🖊️ Writing Prompt Wednesday has long been a sacred space — a gathering of reflection, creativity, and voice. Over the past year, we’ve journeyed through deep and tender themes like Remembering, Grief, and Loss. We’ve also lifted up the powerful texts born from our community, including Reconsidering Eve and Finding the Voice Within.
Each prompt has been an invitation to write from the soul — to reflect, reclaim, and reimagine.
This season, we turn inward once more with a new series: Black Women Practicing Self-Compassion and Self-Empathy.
In a world that constantly measures us against someone else’s standard, it’s all too easy to become our own harshest critics. Even as we learn to hold space for others, we often forget to extend that same grace to ourselves.
So each Wednesday, we’ll offer a quote as a starting point — a sacred mirror — followed by a prompt to help you go deeper into your own knowing. Deeper into tenderness. Deeper into truth.
This is your invitation to write with softness. To return to yourself.
WRITING PROMPTS
October 15: Celebrate You!
🌸 Quote: “Come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.” — Lucille Clifton
🖊️ Prompt: Take a sacred pause to reflect on how you celebrate yourself. What rituals or embodied practices help you honor your spirit, your growth, and your journey? What often gets in the way of you taking that space to simply be with yourself in gratitude? Consider what intentions or practices you can set to ensure that you honor who you are—not just for what you’ve done, but for the sacred being you continue to become.
September 24: Divine Timing
🌸 Quote: “You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can’t go wrong. The world is behind you.” — Josephine Baker
🖊️ Prompt: Write about your relationship with time and timing. When have you been gentle with yourself about your own pace and journey? Reflect on a moment when something happened at exactly the right time, though it may not have seemed “right” by external standards. How can you extend compassion to yourself regarding your personal timeline?
September 10: The Voice Within
🌸 Quote: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker
🖊️ Prompt: Consider the divine inner voice that guides you. When did you first recognize this voice as distinct from external expectations or judgments? Write about a time when you trusted your inner wisdom despite doubts or contrary advice. How has listening to yourself been an act of self-compassion? How can you practice paying attention to that inner voice more? For more inspiration on harnessing the voice within, check out our text, Finding the Voice Within.
September 3: Joy as Resistance
🌸 Quote: “When Black women are joyful, it is not in spite of but because of the ways we have learned to be artful, persistent and discerning as we navigate this world.” — Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts
🖊️ Prompt: Reflect on a recent moment of pure, unfiltered joy. What made this joy possible? How did you allow yourself to fully experience it? In what ways is your joy an act of resistance in a world that often expects Black women to carry everyone else’s burdens?
For more inspiration on practicing joy, check out the following reads:
- Inciting Joy, Ross Gay
- A Good Cry, Nikki Giovanni
- The Gospel According to a Black Woman, Ebony Aya
August 27: Writing to Heal
🌸 Quote: “I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.” – Alice Walker
🖊️ Prompt: Reflect on the ways writing has served as a practice of healing in your life. When did you first notice its magic—its power to transform? When you face yourself on the page, what happens? What obstacles get in the way of writing as a path to healing and transformation? How might you lean more fully into a writing practice that nurtures healing, rather than one that leads to condemnation or self-doubt?
For more inspiration about the transforming power of writing, read “Why I/We Write”
August 13: Giving and Receiving
🌸 Quote: “We as Black women have to actually practice receiving as much as we have been proficient in giving. We know what it is to labor and sacrifice. We know how to take care of everyone else around us, and though tired, feel quite comfortable doing so…What we are less practiced at is receiving from others, without feeling as if we owe somebody something for daring to give a damn.” – Ebony Aya
🖊️ Prompt: Reflect on your own balance between giving and receiving. When have you felt at ease offering your care, energy, or resources to others? When have you found it challenging to receive without apology, explanation, or the urge to “repay” the gesture? What might it look like to welcome generosity toward you—fully, freely, and without guilt? How might practicing receiving become an act of self-love and restoration?
We invite you to share your reflections in our community space or keep them private in your personal journal. However you choose to engage, know that each word you write is an act of reclamation — a return to your most authentic self.
August 6: The Courage to Rest
🌸 Quote: “Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.” — Tricia Hersey
🖊️ Prompt: Consider your relationship with rest. How did you learn that your value was tied to your productivity? Write about a time when you allowed yourself to truly rest without guilt. What made this possible? If genuine rest feels foreign to you, imagine what it would look like to embrace rest as a sacred practice rather than a reward for exhaustion.
We invite you to share your reflections in our community space or keep them private in your personal journal. However you choose to engage, know that each word you write is an act of reclamation — a return to your most authentic self.
July 30: Self Acceptance
🌸 Quote: “Embrace what makes you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable. I didn’t have to become perfect because I’ve learned throughout my journey that perfection is the enemy of greatness.” – Janelle Monae
🖊️ Prompt: Find a mirror. Sit with it. Look closely—not to critique or compare, but to witness. Take in the curve of your nose, the lines around your eyes, the richness of your skin, the way your face holds history.
Then, look deeper. Beyond what the world has told you to love or reject. What lives behind your eyes? What truths, memories, or dreams rise to the surface?
Many of us have been taught to turn away from our reflection—to doubt our worth, to shrink from who we truly are. But this week, resist that urge.
With pen in hand, begin to write the story of your becoming. Name the qualities, values, quirks, and questions that shape your sense of self. Name them without shame. Without apology. How can you begin to not only see yourself—but to accept, honor, and love what you find?
July 23: Beyond the Mirror
🌸 Quote: “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.” — Maya Angelou
🖊️ Prompt: Write a letter to the part of yourself that still believes you must constantly prove your worth. What expectations have you internalized? When did you start to internalize those messages? Did they originate with you or from somewhere outside of you? What would it mean to release the constant striving and embrace your inherent worthiness?
July 16: Sacred Boundaries
🌸 Quote: “If you prioritize yourself, you are going to save yourself.” – Gabrielle Union
🖊️ Prompt: Reflect on a boundary you’ve recently set (or need to set) as an act of self-preservation. What made this boundary necessary? How did it feel in your body to honor your needs? What voices — internal or external — challenged your right to this boundary?
July 9: The Softness of Being
🌸 Quote: “You are worthy of love and respect, and that starts with treating yourself with kindness and compassion” – Alex Elle
🖊️ Prompt: Think about the ways you extend grace and empathy to others. Now, write about a moment when you offered that same grace to yourself.
If no moment comes to mind, that’s okay. Instead, imagine what true self-compassion might look like in your current season of life:
- What words do you speak to yourself?
- What boundaries do you honor?
- What practices help you return to your own softness — your need for care, tenderness, and understanding?
Let your pen be gentle. Let your truth rise.
NEXT STEPS
✨ Share your reflections:
We’d love to hear what came up for you as you engaged with this prompt. Feel free to share your writing by tagging us on Instagram or sending us a DM at @ayacollectivemn. Your words matter 💛.
✒️ Resources for Going Deeper:
Check out this podcast on self-compassion produced by Therapy for Black Girls. Listen to the podcast.
Read Chanequa Walker Barnes’ Sacred Self Care. Get the book.
Listen to this 5 minute self-compassion meditation with Haven Inspired. Listen now.
🤎 Let’s connect!
Join our online writing community on Discord, a place where we can exchange our writing and encourage each other. Email ebony@ayacollectivemn.com to get a personalized invitation to join today.
Aya Collective Publishing 