[Early in her newest book, The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story, Linda Joy Myers describes well our feelings as memoir writers:

This scenario is a common one with memoir writers — the struggle between the desire to write and all the issues, conflicts and worries that come up at the very beginning. When the energy of excitement collides with the sheer wall of fear, guilt or shame, it’s nearly impossible to find the creative flow necessary to write…. 

The energy of wanting to write will drive you through all the barriers, so it’s important to hold on to the feeling in your belly that takes over when you think about writing your story, that sense of purpose and inspiration. It’s your best friend…

Linda Joy encourages us to view the writing of our life stories as not only a creative endeavor but also one that holds great capacity for healing and growth. We think you’ll enjoy reading the words of this psychotherapist, writer and writing coach who helps us honor the endeavor to write our life stories. — Ed.]

Writing from the Inside Out: The Wisdom of the Body and the Power of Story
By Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D.

For many years before I was “officially” a writer, I wrote in a journal, as so many of us did. There I tried to tune into the swirls of feelings and stories of my life. I wrote about my mother’s ongoing rejection of me as her daughter, not understanding yet, nor would I for a long time, that she was mentally ill. Snippets of Anais Nin’s Diary, poetry, and songs were in there, scribbled along with drawings — a confusing mélange of expression that arose from within. Later, after I became a therapist and learned how the body holds a person’s stories, I listened with full attention to the stories of my clients.

I would hear the same story dozens of times, and observe how their bodies told the story along with the words: fingers that clenched and unclenched, tight jaws and watery eyes. When I asked about feelings, the client was often unaware of the cues they were giving or that they were even having feelings. But their bodies were speaking their story. Over time, with careful listening, the whole tale would be revealed.

Deep Listening
My job as therapist and memoir coach is to listen to those hints of emotional reaction embedded in stories. You might be surprised how often writers are telling tales beyond their own awareness in their writing. When they read their stories aloud during our meetings, their body language adds volumes and layers to the written word. I notice there’s a part of them that wants to get past the unconscious defenses they’ve learned and find new choices and a new version of their story. We all are stamped with certain memories, traumas and dramas that play themselves out in our lives, our stories, and our bodies. Writers struggle with these hidden experiences and find ways to express them — poetry, metaphor, fiction, and memoir.

These memories are embedded in various layers of being — physical impressions made upon cells in the body, emotional tunes played in the amygdala and hippocampus areas of the brain and psychologically recorded as part of the person’s identity: “this is who I am, this is what happened to me.” The beliefs, habits, and patterns that reside in the body-mind are mostly unconscious, but when we become more aware of the stories that weave us together to help us survive, we can heal the stuck places.

The research by Dr. James Pennebaker in the 1990s showed that writing stories helped to heal physical ailments and helped to create a new perspective about past traumas. After discovering this fascinating research, I saw how closely connected therapy was with the writing life. Having journaled for so many years, feeling relief about some of the unending loops of stories that were connected to my fractured childhood, I knew that writing had helped me to feel better. But discovering the scientific research by Pennebaker and other scientists supported my anecdotal impressions, and affirmed what my body already knew.

Writing from the Body
Writing is a holistic healing method, a means of transformation; it’s a physical experience to use our pens to translate the thoughts, images, and feelings that reside within. As memoirists, we’re challenged to discover the many layers of our truths, beliefs, identities, hopes, and dreams. We need to unearth the important truths that have formed us, and try to make sense of our experiences. We need to write freely so we can tune into the hidden parts of self that we often protect ourselves from knowing.

At the beginning of our writing-to-heal journey, we may do it primarily to put our demons to rest, but then we discover that the stories themselves have their own power and grace. We learn that stories have their own wisdom, if we know how to listen. Through writing our stories, we learn to listen to our own deeper voice, our inner wisdom, and our creative spirit that nourishes us when we allow it.

The evidence is clear from the research of Dr. Pennebaker and brain researchers such as c: memories reside in our body, and when we tune into the body-mind and write from a place of openness, we can free ourselves from the past and open ourselves to a new future.

Healing Trauma
If you have had upsetting or traumatic experiences, you know about intrusive memories or flashbacks. Writing engages these stuck parts of the brain and helps to create new neural pathways that free us from the past. But we don’t have to be stuck in the darkness in order to write — writing from happy memories creates changes in the brain too, enriching the fullness of our joy and sense of well-being as we bring forward in scene the full colors and sensual detail of our lives.

To create this kind of transformation means that we must be willing to engage in the journey of memoir from the inside out. When we write from the inside out, we have a “Beginner’s Mind.” We enter the journey with an idea of what we would like to write about, and allow the process of writing to guide us. In one of his articles Dr. Pennebaker wrote, “Story is a way of knowledge.” This phrase ignited my interest in pursuing the idea of story as healer, story as wisdom path. I think he means that we need to allow the story tell us where it wants to go; to allow the process of writing to lead us into the heart of our stories and ourselves.

Beginnings
As we begin our stories of truth and healing, we ask these questions:

• What do I want to say?
• What memories keep coming back to me?
• How do I feel about what happened in my life?
• What significant events changed my life?
• Who was important during my life’s journey?
• When and where am I in time as I muse about my life?

The questions who, what, when, where, and how appear as a way to investigate the heart of who you are, and enter into the layers of what your story might be. You need to write to discover your story, to write to discover what you don’t know.

In my new book The Power of Memoir — How to Write Your Healing Story, I talk about the journey of memoir writing from your early ideas and reasons all the way to being published. I know from personal experience how memoirists struggle with the inner critic and writing the dark stories, and I offer tips about how to overcome these obstacles. I also talk more about the exciting research about how writing helps to heal both body and soul. Memoirists always struggle with issues of family privacy, secrets, and power, and I address those dynamics in a chapter about the psychology of memoir writing.

Naming
I think that the best way to unravel the complexities of your story through charting your turning points. Think about the moments when your life changed and your journey took a whole new turn — these are moments of powerful emotion and depths of feeling. It’s important to enter and embody them through scene and detail. When you place yourself in the body of who you were, you write in an integrative way, using the wisdom of the narrator — who you are now, along with the person you were then — your younger, more innocent self. This back and forth weaving creates integration and changes your brain. It can change your life.

So, how can you create this amazing pathway toward your new and better self? First, listen to your body. Listen to the whispers of story, image, dream, and memory that waft up in the small moments of the day — when you’re gardening, petting your cat, eating a delicious meal, and laughing with friends. Spend time with the family photo albums. Perhaps you would like to paint or sing fragments of memory, your favorite moments. There might be times of grief and loss that you discover you need to enter into again. It’s important not to suppress or repress these invitations. You need to listen to the subtle clues arising from your unconscious mind. Your body has the wisdom it needs to heal, to transform, and to lead you to new levels of your being.

Tips

1.      Tune into the wisdom of your body and the subtle cues from your dreams and unconscious.

2.      Work with photos, art, and poetry to help you develop your sensual details and metaphors, and continue the tuning in process.

3.      Be sure to weave the “lighter” stories in with the “dark” stories from your past. Keep your emotional balance.

4.      Honor the process of writing. Think of it as venturing into the unknown, and get more comfortable with the uncontrollable and magical elements of the creative process.

5.      Learn how writing in scene and using the dramatic arc of plot can help change what you thought was your story.

6.      Have a “Beginner’s Mind” when entering your stories. Be willing to let your stories guide you. They have their own wisdom.

7.      Read the amazing research on how writing changes the brain and helps to create a better future. Dr. Pennebaker’s publication page contains links to all of his articles, which are well worth reading. You may also enjoy Dr. Matthew Lieberman’s publications, which are also available on the web. In addition, Pennebaker’s books Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, about expressive writing, and Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from Trauma & Emotional Upheaval, which is a workbook, are both very valuable.

8.      Listen to the whispers of wisdom arising from your body and from all the stages of your life. This can lead you into greater freedom and happiness.

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To read more about Linda Joy Myers and her work with those wanting to write memoir and healing stories, visit Women on Writing.