About: Who is the Woman Wielding Words?

Hello everyone! This blog has become a place for me to explore life and practice writing. It is a motivator for myself to sit down and write as often as possible. It is also a place to explore ideas, issues, and questions. Sometimes it is a place to vent. Sometimes it is a place to cry. Sometimes it is a place to laugh. To me, it is a sacred place, so please treat it with respect.

Who am I? Well, the nuts and bolts are that my name is Lisa Kramer. I hold a Ph.D. in theatre for youth, an MFA in theatre directing and a BA from Smith College in English Language & Literature and Theater. I grew up in Brockton, MA lived in Japan for three years and have lived all over the country except for the Pacific Northwest.  I recently moved back to MA and now live in Auburn which is near Worcester. I’m looking for more work opportunities there now, if anyone has any connections or interest.

I am a wife to Nathan and a mother to eight-year-old Sarah. I am a theatre director and educator. I have taught college courses in theater, freshman composition, research writing, education and honors programs. I also do freelance work in elementary and high school, incorporating drama programming into classrooms. I’ve taught acting classes to kids of all ages. I am an artist, and educator, a mentor, an advocate and a multi-talented person. Give me a challenge and I will meet it.

So those are the nuts and bolts, but it isn’t who I am. I am a woman in the middle of reconfiguring her life. I hope that somehow writing will be a major part of that reconfiguration. I am a person who wants to travel and loves to read and study languages.  I am someone who  has finally realized that a life well-lived is one that is about passion, love, and kindness. This blog is part of my search to live that kind of life.

Join me on my journey and let’s see where we go.

ADDITION: If you are interested in learning a little more about me from past posts without wading through the mass, here are a few suggestions from my post called “Reflections on Writing”

1. Most Beautiful Post . . . I’m going to cheat a little and simply link to my most a recent post about Beauty called The Search for True Beauty.

2. Most Controversial Post . . . Despite the fact that I seem to have a tendency to rant in my posts, I don’t seem to spark a lot of controversy. Maybe I simply don’t have enough readers for a true public debate, or maybe I only interest readers who, for the most part, understand my point. However, I wrote Hell is Living in the Bible Belt knowing that I might trigger some people, and got a few comments that basically told me I was going to Hell. If that’s not controversial, I don’t know what is.

3. Most Helpful Post . . . I don’t know that any of my posts have been extremely helpful except by introducing a few bloggers to each other (I seem to be good at making the connections between bloggers). But here’s a (barely read) post that I think could be very helpful to those of us (or many of us) who struggle with The Persistent Power of Perfectionism.

4. A Post Whose Success Surprised Me . . . this one is the easiest for me to pick because I simply looked up the post that got the most hits and voila, Birthday Wishes comes to the top. I think its success merely comes from people searching for words to say to someone else for their birthday. But, as I read over this post, I realized something pretty incredible. Many of those birthday wishes have come true. Not all, but many.  Maybe there is some magic to a wish made on your birthday.

5. A post that didn’t get the attention that I felt it deserved . . . I don’t know that anybody ever read my post The Culture of Bullying, but I think it said something important.

6. Post I’m most proud of . . .I struggle with this one, as I find it hard to be proud of any of my writing. I still battle the “its not good unless I’m Freshly Pressed” or “I can’t be a good writer because nobody comments.” But, I think the post I am most proud of is a recent one, where I share the lessons I learned working with a very special community of people–Appropriate Age Appropriateness.