Oh my god, do I understand! I wasn't brave enough to write about my traumatic experiences for many years. You have done so and it is surely powerful, to have gotten the responses you have. You are braver than I! Later, as I began to write about those things, I found them difficult to get down on paper, and then on rereading - I was bored…
Oh my god, do I understand! I wasn't brave enough to write about my traumatic experiences for many years. You have done so and it is surely powerful, to have gotten the responses you have. You are braver than I! Later, as I began to write about those things, I found them difficult to get down on paper, and then on rereading - I was bored to death! The experiences didn't come alive. Slog, slog, slog, words dull words. So I wrote as if these things were occurring to someone else. Nope. Didn't work. i wrote others' traumas, not mine, and those were better. Now at last a month ago I wrote about my husband's death when our son was 18 months old and I hadn't finished college and was in a strange place, alone. As I would write a sentence, I thought, oh how BORING. But I didn't stop and I didn't erase, I drew a line through the boring parts and dug down into my memories. And after a bit, something real came up. then I wrote some more. BORING! Again I drew a line through the words, leaving them in place, and so on and then I made that process part of the story. How I got to the raw and the real through the cliches, through the patter. And I have at last written that day in a way that I can feel and reread. 1000 words. I've given it to one reader, without any warning. And she was shaken by it. She said she'd find herself falling into a thought or a description as she read, and then I'd cross out something and she'd go on to the next uncrossed out bit, and finally was not reading the cross-outs, but she understood them. Conventional responses, conventional "stories," would crop up for me to hide behind and I'd mark through them and get to the real meat. Until I had the first part of the experience, the day, my 22nd birthday, when my husband left the house and never came back. My waiting and watching, and my sudden knowledge, he's dead! And his friend's arrival and our search and what we found, and how I became violently ill. And how I managed at last to sleep with my arms around my little boy, and how days later a neighbor brought me a sweet custard that I could eat, and the realization that if I could eat, I could live. And I'd have to for the child. That reader is NOT a writer. But she got it. So at last I have managed to express some of the reality of myself and my child in the world we were thrown into by this shattering death. Now I am working on how at last, much much later, I also began to recover from the shock that had left me so numb. And how I ventured out into living again. I grew up in the South in the era before the Civil Rights Movement, which was harsher than any other part of our country than - a different harshness, one of the body alone - the Arctic Circle. People, my people, in the South cut themselves off from all real humanity and abused people, and they are doing it again. Women, Blacks, immigrants, the very poor, are treated like trash because in order not to admit what the white people have actually done to other human beings, they have to cease being human in the real sense. Coming out of my shock, trying to make a living, having the help of a dear friend, I had a cross burned on my lawn. I can smell it to this day. I was so afraid for my friend and my child that I left the South again and went back North. I've lived. But not until my 70s have I found myself in a community where with despite my differences, I am accepted. And at peace. But place marks us, and part of me longs for the rivers and fields I grew up in. I can never go back. I went back for visits while my friend was still alive. I helped her in her old age, and i loved her. I used to loathe those people, my people. I ached to write of them and i made them all villains. Now I am able to see them as humans like we all are. But it took a long time. The only thing I can do to honor our humanity is to write it until it is REAL. However often I have to cross-out the tritenesses, even the sorrows, that I hide behind. Thank you for your letter, Ansuya. I hope my answer is not painful to you.
How could it be painful? It's beautiful, although I wish you'd never had to go through this. My own experiences are bread crumbs in comparison. I hope I can read this book some day!
How could your experiences be bread crumbs in comparison with anything? We don't compare pain, it's not on a scale! We suffer, we struggle, and we must find acceptance in ourselves, really we must. We are mortal, we are animals, we are born, we live with suffering and joy and work, and we die! You are not a bread crumb! you are a full, delicious meal with hot sauce! Don't forget that. I have your email address. When I am satisfied momentarily with my chapter 1 of that life, I will email it to you. I can send it as an attached pdf. Someday, you will send me part of your work.
Oh my god, do I understand! I wasn't brave enough to write about my traumatic experiences for many years. You have done so and it is surely powerful, to have gotten the responses you have. You are braver than I! Later, as I began to write about those things, I found them difficult to get down on paper, and then on rereading - I was bored to death! The experiences didn't come alive. Slog, slog, slog, words dull words. So I wrote as if these things were occurring to someone else. Nope. Didn't work. i wrote others' traumas, not mine, and those were better. Now at last a month ago I wrote about my husband's death when our son was 18 months old and I hadn't finished college and was in a strange place, alone. As I would write a sentence, I thought, oh how BORING. But I didn't stop and I didn't erase, I drew a line through the boring parts and dug down into my memories. And after a bit, something real came up. then I wrote some more. BORING! Again I drew a line through the words, leaving them in place, and so on and then I made that process part of the story. How I got to the raw and the real through the cliches, through the patter. And I have at last written that day in a way that I can feel and reread. 1000 words. I've given it to one reader, without any warning. And she was shaken by it. She said she'd find herself falling into a thought or a description as she read, and then I'd cross out something and she'd go on to the next uncrossed out bit, and finally was not reading the cross-outs, but she understood them. Conventional responses, conventional "stories," would crop up for me to hide behind and I'd mark through them and get to the real meat. Until I had the first part of the experience, the day, my 22nd birthday, when my husband left the house and never came back. My waiting and watching, and my sudden knowledge, he's dead! And his friend's arrival and our search and what we found, and how I became violently ill. And how I managed at last to sleep with my arms around my little boy, and how days later a neighbor brought me a sweet custard that I could eat, and the realization that if I could eat, I could live. And I'd have to for the child. That reader is NOT a writer. But she got it. So at last I have managed to express some of the reality of myself and my child in the world we were thrown into by this shattering death. Now I am working on how at last, much much later, I also began to recover from the shock that had left me so numb. And how I ventured out into living again. I grew up in the South in the era before the Civil Rights Movement, which was harsher than any other part of our country than - a different harshness, one of the body alone - the Arctic Circle. People, my people, in the South cut themselves off from all real humanity and abused people, and they are doing it again. Women, Blacks, immigrants, the very poor, are treated like trash because in order not to admit what the white people have actually done to other human beings, they have to cease being human in the real sense. Coming out of my shock, trying to make a living, having the help of a dear friend, I had a cross burned on my lawn. I can smell it to this day. I was so afraid for my friend and my child that I left the South again and went back North. I've lived. But not until my 70s have I found myself in a community where with despite my differences, I am accepted. And at peace. But place marks us, and part of me longs for the rivers and fields I grew up in. I can never go back. I went back for visits while my friend was still alive. I helped her in her old age, and i loved her. I used to loathe those people, my people. I ached to write of them and i made them all villains. Now I am able to see them as humans like we all are. But it took a long time. The only thing I can do to honor our humanity is to write it until it is REAL. However often I have to cross-out the tritenesses, even the sorrows, that I hide behind. Thank you for your letter, Ansuya. I hope my answer is not painful to you.
How could it be painful? It's beautiful, although I wish you'd never had to go through this. My own experiences are bread crumbs in comparison. I hope I can read this book some day!
How could your experiences be bread crumbs in comparison with anything? We don't compare pain, it's not on a scale! We suffer, we struggle, and we must find acceptance in ourselves, really we must. We are mortal, we are animals, we are born, we live with suffering and joy and work, and we die! You are not a bread crumb! you are a full, delicious meal with hot sauce! Don't forget that. I have your email address. When I am satisfied momentarily with my chapter 1 of that life, I will email it to you. I can send it as an attached pdf. Someday, you will send me part of your work.
Yes, please do!
Thank you for this!!!