MISSION STATEMENT

SILENT VOICES SPEAK started out as Silent Voices: A Writer’s Workshop, as the first group at the drop-in center at the Broadway location of Community Counseling Centers of Chicago, whose purpose is to empower it’s attendees to form and attend their own groups.

We have branched out as an independent entity. We are silent no more. We say yes to the creative possibilities of life & art...

The mission of SILENT VOICES SPEAK is to give a voice to people who are disenfranchised. Many of the participants in SILENT VOICES SPEAK are also visual and/or performing artists.

Membership is open to all.
Send submissions to lizhipwell@gmail.com.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

FROM THE BEGINNING by Elizabeth Hipwell

No direction
No sense of what's to come
Innocent to the cracking of perfection
Not knowing how to attain
To get
To have
Love, happiness and knowledge
A clean slate
A blank page
Open to whatever may come
No fear
Happy just because
Nothing can stop me
Trauma hasn't happened yet
Causing
Questioning, halting and freezing
Mommy and daddy don't beat one another up...
Yet...
Kids don't call me stupid and fat (Hippo Hipwell Lezzie Lizardbreath)...
Yet...
People haven't given up on me...
Yet...
This story is unfolding...
Yet to be...

-Elizabeth Hipwell