Have You Ever Broken Yourself with Your Own Writing?
I have been sorting through my writing archives lately. Perhaps it is due to the distance I feel from my family, perhaps it is curiosity about how my mind worked 12 years or so ago. The process has been interesting. Absolutely rewarding. But today I stumbled over a few pieces that reminded me what has been lost.
![jakob-owens-224351.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWxSN2G72Gpyam6W9ubQQjsZ4y73uJBTU34JkmmWMG3mt/jakob-owens-224351.jpg)
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
One poem chronicles the death of my grandfather. In it, I say,
When Jido died
I wrote a letter to the family.
I clipped my nails
and saved the scattered white arcs.
I stared at a wall through spread fingers.
I washed the dishes in the sink.
I lay in my bedroom, crying
The emotion I felt as I re-read those lines rolled back over me. Again, I cried. As I cried, I thought about how I would reorganize those lines, make the poem stronger, and how that process would be a release. I have always written through trauma. I wrote poetry as a child, fiction as a young adult and nonfiction once I became a parent. I have been putting together a chapbook of poetry about Lebanon and my time there. This piece, I think, may cap that collection. It will be a relief to refine it, but it will also hurt.
I set the poem aside and kept sifting. I opened a short story and began to skim. In it, I use many true elements of my family's life to create the backstory of a character. The combination of circumstances that create his backstory could be someone else's true story, but what the story actually is, is an anchor for a short story collection.
I went to Indiana University for my MFA in Creative Writing. My subject was Fiction. My thesis was a short story cycle based on my family's experiences in the U.S. and Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War and resulting Lebanese American diaspora. Much of the collection holds truth, but only one or two stories follow and tell relate true events as they happened.
I've been considering editing this collection, but it is painful. It is essentially a memoir; the raw wanderings of a very broken-hearted young woman through her family's hurt in order to heal.
I didn't heal.
Moving back into the stories, refining them, that is where the healing will take place. This frightens me. I know I will break over and over in this writing. However, I have learned that what scares me is what I need to be doing. It's time to buy printer paper and ink. It's time to weed the garden I started with words.
Has this happened to you? Have you created a shore and broken upon it over and over?
It is okay to break. If my words are a shore, I am a wave. I will keep moving over them until they sparkle miles of sand in sunlight. Until they are secret home for the footprints of the night wanderer. I am ready to break, heal and grow stronger.
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nice poem !! i like
Thank you. <3
Yes it.
I hope you have also recovered.
The moments of deep depression and trauma has always been my triggers to start writing.
It seems I can't write when happy. Just like last year when I discovered Steemit. It has become my refuge now.
My first posts were filled with the depression and pain I felt. Then longer I stayed in Steemit though my writings changed to that of hope
The words are the grains of sand that polish and removed the black that surrounded me .
I am still not OK but I am still here.
That is actually quite beautiful. Thank you for sharing this. That shift from pain to being able to capture hope is a powerful process. Congratulations!
This is really beautiful. I understand exactly the process you are describing, though i have never considered it in the terms of breaking upon a shore. I like that imagery a lot. It's apt. Very much so.
Thank you for posting this at The Isle of Write Discord server. I'm happy to have found it there :)
Thank you for reading. I like the image too, because a wave puts itself back together as it retreats, taking with it more.
This is gorgeous
And so devastatingly true.
<3 Thank you.
I have done this many, many times. I have a document around here somewhere that is pages and pages and pages of my life story that is about the process of healing from trauma and it is still something that I can't even read yet.
My fictional works on here are probably half based on my life events and have been healing for me... but there have also been writings that spilled out of me and broke me all over again. Several times I've had to tell my husband, "I just wrote something and it has left me feeling raw and upset, so I'm going to go have some quiet time" or whatever.
Writing is so powerful and I recognize myself in your writing somehow. I guess I can see that you pour your soul and your life into it.
This is one of the most beautiful responses a writer can receive. I’m glad you see yourself here. I see myself in your work too. And if you want to try to get to a place where you can reapproach that tough writing, I’d love to write with you. I actually have one opening left in this class that starts Tuesday (no pressure): https://creativewritingcenter.com/online-writing-course/writing-through-trauma-to-truth/
Thank you! I'm not sure I'm ready to delve back into all of it at the moment. Winter isn't the best time for me emotionally, so it probably wouldn't be a great idea right now. Thank you, though. I've bookmarked your site and I'm going to look into it more.
Writing itself can be therapy and healing. Having your past chronicled is priceless. I wish I had written more and kept what I did write.
But digging up the past and facing it head on is a daunting though worthwhile task. Please pace yourself and break up all that emotion from the past with fun filled and healing activity in the present.
Best wishes to you on this special project.
This is brilliant advice.