on one moment or detail in trauma can give us the tools to overcome and move through that experience. 

We’ll alternate responding to writing prompts and sharing our work and conclude by exploring how to create a blended practice for health and healing as well as how to create an effective regular schedule for that practice.

If you take one thing away with you from these two hours, “Let it be empowerment to create and sustain a peaceful haven for your feelings.”

What You Will Experience

Through this experience, you will: 

• Understand and appreciate poetry as a dynamic healing tool.

• Learn to go deeply into the specifics of a single moment in order to reclaim joy.

• Discover delight in simplicity even in chaotic times.

• Have the opportunity to create the seed of a poem from a dynamic writing prompt.

• Determine a regular time to maintain and sustain a healing writing practice.

Note: You are also welcome to use the time to explore visual art. Sometimes it's easier to draw or paint or scribble than to find words at first. The artwork then will become the seed of a later poem.

Who Is This Workshop For?

Writers seeking peaceful feelings and who have experienced losses will benefit.

The TLA Network offers 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.

What people are saying about learning with Kiesa:

Thank you for all the inspiration!  

What a wonderful presentation and so helpful for anyone with a hidden disability! 

Reordering how we think of ourselves is so key....

Where and When Does this Workshop Meet?

This workshop will be presented Saturday, August 1, 2026 from 3-5PM ET/ 2-4 PM CT/ 1-3 PM MT/ 12-2PM PT / 7-9 PM UTC as a one-time, two-hour Zoom session. The event will be recorded and shared with with anyone registered for Reframe, Reclaim: Poetry as a Healing Path to a Happier Heart .

About the Facilitator

Kiesa Kay, poet and playwright, created a video series on Transforming Trauma through Creative Expression for Survivor Space. Her master's thesis was on using creativity as a healing tool for survivors of violence. Her website is kiesakay.wixsite.com/courage.