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By Sherry Stanfa-Stanley

My memory of the 2022 Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop is a bit blurry. No, that’s not due to a couple late-night roundtables in the hotel bar, where the conversations flowed even more freely than the drinks.

The weekend seems blurry because it flew by so, so quickly. Faster than a speeding fork devouring chocolate lava cake. Faster than the amazing quick wit of a host of comedy professionals. Faster even than Adriana Trigiani’s delivery as she told one hysterical story after another.

Time flies when you’re having so much funny.

My reflections are blurry because my brain is filled with loads of new knowledge, endless inspiration, and the names and faces of hundreds of memorable people.

Thank God for pages and pages of notes.

And during the pinnacle of my workshop experience — the presentation of the DC Stanfa Memorial Writers’ Award and its first three recipients — my vision was blurred through the tears in my eyes. I hadn’t expected to cry. “Ackkk,” as Cathy Guisewite would say.

Of the six or more Erma workshops I’ve been fortunate to enjoy, this was only the second one I’ve attended without DC: my sister, friend, travel buddy and writing partner. But I’d like to imagine she was there that evening: sitting at her usual table in the back, drinking a glass of white wine and smiling with joy and gratitude.

She wasn’t alone. Every person at this workshop left with a heart filled with joy and gratitude.

Erma once wrote, “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.”

Few of us at the Erma workshop waved off dessert last weekend.

And we sure as hell seized every single magical moment, blurry as they each may now seem.

— Sherry Stanfa-Stanley 

Sherry Stanfa-Stanley is an award-winning writer and author of Finding My Badass Self: A Year of Truths and Dares, which chronicles her hilarious and enlightening year of midlife misadventures. Sherry’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Healthy Aging, First for Women and The Huffington Post, as well as the anthologies Fifty Shades of Funny, Laugh Out Loud and You Do You.