This week I’ve been helping a friend with a story he wanted to submit to the editors of Chicken Soup for the Soul for an upcoming book on caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease. As he sat down to his computer I sent him a text: “If you get stuck, remember: you’re just telling me a story about your mom.” I didn’t know in that moment he really was stuck, and my note provided him with the necessary oil to get the gears moving. He eventually sent me a draft of a wonderful story that will be published this spring.
I wish I could say telling your story can always be this easy when you have the right help, but I know that’s not true. As I write this our community here in Sandy Hook, CT is observing the first anniversary of the tragedy that took place at my son’s school. I have yet to complete a piece of writing about the event. Yes, I’ve managed a few drafts over these 12 months and right now I’m probably closer to finishing something than I have been in a long time. But I don’t know if I will finish it. Sometimes writing is just hard, especially when you’re still in the middle of living what you’re writing about. I’m still processing, still making connections. I know I have to allow myself the time and space to do that.
Last summer the online literary journal Numero Cinq published my critical essay on how to connect with a reader when you’re writing about something personal. I stressed the importance of time and reflection. I recently read Sonali Deraniyagala’s memoir, Wave in which she writes of the tsunami that struck the southern coast of Sri Lanka nine years ago this month, killing her parents, her husband, and her two young sons. She survived but it took her three years before she could step foot in her London house again. At five years after the tragedy she still questioned who she was in a new world too strange and unfamiliar. While I don’t compare my grief with hers or anyone else’s, Deraniyagala has reminded me of the importance of time and reflection and why I must be patient and sit with the unknown.
The story you have to tell may come easily or with great difficulty–or perhaps both depending on the day and your disposition. But it is worth it to make the effort to write it. I spent the past year working with 21 women telling hard stories, many for the first time, about their lives. As the book, Women on Fire, Volume 2, neared publication, I know many of them felt apprehension about seeing their lives in print. This week they held the book in their hands for the first time and I have not heard one word of regret. If they can be so courageous I know I can do the same. As Debbie Phillips, who gathered these women for the book likes to say, it’s less scary when we all hold hands and jump into the pool together. Perhaps my writing this post is my way of reaching out and doing that with you. I’ll keep working. I’ll let you know what comes.
