Instructor: Niki DiGaetano
Maximum Enrollment: 6
Class Term: 05/22/2025 - 06/26/2025
Tuition/Fees
SCN Member: $205
Non-Member: $245
Class synopsis
This is a 6-week small cohort course that includes flash writing prompts and in-class activities, short lectures, and time to share your stories with other participants.Class description
In this beginner friendly memoir writing experience, you’ll learn how to capture your life stories, even if right now, you don’t know where to begin. Together and in a safe environment, we will explore your past to share and process the lessons you’ve learned throughout your life. At the same time, we will be gently contemplating our own mortality, and how death and dying offer powerful invitations on living with purpose and meaning.
By the end of this course, you will have 10-12 pages of your own life stories ready to share with family and loved ones or polish and refine into your full memoirs. You will also have a newfound insight on how to live more fully, and with aligned intention.
Note: this is not a writing-critique workshop. We are not giving nor receiving negative critique or feedback intended to polish up the writing. Instead, the focus of this course is to simply and bravely write and share our stories.
Class goals
Create a tangible piece of your living legacy and a keepsake for yourself and your loved
ones
Grow your creative writing skills and confidence
Record and pass on your hard-earned wisdom and life lessons
Gently engage with the concepts of death and your own mortality as a way to learn to
live a more vibrant, authentic life
Class communication method
This class meets online via Zoom, once a week on Thursday evenings from 6:30 - 8 pm Central Time. All student handouts will be provided via a Google Drive folder that will be shared with participants. Student assignments will be posted weekly on the group class page after they are read aloud in our class meetings. All communication with the instructor can be handled by email.Class outline
Week 1: Introductions and Branching Points theme. I will send out the writing prompt/student handouts prior to our first class. Please read the handouts and write your first story on our topic, Branching Points. This theme asks you to explore those “forks in the road” or “branching points” that have deeply altered the course of our lives. Are you proud of the choices you’ve made? Do you have regrets? Why or why not? Let’s unpack it together.
Write your story before class, around 700-900 words. Please be prepared to share. Don’t worry! This may be scary, but we will work together to cultivate a safe and accepting space to cheer you on in your writing.
Week 2: Family theme. I will send out the writing prompt/student handouts prior to our next class. Please read the handouts and write your next story on our topic, Family. This can be a joyous theme, or a painful theme. Oftentimes, it’s a combination of both. But regardless of your current affiliation with your family, they have an impactful role in shaping the origins of our stories.
Write your story before class, around 700-900 words. Please be prepared to share. Don’t worry! This may be scary, but we will work together to cultivate a safe and accepting space to cheer you on in your writing.
Week 3: Death and dying. Now that we’ve had a few classes to get comfortable with each other, we begin to dive into some of the heavier topics of our course. As with the other classes, you will be provided with handouts with questions to spark an experience you’ve had regarding death and dying. Here, feel free to write about the first death you witnessed. Or write about your fears surrounding death.
Write your story before class, around 700-900 words. Please be prepared to share. Don’t worry! This may be scary, but we will work together to cultivate a safe and accepting space to cheer you on in your writing.
Week 4: Grief. I will send out the writing prompt/student handouts prior to our next class. Please read the handouts and write your next story on our topic, Grief. This can be another difficult theme to write about, whether you are writing about the grief of a loved one who has since died, or the grief you feel after a significant life transition, such as divorce, job loss, or empty-nesting. Yet, grief, as death, offers powerful invitations on living: grief invites us to wade into our sorrow to nurture our connection with the one(s) we’ve lost, and to savor the moments of joy that we still have.
Write your story before class, around 700-900 words. Please be prepared to share. Don’t worry! This may be scary, but we will work together to cultivate a safe and accepting space to cheer you on in your writing.
Week 5: Spirituality. I will send out the writing prompt/student handouts prior to our next class. Please read the handouts and write your next story on our topic, Spirituality. Please note I am NOT explicitly referring to organized religion. Spirituality has many definitions and means different things to different people. Where do you feel most connected to a purpose or being larger than yourself? And how might you cultivate more moments of that incredible connection throughout your daily living?
Write your story before class, around 700-900 words. Please be prepared to share. Don’t worry! This may be scary, but we will work together to cultivate a safe and accepting space to cheer you on in your writing.
Week 6: Legacy. I will send out the writing prompt/student handouts prior to our next class. Please read the handouts and write your next story on our topic, Legacy. This is our final prompt! Legacy refers to the mark you leave behind; what stories did you share? What memories did you make? What lessons would you like to ensure are passed on? As you complete your life stories collection from this course, know that you have just created a small slice of your own living legacy.
Write your story before class, around 700-900 words. Please be prepared to share. Don’t worry! This may be scary, but we will work together to cultivate a safe and accepting space to cheer you on in your writing.
Class time commitment
1.5 hours for weekly live class, plus an additional 1-2 hours of writing outside of class. This time can vary depending on how fast or slow of a writer you are, so please plan accordingly.Instructor bio
In her work as a death doula, Niki has seen firsthand the beauty in the ordinary through the work with her clients. She understands that each person has a unique life and perspective, and so, every life is a fantastic story worthy of being told. As a doula, one of the services she offers her clients is the creation of a book of their life stories.
Niki is certified as a Guided Autobiography Instructor through the Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies. Having gone through the GAB process herself, she knows that although this process takes courage, the rewards of self-knowing and lasting legacy are profound.
Niki currently lives in the Salt Lake City area of Utah where she loves skiing, hiking, and rock climbing. She is currently working on writing a book that combines the stories of her 900-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail with the story of discovering death care, and how both ultimately taught her how to fall in love with being alive.