Let’s Experience: Letters to Life
Artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles invites participants to use old-fashioned letter-writing as a channel to heal, re-member, and gather parts of ourselves that may have been relegated to oblivion. As individuals and as a group, we will touch on themes such as forgiveness, impermanence, and love. As part of our engagement with pen, paper, and other materials, we will write letters (choosing to deliver or not) to people we admire and perhaps have never met face-to-face, to a child with whom we would like to share key moments in our path, or to a person we would like to forgive or to thank. We also send ourselves a kind written reminder of what brings us joy in life, stamp it, and forward this in the mail to our physical address.
Together with writing prompts, shares, and reflections, Letters to Life will include somatic practices such as breathwork and very gentle movements. Be ready to engage with items and mundane objects from home as we laugh, cry, reminisce, and co-create a space in the community, even if virtually.
Nicolás treads an elusive path that manifests itself performatively through creative experiences that he helps unfold within the quotidian. He is the founding director of The Interior Beauty Salon, an organism living at the intersection of creativity and healing. He has recently taught healing, meditation, and somatic movement related workshops at Copper Beech Institute, The Creative Center, Hispanic Society of America, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation, Healing Circles Global, and the In My Mind conference at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in New York. Nicolás is a Senior Lecturer and Social Practice Artist in Residence in the Art and Art History Department at The University of Texas, Austin; and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. He holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, where he studied with Coco Fusco; and an MA from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. In 2021 he received a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher certification from the Interdependence Project in New York City. Born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, he was baptized as a Bronxite in 2011.
http://www.interiorbeautysalon.com/
About Reimagine and the Series "A Refuge of Words: Writing our Way to Growth After Loss”
Reimagine is a nonprofit organization catalyzing a uniquely powerful community–people of different backgrounds, ages, races, and faiths (and no faith) coming together in the hopes of healing ourselves and the world. We specifically support each other in facing adversity, loss, and mortality and–at our own pace– actively channeling life's biggest challenges into meaningful action and growth. www.letsreimagine.org
Sometimes there are no words. And sometimes words need to be expressed. Grief changes us after we lose a friend, companion, or relative, regardless if that relationship was loving, complicated, or abusive. There’s no going back to our older selves. In order to stay connected to peaceful memories or to cope with traumatic ones, we can allow grief to enter our lives, to feel all the feels, and at the same time find strategies to contain it. Writing is one tool to integrate our grief. In this three-part series, artists, therapists, and health care providers share insights into the written word: a form of creative and spiritual expression, a modality to process the loss of those who have passed, and a pathway towards growth, transformation, and self-knowledge.
Guest speakers and teachers include grief experts, best-selling authors, artists, specialists in narrative medicine, and palliative care physicians. With fresh and unconventional perspectives, they will share experiences of grief and loss in their lives and their work that developed into generative pathways for healing, creativity, service, and advocacy.
