Post #42 – Women’s Memoirs, Author Conversations – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Today is the start of Linda Joy Myers week at Women’s Memoirs. We’re helping Linda Joy celebrate the publication of her new book, The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story. We’ve known Linda Joy as both a colleague and friend for about four years. It is our pleasure to welcome her again to Women’s Memoirs.
Linda Joy will be answering your questions all week. We interviewed her last Friday and will be posting her responses, one question at a time.
This first question comes from Michele Warnecke and focuses her concern about revealing secrets and the possible consequences from others involved. If you have these concerns, we’re sure you’ll find help in Linda Joy’s answer.
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Check back tomorrow when Linda Joy answers the next question about handling the mistakes as an adult versus as a child.
Linda Joy mentions some of the issues she struggled with in order to write her memoir, Don’t Call Me Mother.
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Kendra, Matilda and Linda Joy,
First and foremost, thank you for incuding my question. In listening to the interview and the response to my question, Linda has provided me with a new approach. And an exciting one to say the least! As the writing of my Memoir has never been much of a struggle – the words have always flowed – I now can take a step back, look at all I’ve revealed in my book, make that list of deep dark secrets and weigh the pros and cons of each. As it is certainly not my intention to hurt or embarrass anyone, but to teach and possibly inspire others with the truth, in a positive way. That even with traumatic experiences in ones’ life, they can be overcome, and the cycle changed. Growing up with a mother only 13 years my elder has been an experience like no other. At 13, how can a girl possibly form that much needed mother/daughter bond!
I immediately ordered Linda’s book when I first saw your post on interviewing her. I’m filled with several different emotions and know that her first hand knowledge and guidance in this book will lead me in the right direction.
Humbled,
Michele
How does one combat the feeling of “not wanting to go back there?” I know psychologically I need to write this book, but as I tell my critique group–who wants to live that over again. I have become adept at creating avoidance activities like writing poems or other, happier stories, checking emails and reading. So far, cleaning the house has not been powerful enough to pull me from writing–thankfully
Hi Michele:
Kendra and I want to thank you for your thought-provoking question that got our interview with Linda Joy off to such a great start.
We really like our new approach of featuring one question and one answer in the audios we are posting this week. It gives us a single concept to think about during the day. Having your question first launches us with a strong and important topic of discussion.
Thanks,
Matilda
Renee:
What? No housekeeping yet? How about getting a snack? That’s the one that gets me away from my writing.
Seriously, avoidance behavior is a familiar pattern to many of us. For now, I’ll let Linda Joy respond to you as I know she intends to do later today. However, this is a good topic for future discussions.
-Matilda
Dear Michele,
You say some important things in your post–especially that you see how the wounds can be healed and a new cycle can begin. I certainly found that to be true as I worked on healing the wounds passing through three generations of mothers who in one way or another abandoned their daughters. Certainly, writing my memoir was one of the most important and helpful things I did, other than tons of therapy, to create more peace in my heart.
Nothing is perfect, but by looking frankly in the face of the dark stuff, we learn that we CAN really bear it, that piece by piece we can examine what was broken. Often we need to be okay with our anger and pain, and after owning that, we are more able to find compassion and forgiveness. For a lot of people, writing a memoir is about finding something uplifting, something new in the old stories. We can’t sweep the past under the rug, as it makes nasty dust bunnies that threaten to choke us, but we can take it out a story at a time. It’s important to balance the dark and the light stories, and making lists is a good way to manage feeling overwhelmed.
Best of luck to you as you finish your memoir and open the doors to a new future!
–Linda Joy
Dear Renee,
I know that feeling! And it does help to clean the house while you think and reflect. They say that writers have the cleanest houses in the world! The reason I say that cleaning is okay is through my own experience writing the tough stuff–I’d get stuck, go make some tea or clean the stove while keeping in my consciousness all the things that were boiling over in my mind. They say that right brain activity–such as driving, walking, taking a shower and other activities where you can go to one degree or another into a dream state is very helpful. If you have not read Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write–get it today. It’s one of the best books on creativity and self-expression that I know.
Emails can suck away your creatvity, as can any activity of avoidance. Can you think of yourself as pregnant with the stories you are needing to write? You can do an activity if you keep in mind the unconscious processing that is going on. Sometimes I would look at a photo, or make a list of the stories that were needing to come up, then go do the activity. Brenda Ueland says that we need to “moodle and dream” our way to our writing, something that’s not recommended enough I think.
Creativity is not controllable nor is it linear. We need to feed our creative spirit. I feel that poems can do that, as can gardening and inspiring books and movies. I wrote my first “autobiography” by writing poems, as they were the shorter version of the prose I had not yet found my way to.
In short, well, I’ve said a lot by now I guess, it’s your consciousness that helps you get to the hidden stories, so keep them in mind as you enjoy your poems and your cleaning! Hey, it’s time to plant flowers!
–Linda joy
I just received an email from a friend in Chile that seems to relate to today’s topic.
“But I have to tell you, the emotional cost of hearing dozens of personal stories was high. Remember 9/11 and seeing those planes hit those towers over and over again on the news? It´s like that…. unrelenting… the wound doesn’t get a chance to start to heal.”
I think Linda Joy’s comment in the audio about balancing the dark with the light stories is right on target. If you only focus on the dark and tragic stories, then it is hard to heal. After examining a dark or difficult story, we need to put some light around it and let the wound have a chance to heal.
Thanks, Linda Joy.
-Matilda
I just discovered this website through a comment that Kendra made on a writers’ group I belong to. There is an incredible amount of information here. I’m really intrigued with this discussion of memoir. I had been staying away from memoir in my own writing because of the terrible story I would be telling. But I can see there is a way to balance the good and the bad.
Thanks to everyone here.
About the subject of the dark stories: some indeed are very tragic, and each of us has our own best way to take of ourselves. Some people needed to watch the planes over and over again to process the shock, and others needed to not watch TV at all.
Another’s dark story can trigger our own pain, which is then an opportunity to come to terms with it. And, we also need to dig in the garden, write a lighter story, pet the dog, or watch a funny movie as a way to put distance and allow for some indirect, but very real, healing. Many of the holistic doctors recommend hugs and laughter. The research shows that writing a positive story is about as healing as writing a dark one. Each has to decide what she needs to do about all this. But for most of us, sweeping things under the rug eventually requires taking that rug out and shaking it. One story at a time might fall out, and then we are free of its power.
–Linda Joy