Post #78 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Memoir Writing: A Case of Too Much Garbage
As many of you know, we have moved from California to Oregon just before Thanksgiving last year. The final days of packing were the usual hectic scene. We were packing certain items, such as our clothes and our offices, and the movers were packing the dishes and furniture. Of course, it is never that tidy.
Because the new owners wanted in before the holidays, we were on an expedited schedule. My husband and I stayed up until midnight for more than a week, working to stay ahead of the movers with our sorting. I finally lost track of how many trips we made to Goodwill and Salvation Army. Most notably we gave up about 1500 books. We even did more packing than anticipated just to make sure that we would be out in time. I could frequently be seen running from one room to another pulling things from closets and drawers and moving them to other rooms or the car.
Something was going on in every room all the time. I had one room in the house where I kept all the Women’s Memoirs products — Thai silk journals, hand-crafted soaps, Rosie’s the Riveter Legacy bandanas and mugs, organic teas for sipping while writing a memoir, copies of our collective memoir Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story, etc. That room was shared with our exercise equipment, which was being sold with the house, so I only had to be concerned with the products. I went through the supplies for the products and found some were no longer fresh or relevant — experiments that never became products and pitched them into our only handsome wastebasket in the house, which we happened to keep in that room. This is a wood basket that I gave my husband a number of years before. I also tossed in some signs (menus and notes to guests) from the last big party we had.
A mover probably asked me a question while I was in the midst of my sorting task, and I never returned to finish it. Who remembers. Actually, I had completely forgotten about all of that until I opened the box in our new home that contained the wastebasket. Yes, you guessed it. All the garbage I had put in the container was still there. The movers had packed my garbage.
This made me think about all the times and ways in our lives that we take our garbage with us. We have resentments that we carry around, never really putting them down. We have relationships gone bad that linger in our minds. We have regrets that keep us from taking positive current or future actions. And that isn’t all. We keep things and thoughts, even nice ones, that no longer serve us. These lavender wands were part of the garbage that I meant to toss. They were pretty and still had a lovely aroma. But they were no longer functional or useful. It was time to let go of them.
We all take our garbage with us. Carefully packing it up and unwrapping it at various times. It is important to let go of it.
MEMOIR WRITING PROMPT:
1. Have you ever taken your garbage with you? Most of us have. What do you still carry around that may be holding you back? Write for 10 minutes about what your garbage is and why you still keep it close. Turning the spotlight on garbage may help you decide to finally throw it away. Perhaps some of the garbage is slowing you down in your writing. Try to at least pack it away in a box even if you can’t quite put it out at the curb for the garbage collector.
Here’s one suggestion: Write about it and then throw away what you have written as a symbolic disposal of your garbage. Remember, not all garbage is bad. Sometimes it is just ideas and thoughts that once served us well but that keep us from being open to new ideas and new ways of living.
