Hedgebrook Archives - Ann Hedreen, Writer Teacher Filmmaker

Go Small

Ann Hedreen2025-03-24T10:00:58-07:00Categories: arts, Creative, featured posts, human rights, immigration, journalism, politics, Uncategorized, writing|Tags: April 5, Connie Schultz, Donkeysaddle Projects, Hedgebrook, High Country News, Indivisible, Jess Piper, Progressive Era|

Last week was another punching-bag week, wasn’t it? Maybe you felt like the punching bag, and all you wanted was for the punches, aka the big ugly news alerts, to stop. Or maybe you needed to go find an actual punching bag and start punching. Or maybe it was the small stuff—your phone froze, the light rail was delayed, a muscle ache popped up somewhere you didn’t even know there was a muscle—all of which you could normally handle, if you hadn’t just been hit with another outrageous announcement from the White House. Or maybe, as happened in my neighborhood one morning, you heard gunshots that were way too loud, aka way too close for comfort, though no one was injured, thank God; probably it was somebody wanting to scare somebody else, without thinking about the kids out waiting for school buses. My first instinct, as always, was to want to move, immediately. To another neighborhood. Or Canada. But it’s been four days now, and I’ve calmed down. Sort of. This is not just the usual gun-loving America, it’s Trump’s America: the guns aren’t going anywhere. And unfortunately, neither is Trump. And it seems he still has a long way to go on his punch list, as builders like to call their project to-do list, though in his case it’s a punch list for un-building. Dismantling. Destroying. What can one person do? I keep asking myself. Very little, it seems. Very little. But little is not nothing. If we all keep doing whatever very little things [...]

Gloria

therestlessnest2019-11-07T15:39:52-08:00Categories: human rights, midlife, writing|Tags: Benaroya Hall, Cheryl Strayed, equal rights, feminism, Gloria Steinem, Hedgebrook, memoir|

“Don’t listen to me,” Gloria Steinem told the two 15-year-old girls. “Listen to yourselves.” A packed-to-the-rafters Benaroya Hall erupted in applause, as it did dozens of times on Sunday night. But there was something about those girls. They were all of us. We have all been fifteen and remember well that panicked thought: who am I? Who will I be? Who do I deserve to be? That the two of them stood together at the microphone, because standing alone would have been too scary, made it all the more poignant. How far in advance did they plan which one of them would ask the question—what advice do you have for teenaged girls?—and which one of them would stand with her for support? Gloria Steinem was in Seattle to promote her new memoir, My Life on the Road. In an evening presented by Hedgebrook, the Whidbey Island retreat for women writers where she wrote much of her book over several summers, Steinem was interviewed by Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, the best-selling memoir of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Strayed was funny and lively and made it clear from the beginning that she was as awed by Steinem as the rest of us. But it was Gloria’s night. I hope she doesn’t mind if I call her Gloria. I don’t believe she will. As she quipped at one point during the evening, “We women aren’t generally so attached to our last names, are we?” When Gloria and Cheryl walked on stage, I felt as if my spine [...]

Happy Birthday, Gloria Steinem

therestlessnest2019-11-13T16:36:10-08:00Categories: brain, dementia, memoir, midlife, politics, writing|Tags: Alzheimer's, feminism, Gloria Steinem, Hedgebrook, women's rights|

Happy Birthday, Gloria Steinem. If you are what eighty looks like, then there is hope in this world. And it is high time I thanked you for a few things. First: Six years ago, for two weeks of my life, you gave me courage to get out of bed. It was April 2008. A cold April: frost every day, even a few snow flurries. Every morning, I huddled under the covers in my cottage at Hedgebrook, the Whidbey Island retreat for women writers, reading your brilliant book of essays, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. You have to understand, Gloria: I did not deserve to be at Hedgebrook, because I was not a real writer. Documentary filmmaker, occasional journalist, effective public affairs bloviator—you could call me all of the above. But writer? What was Hedgebrook thinking, giving me a cottage for two weeks on the basis of a script I’d written for a doc film about Alzheimer’s disease? It was you who gave me courage to get over myself, get out of bed and start writing. Your honesty—about being a Playboy bunny, about your mother’s mental illness, about being a woman—inspired me to write honestly. Your voice—frank, funny, humble, confident—inspired me to try out my own. I was writing about my mother, too. Or trying to. Her birthday is also March 25th. She would have been 83 today, had Alzheimer’s not marked her and claimed her far too young: at 74, after nearly two decades of relentless assault. Even though my mother was just a few years [...]

Restless Breeze

therestlessnest2013-08-29T14:50:43-07:00Categories: arts, hiking, nature, parenting, Uncategorized, women's rights|Tags: Cliff Mass, Hedgebrook, She Writes Press, Washington Trails Association, writing|

I’m restless, I’m humid, I’m one big inhale. I’m a late-August breeze in the shape of a woman. Labor Day is SO next week. Vacation’s over. There’s work to do. But give me any excuse and I’m jumping on my bike. And/or into the lake. I’m stalking blackberry bushes with a plastic bag. I’m looking at the Washington Trails Association website, studying the Hike of the Week, reading articles about what to do if you encounter a bear. I think the entire Northwest population is unanimous about how wonderful the weather has been this summer, even with these recent splatters of rain. It’s such a big deal for us: we don’t always have summers like this one, with tomatoes ripening in early August and day after day glittering like a glacial stream. But it also makes it very hard to say goodbye. Word from the weather watchers is that we don’t have to quite yet, thank God: the September forecast is for more, more, more. But therein lies the challenge: how do we shift gears, get busy, get going, when our restless bodies and minds shout Summer? I am hoping that resuming my reports from the Restless Nest will help. Breaks are good, but I’ve missed this, which is so different from anything else I do or write. And the Nest is authentically Restless right now. Our children—who don’t live under our roof but do live nearby—are off adventuring. Claire’s in the mountains of Colorado with the Southwest Conservation Corps, out of cellphone reach for ten [...]