Writing About Painful Topics
My friend, the essayist Brenda Miller, wrote the introduction to my memoir A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief. “I understood then,” she wrote, “that grief can be a channel in which you swim alone, where you can also find your brethren as they flicker along beside you, their bodies gliding in and out of focus in such deep and liquid light.”
I remember her words when I sit with the writing of a person who has shared painful experience in a poem, a personal essay, a piece of flash writing. I remember her words when I enter grief’s waters.
I remember them when I am coaching a writer against putting off writing about what hurts most, against avoiding subjects because of fear of diving into emotional writing.
If you have a painful topic you have been avoiding writing about or have been unsuccessful fully evoking in your writing to find insight and some resolution, here are ideas that might help you prepare and get going on such writing, ideas that will help you find and appreciate the “deep and liquid light.”
My idea is to start by writing a narrative of your loss or painful experience, and then to write about your desire to write about it as well as your concerns about writing on this topic. You can let the page be your confidant as you write what it is you have to say about your loss or hurt, the way you describe it, not the way you have heard others write about loss and pain or talk about it. Tell your confidant why you want to write about the painful topic. If you don’t quite know, conjecture can help you write. “It may be because….” might be a phrase you repeat to keep yourself writing.
To accomplish this writing, you can interview yourself:
- What is the pain or loss you want to write about?
- When did it happen or begin?
- What are you hoping that writing will do or be for you in dealing with your life situation?
- What are you afraid your writing might do that will not be helpful?
- Are there parts of the story you have left out when telling others or attempting to write the story?
- Have you been writing already? What are some snippets from that writing?
- What reading have you been doing that has had meaning for you? What in that writing struck you and stays with you? Why?
You may be very surprised at how much work you have been doing while you have been thinking you are not approaching your topic.
You might answer two more questions:
- What do my answers to these questions tell me?
- What have I written in these answers that I might use to start a piece of writing for insight I cannot acquire until I write about the topic?
Like with all good writing, you needn’t and probably shouldn’t have everything figured out as you start to write your essay or poem. But you will have images and powerful phrases to facilitate more writing. They will act as the net you dip into the new waters to find what lives in your consciousness.
Now that you know the questions, pick a location from which you think you will feel safe to write on this topic.
- Do you need to sequester yourself in a room at home?
- Do you need to find a spot at the public library or a coffee house?
- Would staying in a hotel for a couple of days help you stick to the writing?
- What change of scenery might work so you really observe the landscape and peoplescape, the fauna and flora, because all of the details of “now” will help you associate to “then.”
When you are where you want to write, get comfortable, whether that is with a cup of tea, flowers before you, a material object that you like to look at or touch. The Chilean memoirist Marjorie Agosín describes her father’s journal keeping this way in her book A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile:
In the rain-drenched nights, my father would take out his green covered notebook as if it were made of fine forestry velvet and would tell us that only in the company of the dancing pines and the wise and heavy rainfall, could he dedicate himself to writing.
When you start writing your answers to the “interview” questions, go for 20 minutes before you stop. Take a break by doing something physical that gets you away from the writing. Come back in a bit and write more between taking other short physical breaks.
When you have answered all the questions, reread what you wrote. Highlight or underline phrases, words, sentences that you connect with and want to write more about or from. Let those sentences start paragraphs so you can commit to more writing.
Here, too, use the 20 minutes and then a break idea—so be sure you set a timer on your phone or bring a kitchen timer with you. You may, of course, write longer if you want to between breaks, but knowing you only have to write for 20 minutes helps you focus when you are not certain you will be able to write on a painful topic.
Be sure to reward yourself after you’ve finished the writing session. A TV program, movie, glass of wine and conversation with a close friend all work to help you feel like you deserve to do this writing.
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The aftermath of loss and pain is not pleasure. The aftermath is knowing that we can handle what it is we have lived through. The aftermath is growth.
Does grief have wings? I think it does; eventually, from our loss and our pain comes enormous compassion, love and commitment to others. I thank writing for helping me get there. I thank the editors and publishers of journals that share such writing. Here are links to four of them you might consider sending your writing about painful topics:
I thank each and every one of us brave enough to write from painful experiences. The writer Anne Lamott said in a keynote address years ago at Seattle University’s spiritual book festival that she cries buckets around her ankles every day, that all of us should. This reminds me to be human we must be brethren who are ready not only to enter into joy, but to glide and flicker in grief’s channel, one of the most meaningful waterways of our living.