The Past Is So Not Over! Slaying the Dragons Through Memoir Writing
Oct
24
to Nov 26

The Past Is So Not Over! Slaying the Dragons Through Memoir Writing

The past is very much alive in the present. Memoir writing is one of the most powerful ways to slay the dragons of the past so that we can become more present. And when we're present, we become more intimate with ourselves and everyone around us. This weekend/afternoon workshop will be an open-hearted, step-by-step exploration of how to grapple with the past through our present feelings and well-chosen words.We will open with mindfulness and mediation, turning our attention to right now. And then, through guided reflection, resonance work, and revision participants will apply their attention to chosen scenes from their lives and on the page. We will use Grice’s Maxims of quality, quantity, relation, and manner as a guide for finding just the right amount of detail.Participants will walk away with a better understanding of what it means to be present, the skills to write about their lives, and deeper reverence for the past and its impact on our future. They will also learn how to see the connection between what’s happening inside their bodies, what’s happening in the world, and what’s happening on the page. It’s in this connection that we live a joyful, coherent life.

Workshop 1
Saturday, October 24th, 9am - 12pm

Workshop 2
Sunday, October 24th, 9am - 12pm

*Please note the schedule is subject to change

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Riveter Reads Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into the Science of Attachment
May
19

Riveter Reads Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into the Science of Attachment

Join author, award-winning editor, and researcher, Bethany Saltman, as we discuss the postpartum experience. Her new book, Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into the Science of Attachment, will resonate with people now more than ever.

When Bethany gave birth to her daughter Azalea in 2006, she loved her like crazy, but felt like something was missing. Instead of the 24-7 bliss state she expected, alongside loving affection, she also felt distance, frustration and sometimes anger. Her mixed feelings were so alarming that she went on a ten year journey into the science of attachment to find out what this love was all about. What she discovered changed everything about who she thought she was.

A Virtual Event
RSVP on the Riveter

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Virtual Event: Andrew Solomon in conversation with Bethany Saltman about her book Strange Situation and parenting in these strange times
May
14

Virtual Event: Andrew Solomon in conversation with Bethany Saltman about her book Strange Situation and parenting in these strange times

A full-scale investigation of the controversial and often misunderstood science of attachment theory, inspired by the author’s own experience as a parent and daughter.

When professional researcher and writer Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she loved her deeply but felt as if something was missing. Looking back at her lonely childhood, dangerous teenage years, and love-addicted early adulthood, Saltman thought maybe she was broken.

Then she discovered the science of attachment, the field of psychology that explores the question of why—from an evolutionary point of view—love exists between parents and children. Saltman went on a ten-year journey visiting labs, archives, and training sessions, while learning the meaning of “delight” from Mary Ainsworth, one of psychology’s most important but unsung researchers, who died in 1999.

Saltman went deep into the history and findings from Ainsworth’s famous laboratory procedure, the Strange Situation, which, like an X-ray, is still used today by scientists around the world to catch a glimpse of the internal workings of attachment. In this simple twenty-minute procedure, a baby and a caregiver enter an ordinary room with two chairs and some toys. During a series of comings and goings, a trained observer studies the minutiae of the pair’s back-and-forth with each other.

Through the science of attachment, what Saltman discovered was a radical departure from everything she thought she knew—about love and about her own family, her story, and herself. She was far from broken—she saw that love is too powerful to ever break.

Strange Situation is a scientific, lyrical, life-affirming exploration of love. Not only will readers be taken on an emotional ride through one mother’s reckoning with her own past and her family’s future, but they will also be given the tools with which to better understand their own life histories and their relationships today.

“A profound and beautiful work . . . searingly honest, brazenly fresh, and startlingly rich.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

BETHANY SALTMAN, a longtime Zen student, lives in a small town in the Catskills with her family. Strange Situation is her first book.

ANDREW SOLOMON, Ph.D., is a Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology at Columbia University Medical Center and past President of PEN America. He writes and lectures on politics, psychology, LGBTQ rights, and the arts. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Times. His Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was chosen as one of the New York TimesTen Best Books of 2012. His subsequent Far and Away: How Travel Can Change the World, has been named a New York Times Notable Book. He previously wrote The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which won the 2001 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He made an award-winning film of Far from the Tree and produced an audiobook, New Family Values. He lives with his husband and son in New York and London; he also has a daughter with a college friend.

Purchase a copy of Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree here.

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