How It Works

1. Read the poem 

2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

4. Use the selection of prompts below

5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

Instructions For The Journey

The self you leave behind
is only a skin you have outgrown.
Don’t grieve for it.
Look to the wet, raw, unfinished
self, the one you are becoming.
The world, too, sheds a skin:
politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days.
It’s easy to lose this tenderly
unfolding moment. Look for it
as if it were the first green blade
after a long winter. Listen for it
as if it were the first clear tone
in a place where dawn is heralded by bells.

And if all that fails,
wash your own dishes.
Rinse them.
Stand in your kitchen at your sink.
Let cold water run between your fingers.
Feel it.

—Pat Snyder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Schneider

If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

The next Read-Around is 3/5/25 at 5:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

Initially, I found the first advice Pat Schneider gives in her poem, Instructions For The Journey — not to grieve your own skin when you shed it — hard to swallow. Isn’t it natural to grieve the self we have outgrown, which was, after all, the closest thing to us? I know from my own shedding that we may feel every shade of grief for the outgrown self—from the good grief of relief to the wrenching loss of the only life we’ve ever known.  That loss and our addiction to the familiar are often the reasons we keep ourselves small because it’s better to stay small in the familiar we know, no matter how painful or limiting it may be, than to risk the wet, raw, exposed, and unprotected transformation into a new form. That’s when Snyder‘s voice comes through tutoring us in that tenderly unfolding moment, which, she tells us, is not the moment to grieve (because grief may pull us back). Instead, we must strive to find our footing on new ground. She advises us to look to the one we are becoming; to cast our eyes toward the first green blade of spring and our ears toward the bells of a new dawn. And if that fails, to simply practice the new embodiment of our everyday life in everyday acts.

Prompt Ideas

1. Journal or write a poem about shedding skin, whatever that might mean to you.

2. Journal or write a poem about a self you have left behind or outgrown. Why did you shed the old skin? How do you feel about it now? Have your feelings about it changed over time?

3. Describe a time when you experienced a transformation emphasizing the period after dropping the old self while the new self was still wet, raw, and unfinished. What do you see, think, say, or feel when you look to the one you are becoming? Do you have a sense of your own becoming? What is different than the self you have outgrown and what is the same?

4. Schneider says the world sheds its skin too. Journal or write about the world shedding its skin.

5. Journal or write about a tenderly unfolding moment in your life.

6. What advice might you give to your new self in that tenderly unfolding moment when still wet, raw, and unfinshed.

7. What is your fall safe when making changes in yourlife?

8. Write about anything else in the poem or in life that inspires you.