Heartbroken Open Mic at Open Book is open to all.

Exchange: sliding scale suggested donation of $5-$25. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Performance type: whatever wants to be expressed. Poetry, essay, song, interpretative dance. You bring it.

Set limit: 5-7 minutes (You will be lovingly contained, so please time/practice what you’re going to share)

Sign up at the door.
Start prepping now. Tell your friends. Stock up on Kleenex. Get ready to be moved. I can't wait to see you there.

Facebook Invite: https://fb.me/e/14ivWXIEn

We need each other. Period. 

We need each other to heal. We need to see ourselves reflected. We need to be received with empathy and resonance. We need each other to risk vulnerability and to put our fragility in the hands and hearts of others. 

We need each other to survive. Always, but especially right now. 

Our mainstream, White supremacist, capitalistic, oppressive systems have taught us how to be self-reliant, self-contained individuals. Colonization insisted we be separate from our bodies. 

These systems, this disconnection, this separation, this trauma–both collective and personal–has broken our hearts; we are all living within these systems and relating to one another from these places. 

And because life is a mystery and full of uncertainty, longings, and the condition of being human, life, my friends, can hurt.

Heartbroken is a space to name those moments and places of disconnection and separation that happened in our lives. It’s a space to be seen in our hurt and our heartbreak.

From the enormity of big grief to the everyday moments of loss, change, surrender, and regret, this is the space for those truths to be spoken.

It’s a place to connect to ourselves by naming the truth of our experience–to hold ourselves–and to be held in a community of care at the same time.

This space is not exclusively queer, but is absolutely queer/trans-friendly. 

This container is held and emceed by Grey Doolin (they/them pronouns). Grey is a queer- and trans-identified writer, musician, and space holder. A radically authentic and rigorous visionary, they are a devotee of conscious communication, somatics, and the intersection between the two. 

They have a master’s degree in Counseling and 6 years of PhD-level training as a therapist. They are a student of somatics and nonviolent communication and bring the values and practices of these modalities into their beingness and work in the world. 

They created and emceed the wildly successful Queerspeak Open Mic in Madison, WI. They believe that our relationship with our own bodies, hearts, and experiences sets the tone for all other relating in our lives.

What makes this open mic trauma-informed? This open mic is trauma-informed because there’s an awareness that all of us have bodies with nervous systems, and that our nervous systems are carrying many collective traumas + individual traumas unique to our lives and lineages.

It’s trauma-informed because there’s an awareness that given the unique makeup of our bodies and nervous systems, that each of us will respond to stimuli in our environment in different ways, depending on what our bodies might find enlivening, overwhelming, or threatening. 

This awareness informs the intentions and commitments that are the foundation of the space. 

What makes this open mic somatically-aware?

Our experiences–both past and present–live in our bodies; each present moment consists of sensations moving through the body. Becoming aware of those sensations is the beginning of being in relationship with them. The foundation of this open mic is about relationship. 

The open mic will be interspersed with moments of checking in with our bodies and relating to them, facilitated by Grey. This might look like shaking things out, movement, pausing to allow something we just witnessed settle into our bodies, and joining our collective voices together.

Attendees will be encouraged to care for their bodies and selves as needed throughout the event.

Each performer will have the opportunity to ask for how they want to be received by the audience. This is optional, not required. Do you want applause? Silence? Snaps? A hug? Being told that you are beautiful and courageous and loved? 

All of these are strategies for getting our needs for connection, community, belonging, to be seen, to be heard, to be loved (and many more) met.

Beginning to understand and embrace the needs at the center of our humanity and how they inform the strategies we use to get them met (or not) lends itself to radical self-responsibility, empowerment, and connects us to our lifeforce + one another.