Poet, Writer, Somatic Mind-Body Coach (Writing & Expressive Arts), writing facilitator, Photographer
I am an ALLY for LGBTQ2S+, Mental Health, Neurodiversity, Trauma,
Poverty, Addiction
Hello, I’m Debra!
Work with me. Find rest in your words and your body.
Work with me 1:1 or join our facilitated groups to find healing in your body through creative and expressive arts, somatic writing and body mapping and stories, and through shared community.
When you write and create, bring your body along. This is where you will find home.
Also, read some of my poem excerpts below.
“a body is skin wrapped around stories, is tissue filled with veins that the truth runs through, is a box of bones with a voice inside. I don’t want to be a volcano. I want to be a garden full of flowers bursting open toward life, all of them singing, I’m here, I mean something, I want to live.”
—Kai Cheng Thom
Magnolia
No ones knows the magnolia
that blooms in me.
No one knows my heart
is yellow with dahlias.
I carry the moon’s petals
in me day and night.
No one knows the loss
I gently write.
But I do. I will wake
and breathe magnolia
blooms, I will let her yellow
be a sun in my heart,
I will float until I rise and set,
a yellow sun.
Magnolia, blooming
so beautiful, keep blooming,
keep blooming.
—Debra Franke
Join me on the journey towards healing and rest.
1:1 Somatic Writing and Coaching
Group Writing in Community
Individualized 10 session Flow
Nature & Wilderness Writing
I am also a poet and writer.
Read a few of my poem excerpts below.
Poem Excerpts
I followed up up the sandy path
between pines and spruce that summer,
the burning sun our only witness. I was seven,
and my worry kept pace behind you.
(from Kildeer, by Debra Franke)
How do we bear witness when our compass is spinning, when our maps make us lost,
when the sun and moon disappear?
How to bear witness, when we cannot bear to look, because the river is everywhere, everywhere in this city?
Because we see her everywhere.
Like two eagles that came out of the drums at the rally, she is the wind.
(for JB, from Bearing Witness, by Debra Franke)
James Wright calls it a blessing,
how in those heightened moments we might
step out of ourselves and into blossom.
Was my blessing the chestnut horses?
Or was it my heart rising like the morning?
(from Three Horses, by Debra Franke)
The moon tide, like your dusk-dark room,
keeps pulling me, spinning on its axel;
blue sky/earth meet like past/present.
(from A Day of Flight, by Debra Franke)
You could have had us visit beforehand
preparing us would have been kind,
then the way would not have been
so hard to find in blowing snow
(from Snow Stopped The Town, by Debra Franke
Electricity in the air like black jagged lines of EEG screens.
The wind outside is fierce, rain heavy as gauze,
and I know that nothing is right
except the sky, orange reflective guiding me,
blue and red rain streaks like lights of a helicopter pad
shining in the night, telling emergencies
to land here lightly.
(from Everything Is OK, by Debra Franke)
My Blog
Blog
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
— Tulips, by Sylvia Plath
Welcome! My name is Debra. Thanks for visiting. Learn more about my writing here.