Marching Forth, 2026
March 4th is a word nerd's favorite holiday, a day for new beginnings, and a time to celebrate your achievements! Find your March Forth inspiration here, including a writing prompt.
Welcome back to This Dream is a Poem, my (mostly) weekly newsletter celebrating dreams, writing, and all of the cozy places where they intersect! It’s free! Or, get extra benefits when you become a paid subscriber.
Today I’m:
🎈 Upcycling my annual March Fo(u)rth post,
🎈 Updating you on my March Fo(u)rth progress, and
🎈 Offering a March Fo(u)rth writing prompt to inspire you.
BUT FIRST: Let’s honor this mostly made-up holiday!
March 4th is the only day of the year that is a complete sentence. (Get it? March forth!) Therefore, I’ve declared 3/4 to be a holiday.
To honor this day, choose something you are ready to let go of (an old grudge, an outdated belief, an unhelpful attitude) and then declare that you are ready to March Forth into a new chapter of your beautiful life.
While you're deciding what you want to let go of on this March 4th, here's a link to a story about how I learned the value of moving forward thanks to some bad advice that turned good.
What happened when I Marched Forth on 3/4?
Several years ago, on March 4th, I launched a 100-day writing challenge to motivate me to finish writing my book about dreams and writing that I’d been—well—dreaming about for more than 10 years.
Exactly 100 days later, having met my goal, I received an email from The Collective Book Studio saying they were interested in publishing my book!
🎈Now Dreaming on the Page has been out in the world inspiring dreams, poems, stories, and memoirs for more than three years! 🎈
My (other) online publication, The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined, launched on March 4, 2023.
Since then:
More than 2,100 subscribers have signed up to read the weekly installments of The Life of H.
More than a dozen poems from The Life of H have been published in literary journals, anthologies, and more, including in Pensive, The Other Journal, The Jewish Writing Project, and Ritualwell.
I’ve translated over 100 verses of Sarah’s story from biblical Hebrew into poetic and transformative English as part of “The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined,” which I share on my other Substack publication.
What will you commit to on this March Forth (made-up) holiday? It could be a big goal or a subtle intention.
You might decide there’s an old habit you want to leave behind, or a new behavior you want to cultivate.
Or maybe there’s a big dream that you're ready to take a step toward making real.
PRO TIP: Sharing your intention with a trusted friend, or with a community like this one, can help you stick with it!
March forth on the page with this writing prompt.
Celebrate the only date on the calendar that is a full sentence with pen in hand! Here’s how:
Find a quiet, comfortable place to write.
Set a timer for 20 minutes or less.
Then, make a list of all of the times you have marched forth to leave behind something or someone to find something better.
Choose one to write about, or toss the items on your list around and create a poem or a bit of expressive writing from them all!
To inspire your writing, check out Kerrin McCadden’s poem, “Epistle: Leaving.” Here’s the first stanza:
Dear train wreck, dear terrible engines, dear spilled freight, dear unbelievable mess, all these years later I think to write back. I was not who I am now. A sail is a boat, a bark is a boat, a mast is a boat and the train was you and me. Dear dark, dear paper, dear files I can’t toss, dear calendar and visitation schedule, dear hello and goodbye
by Kerrin McCadden - Poems | Academy of American Poets
Make a March 4th commitment to your writing:
Join the at-home retreat
✒️ Do you have a writing project you want to commit to?
✒️ Do you yearn for a stretch of uninterrupted time to focus on your poetry, journal-writing, or book-in-progress?
✒️ Do you yearn for a writing retreat that won’t bust your budget?
If so, I want to help!
Join me the weekend of Fri-Sun, March 20-22 for a welcoming, affordable, at-home (online) writing retreat.
Register for the at-home retreat
Thank you for marching forth with me!
Tzivia Gover is a Certified Dreamwork Professional and author of Dreaming on the Page: Tap into Your Midnight Mind to Supercharge Your Writing.
