Writing is hard. Writing honestly is even harder. Writing something honest means having to open up and be vulnerable. You have to make the page your safe space and you can't second guess yourself. It's not an easy task but honesty is what is at the heart of every great work of literature.

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

-Ernest Hemingway

I know that I am writing honestly when I can't control what I'm saying anymore. It's like my hands go into autopilot while they communicate with something inside of me that I can't hear or look at or know. My words become little convicts escaping the Alcatraz that is my mind. I'm scared they're going to run too far, but it's kind of exciting seeing them freed onto the page.

I recently had the opportunity to write freely and honestly when author Terry Tempest Williams visited Wake Forest University and taught a writing workshop called Writing Resistance. Terry created a sacred space for 25 undergraduate and graduate students to write about their transformative moments, and I was blessed enough to be one of them.

Terry taught me about "sacred rage" the idea of turning your fruitless anger into a productive act of resistance. Our class learned about "radical empathy" where we got to learn another's story and recount it in first person, making their pain, heartbreak, determination and success our own. I learned that storytelling is an act of resistance as much as the beauty of the mountains and deserts in our national parks are acts of resistance. Through Terry's stories, I got to visit places that I have never been to before, like the desert and Yosemite National Park. I got to feel a new connection to our beautiful home, earth.

The writing workshop was three hours each night from Monday- Thursday and after each workshop I felt like my mind was floating in a slow miasma that allowed me to communicate with that place that only my hands have had the privilege of knowing until this point.

There is so much more that I could say. I feel as if I could recall her stories with radical empathy. I want to tell you that Vivaldi's Four Seasons is now the blood coursing through my veins. I want to tell you the icebreakers we used to begin and end class. I want to tell you about the desert that I've never visited and the bison that I've never seen. But those stories belong to the moment and now, they belong to my heart.

I am so thankful to Terry Tempest for taking time out of her busy schedule for dear Wake Forest students. I will cherish my experience with her and my 25 new friends forever.