“I Can: Twelve Ways to Witness the Heart” @ Dandelion Botanical

A full house of individuals joined Pamela Sackett, principal artist & founder of Emotion Literacy Advocates (ELA), as she read passages from her latest book, “I Can.”

The evening’s activities featured a couple musical surprises with special guest Nalini Lasiewicz, Pamela’s singing partner in Los Angeles, where they performed and recorded. They reconnected, for the first time in numerous years, when Nalini flew to Seattle to participate in the book launch, singing her signature harmonies to the book’s theme song: “Inside My Head.” (Special thanks to Bill Zama for taking and giving us this video.)

 

We had a lively discussion afterwards, with Q & A to start, followed by much mingling. We thank all of you who attended the event as well as those who expressed interest.

EXCERPTED FROM OUR EVENT GUEST BOOK ENTRIES:

All the lost things in the world come to you for voice. This was lovely, the reading, the songs, the discussion…

~Arlene Plevin, Ph.D

Witness! something I needed to hear. In a world that is so angry, cruel and shocking, you are the fresh breath.

~Marjie Cogan (work in progress)

Listening to you read soothes, elevates and enlightened me. I am grateful for all of the love, curiosity and grace you have invested in a quest that we know is NOT quixotic: healing, holding and salving the world’s woundedness.

~audience member

Keep sharing your insight, the world needs you.

~Colleen Laing

To obtain a copy of the I Can book and have it sent to you, you can buy it on the I Can main book page.

P.S. Nalini & Pamela outfitted by Prairie Underground
{a Seattle-born ecologically and ethically sustainable
populist apparel designer & manufacturer
}.


THE “I CAN” BOOK IS PRINTED IN THE USA ON PAPER CERTIFIED BY THE FOREST STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL (FSC) AND SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY INITIATIVE (SFI).

“I Can: Twelve Ways to Witness the Heart” @ East West Bookshop

On October 17, 2019, in East West Bookshop’s presentation room,
Stan Dombrowski introduced Pamela

Pamela entered the scene, welcomed the audience
and shared how her book came about…
she then proceeded with her tone-setting song
“Lotus Blue”

Pamela then read from her new book
I Can: Twelve Ways to Witness the Heart
and
responded to questions from the audience…

I loved the vitality with which you read from your book,
just your vitality in general…
I loved hearing, first-hand, the conviction
behind your well-chosen words…
I’m looking forward to reading your book…
thanks so much for the beautiful reading
and wonderful songs!
~gathered from audience feedback forms

Heartfelt to hear in person. ~ Phil Miller

Pamela’s whole presentation
is 
always extremely engaging
and my favorite issues
to talk about…
there is a dramatic value
to her communication style…

I love it!
~Becky Gimelli, psychologist

 

…what a wonderful star that led you to my life…what a gift you are—what wisdom, clarity,
generosity of mind and spirit…
lovely and learned and soooooo refreshingly
and unabashedly human.
❤️
~Jennifer Joslyn Sill

Thanks for inviting me
to hear your book reading.
The discussion you and others provided,
during and after the reading parts,
gave me more to think about and understand.
I haven’t read the book yet
but now I’m more interested in it
and how it can help me and others I know.

~Eric Farris

Pamela closed with her I Can book’s theme song, “Inside My Head”

…clear, accessible, enlightening, validating, healing, endearing.
~ Jennifer Johnson

Here is where I Can book info can be found.

Here is where you can read about
our first launch in July @ Dandelion Botanical
and see a brief video of Pamela performing the book’s theme song
with long-time singing collaborator Nalini Lasiewicz.

Thank you for your interest!


Event photos: Nadia Nurmukhametova
Recorded songs’ vocal, guitar, composition: Pamela Sackett

“Saving the World Solo” commentary

STWSFrontCoverFull
Ms. Sackett’s second of three books of rhythmic prose, a humorous, poignant memoir, a pithy, earnest vision for the future

Author Puts Emotions in Motion
Have you ever had a feeling you couldn’t put into words — some roiling emotion begging for expression? Has fear ever kept you silent? You might be interested to hear from Pamela Sackett, the Seattle author, playwright and artist who will be reading from her new memoir, “Saving the World Solo” at The Elliott Bay Book Co.

Sackett is involved with a group called Emotion Literacy Advocates, using her words in compelling fashion — to entertain and teach about the essential role language plays in relationship to feelings and behavior in schools, on stages and beyond.
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2004

Excerpt from Saving the World Solo book introduction

…as a lover of language, I was awed by (Pamela’s) ability to manipulate and revel in words—to play with their multilayered meanings and their rhythm, to make them completely her own tools to express precise perceptions and nuanced tones of feeling. But beyond the word-dance, it was the content of the pieces that held me transfixed: Pamela Sackett was expressing the meta-mental and emotional process of the Strong Idealist who is burdened with a legacy of personal self-doubt and fear, living in a world that is structured at so many levels to foster and maintain that self-doubt and fear…

…Pamela demonstrated great vulnerability and sincere bravery as she wove pieces of her life story around her conviction to reach for personal and planetary emotional health, in the midst of navigating her own deep wounds, and ours. I wondered how many other people in the audience felt like she was telling their stories out loud, articulating their own idealism and self-limitation.

I know I did. Having dedicated my life to “accountability,” at all levels, working as a professional activist and as a personal activist, examining and rooting out my own patterns of limitation that interfere with my ability to be my strongest, most liberated self, Pamela’s words were like a mirror reflecting my own greatest hopes and darkest secrets.

It became immediately clear to me that Pamela’s richly textured work was just that—her work, her calling, her reason for being on this earth. To use language to bear witness to where we are locked up as a society and as individuals, and to do so by using herself as the primary specimen under the microscope. In doing so, she gives us several gifts.

First, the gift of naming and shaping our greatest potential: the freedom to be emotionally authentic.

Second, the gift of exposing the greatest obstacle to that freedom: our fear of vulnerability in being emotionally authentic, and the lengths we will go, because of that fear, to avoid our own authenticity and freedom.

Finally, she shows us a path to our greatest potential: to examine the fear and learn the forms it takes; to then listen to the still voice inside that is already authentic and free; and to amplify that voice by sharing it…


Dana Gold continues to work with the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and served as director of the Center on Corporations, Law & Society at Seattle University School of Law

Pamela uses everyday language in a vital and innovative way…high quality stuff, redefining the human.
—Rich Reha, gallery owner

I had the privilege of hearing Pamela’s performance and enjoyed it enormously. She displays subtle humor effectively with an originality that made her message most meaningful. I confidently recommend this program.
—Bob Wilson, former Rotary District Governor

Pamela is a gifted stream of consciousness writer—a creative catalyst replete with screaming clarity!
—Joanne Wright, board advisor, Women Business Owners

I attended this event because I thought/hoped Pamela would have a paradigm-breaking use of words … she did. She is amazing, touching, honest, funny, but yet beyond and deeper than my own words are saying here … timing, voice, deep, funny both ‘ha-ha’ and deeply real … I could listen and be awakened by her for hours, days…
—Jordana P. Smith, Portland, Oregon

 For book excerpts, testimonials & info.

“Speak of the Ghost” testimonials

little girl w:ghost001

FOR THE LOVE OF FEELINGS…

Speak of the Ghost: In the Name of Emotion Literacy is a series of seventy-eight finely detailed narrative poems and a comprehensive introduction. The book’s primary intent is to support individuals moving through family of origin issues by providing witness, prompts for stages of the journey, insight and encouragement.

A work of creative non-fiction, the book also serves group facilitators working in therapeutic and educational settings.

Speak of the Ghost fan letter excerpt

Hello Ms. Sackett…your name was entirely new to me…when I sampled some paragraphs from your book, I was quickly struck by the directness of expression, the clarity of detail and tone, the sense that you are reporting on real defeats, struggles and victories; the complementarity of inside and outside, of personal and social; the sharp challenges, the shocks of recognizing accustomed and perverted priorities; the both visceral and conceptual responses; the voices of self, selves, and self-alienation; the radical changes of recovery, the sweetness of healing and self-integration; and other content and characteristics I am still struggling to name. Most important, the conviction that they all are fruits of a hard-won knowledge and integrity.

Such an integrity is part of my goal also.

I was stunned. The book quickly became necessary (one of my conditions of purchase), and it captivated me for several hours…

…I look forward to learning more about your methods of using language as a tool for recovery. And even without understanding your methods, your work is encouraging. Hurrah! Thanks…
—Anonymous

Reader Comments

Take a look at Pamela’s book and you will find everyone on trial, caught and transformed. I loved those poems.
—Arnold Mindell, Ph.D. author of The Leader as Martial Artist

Pamela’s words and feelings are mine. She went into that place in me where they had been hidden for so long and gave permission for them to finally come out. Her work is a gift to me because it gives so much permission and validation.
—Bayla Greenspoon, early childhood educator, teacher on 
anti-bias, multicultural issues

This book is a primer for the reality of emotion, makes it tangible. Reaches the part of me that sees without my eyes—-my whole being—-every cell of my body has eyes when Pamela speaks.
—Taylor Danard, M.A. Psychotherapist

It’s loaded!
—Marjorie Cogan, recovering stage manager

…tapped my losses from childhood forgotten, that men don’t talk about in our culture…tapped somewhere in me, untied a knot in me long buried.
—Barry Schiess, landscape artist

Her collection of poems and writings contain strong emotion, clear insight and models ways for each reader to emulate as we fight clear of the hurts of the past.
—Earl Rice, Pastor, Trinity United Methodist Church, Seattle

Your words went directly to my emotional body. As I listened to you, I heard the truth of my own story, uttered with such passion and wit. My body literally tingled. I felt shivers as the wave of realization rippled through me. Thank you for putting words to my experiences. I feel more deeply empowered to utter my own story now.
—Elliott Bay Book Company reading audience member

What an absolute pleasure. Your language drew me in, made me ponder. I thank you for that. Several of your pieces are meant for several of my clients, and me, and my husband!
—Seattle Counselors Association member

Having also been born into a family where emotional repression was the key to survival, I was quite moved by many of your pieces. I was also very heartened by the commonalty of experience and the hope, willingness and insistence on active change towards emotion literacy. As a researcher in domestic violence and as a survivor, I wholeheartedly recognize and acknowledge the need, and thank you for your courage.
—Mary Kernic, epidemiologist in training

Your book has been an unspeakable asset to both myself and my best friend who is in the midst of recovery…
—Seattle University psychology student

It helped me to re-establish the importance of my writing and among many other things, being a witness to children.
—Anonymous

LOOKING BACK…

Like every offspring, Speak of the Ghost came with its own set of gifts and demands. Mere minutes after an east coast truck delivered the finished book to my door, I received a call from Kevin Krycka, Seattle University’s (then) graduate psychology program director letting me know he elected to put the book on a required reading list and integrate my live, dramatic presentations into three psychology curricula.

Placing such a personal work into such a public format heightened my sense of risk and fear of scrutiny, punctuating the essence of why I needed to write the book in the first place–to retrieve my own sense of authority and to exercise my ability to stand by it, no matter how this work might be publicly perceived.

Engaging in that struggle through the writing and delivering of Ghost influenced my direction, personally, as an artist, forever, and seeded the founding of Emotion Literacy Advocates.


I am grateful to all those who let me know they appreciate the chance I continue to take, years hence, with comparatively microscopic hesitation.
—Pamela Sackett 

Learn more about “Speak of the Ghost” here.

“Booing Death” testimonials

reading BD from the pulpit for audience
Photos by Jeff Rogers

me BD @ EBay w:book covers

In Booing Death, Pamela manages to find tender humor in this subject that is too often not even spoken about. It creates an opening that I find very refreshing. As a drama therapist and teacher of emerging therapists I have utilized several essays and poems from Booing Death to help students focus on the various issues included in grief. We have found that her way of ‘getting in the corners’ of those issues inspires embodied activities that are central to our healing art.
—Bobbi Kidder, MA, RDT/BCT 

In reading your book, Booing Death, I am reminded of my husband’s passing over eight years ago. When he died, I received at least twenty-five books about grief. They were either delivered to me at my door or mailed. Also there were recommended readings via phone or email. All from our dear friends. Yet, not a one spoke to me. I admit I didn’t feel an urge to pick one up. I am positive that if I’d received Booing Death eight years ago, I would have been curious,
drawn to open it.

I have found it necessary to consciously stop, put your writings aside, and be still. This is so I can have a moment to relish each experience you describe, each intimate poetic brilliancy you have willingly shared, with me—yes, your work is so very personal—and in part, a replica of my own story. I read your riveting awarenesses over and over, Ms. Sackett, for when I do, it appears as if I am reading a profound page all anew.

With gratitude beyond words, thank you.
—Rebecca Love, M.A.

… beautiful, gut wrenching and comforting all put together!
—Julie Daniels, actress, writer, M.F.A.

I keep reading Booing Death...an absolute postmodern classic!
—David Wilson, writer

—Pre-publication reader comments

An uncompromising work of absolute emotional authenticity.

It’s not a self-help book (thank goodness); it doesn’t offer solutions (what solutions are there?), but after reading it I felt neither depressed nor fearful. I felt uplifted in a quiet way; I’d been made more aware of connections to other people.

This book is incredible, a salve and a bridge, takes me places I need to go!

BD Ebay bk sign 4 RHS student
Post-performance book-signing
BD Ebay smiling clasped hands:backs o heads
Q & A @ Elliott Bay

Fall semester of 2013, Christina Roux, language arts teacher at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, decided to make Booing Death her honors credit “Book Seminar” course selection. Nineteen students finished the course which included the purchase and reading of the book, attending one of Pamela’s author events in Seattle, journaling, responding to the study guide for Booing Death and discussing the material together in the class that Pamela was invited to visit.

Here are a few student comments about Booing Death:

I decided to sign up for (the course) because (death) is a topic that is not very common in literature, especially when discussed so candidly and up front… and because of the death of my mom’s parents. It really affected our family and I was interested to hear other points of view on death.

…death is never really talked about in a relatable way but in Booing Death it was very understandable.

[I chose Booing Death] because I have had a family member pass away and I was curious how other people dealt with the same pain…because I have an interest in short stories and poems. I like to write them so I figured this would be a great opportunity to learn.

I found the cover of the book intriguing and I wanted to learn what it meant…I lost a friend last June and thought this book might give me more insight to the idea of death…so cleverly written…so relatable…this poem put all my thoughts into writing and made it easier to organize my ideas about this…the book really helped me…”Half Green” moved me quite a bit.

I didn’t really think much of this line when I first saw it but I re-read the poem…made me wonder why I didn’t get that clarity in my own life.

I found the poems “Encore”, “Fixed” and “What If” really opened up my emotions and made me realize what exactly I was feeling and thinking about after a grieving loss.

Before I thought death was a very strict and dangerous topic to talk about…I then realized because I was afraid of thinking about death is part of the reason why I feel that death is such a hard thing to overcome.

[“Where The Sun Won’t Shine”] was particularly significant to me because it made me think about life more than death.

…words described exactly how I have felt before…at the time, I was at a loss of words to explain but the author surely wraps up the right words to form a very well-said sentence…the author yet again explains how I (and she) feel perfectly…summed it up for me…evocative of my own life…led me to think in a new way about death, loss, grief and emotions/feelings…gave me a more peaceful image…gave me a different perspective.

…opened doors for me to understand grief…made me understand death on a deeper level…

No one in my life has died but I have experienced friends disappearing out of my life…

…each stanza was so different and so beautiful… (reference to “Almighty Cul-De-Sac”)

—student names withheld

Learn more about “Booing Death” here.