Every week, Scott Feifer gets people to share their innermost thoughts. He's not a clergyman or a therapist. He's a writer, and he believes in the power of the pen.

Feifer, who taught language arts for almost 30 years at Hempfield School District, has been leading writing circles since his days as a teacher. He left his public school position in 2020 and has since focused on the transformative power of writing.

Feifer leads writing circles at Manos House, a residential treatment program for young men in Columbia; Blueprints for Addiction Recovery; Domestic Violence Services; and the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center, among other locations throughout Lancaster and neighboring counties.

"We run from our stories and the trauma and the hard things we've experienced," he said. "But when we write it down, we realize that ultimately, there's no running from our past."

Ironically, the man who gets people to bare their souls on paper wasn't always so open.

In 1998, he signed up for a summer writing workshop at Millersville University. As part of the class, students shared their writing with their peers.

"I didn't want to reveal something so private," Feifer recalled. "I decided I would go to the first class, but if I was uncomfortable or I didn't like it, I would leave during the break."

Not only did he stay for the class, but he also found a new outlet for his emotions.

"Something broke open for me in a way that I hadn't expected," he said of his writing. "I wanted my students to taste what I had experienced that summer."

He began offering writing circles at Hempfield, focusing on ideals expressed in Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones."

"It's free writing, stream of consciousness, just get your thoughts down on paper," he said. "I had kids writing about their dog dying. Kids wrote about their parents splitting up. They wrote about their dad in prison and wondering what he was doing while they were in class."

In 2002, Feifer took a sabbatical and began offering his writing circles at various locations around the county, including domestic violence organizations and detention centers.

"Honestly, when I started going to the Youth Intervention Center, I was shocked by how respectful most of the kids in the unit were," he said. "They were eager to be heard."

This is Feifer's 22nd year volunteering at Manos House, where he leads writing circles with young men, facilitates joint groups with women from a local recovery house and incorporates writing into group counseling sessions.

As a former teacher, he said he most enjoys that this writing is not graded or required to fit any standards.

"There's no rubric, no box they have to fit into," he shared. "This writing lets people know they have a voice and a story, and they can use their voice to tell their story. These writing circles are for people who are struggling just to survive, when we all deserve to thrive."

Feifer's sessions typically begin with a prompt, which could be a poem or a writing passage, but participants may write about anything they like. He also shares his own story with his writing circle, encouraging the writer to embrace the idea of putting their thoughts onto paper.

"I explain that writing slows us down and gives us time to reflect and respond and not just act on impulse or just react," he said.

Ultimately, he's not concerned with the final product; instead, he's focused on the process.

"It's not about the quality of the writing," he said. "It's about the quality of the people who sit and do the writing. It's about what comes out of them. You can hear when somebody's heart is in their writing."

His goal is "writing toward freedom, recovery, healing and hope."

Participants are invited to share their writing out loud during the circles if they'd like to, and Feifer collects the writing and responds to each submission.

"I believe in writing back to them on the back of their paper, by hand," he said. "I read everything they submit, even if it's not shared in the circle."

Feifer, who grew up in Lancaster and graduated from McCaskey High School and Franklin & Marshall College, earned his teaching certificate from Millersville University. He's been honored with local accolades as a volunteer, including receiving the Jefferson Award and a Teacher Impact Award.

He doesn't do it for the honors, he said. Instead, he's motivated and inspired by the change he sees in the people who join his writing circles.

"Someone will tell me, 'This was not what I expected, but it was what I needed,'" he said. "Writing like this allows you take off the suit of armor we all wear, let some light in and really be yourself, who you truly are."

He encourages participants like the young men at Manos House to keep their writings to share with their parole officers as evidence of their growth in the program.

"I tell people, 'When you take what I'm doing seriously, you're taking yourself seriously,'" he said. "I hope that through my writing circles, I'm giving people a tool of greater personal awareness and that is giving them power."

To learn more about Feifer and his writing circles, visit http://www.thewritingcircleprogram.com.