Post #50 – Women’s Memoirs, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
by Bettyann Schmidt
Life is a rough biography. Memories smooth out the edges. ~Terri Guillemets
Most of us realize today we are living in a changing world, both good and not so good. Electronics have ushered in un-thought-of capabilities in this modern age. We have apps on our carry-around phones that can do practically any task we want. We are able to watch wars being fought in real time on our TVs. We can purchase and read the latest new novel with our e-readers in the privacy of our own homes or at a hotel when when we’re traveling.
We are riding high.
Unfortunately, the tragedies escalate at the same rate as the good. Presently, we’re experiencing a nightmare on the Gulf coast where wildlife and beautiful shorelines are viciously attacked by ugly black oil. Because of this, many have lost their livelihoods and family businesses. Already struggling economics after hurricane Katrina have taken a severe blow to our southern states.
Our country is fighting two wars on foreign soil, while here at home families are losing their homes and jobs. We have more homeless citizens than ever before. People get sick and because they have no health insurance, they die. The elderly cannot afford both food and medicine and are thus forced to make a choice.
A lot of people say doomsday is coming. Others deny it. One thing I know for sure, however. We—you and I—are part of it. We are seeing it, hearing about it, reading it, and living it. For me, I use what is happening as inspiration for writing and scrapbooking. And as a learning experience. They say history repeats itself.
Your gut feelings on what is taking place in your world are important. Important enough to share, possibly for some future time in history, when your personal views tell a story that can only be told by you. No one else sees the world as you do. Not another human has the same feelings as you. Your heart and mind are one of a kind.
Changing With History
When you reflect on your private world in the larger universe, what feelings do those inspire? Do these feelings change how you think, how you act? After the 9/11 attack on our nation, did you change? In what way? Was your personal security threatened? Did you lose a loved one, a neighbor, someone you knew in the attack? One of my best friends was in Atlanta that September 11th, and I worried that I may never see her again. I remember the panic I felt initially that I may never see any of my family again.
I stood in the midst of a gathering of doctors, nurses, techs at Vanderbilt Medical Center, where I worked, watching the crumbling towers. No one spoke; tears ran down some of our cheeks. That day was the most shocking in my lifetime. I changed because of it. And I wrote the story in my current scrapbook along with pictures from magazines, newspapers, and some printed from the internet.
Before and After Writing
The above layout describes my feelings about a quaint little town in Mississippi, Bay St. Louis, which Hurricane Katrina ravaged. We had visited there just a year before Katrina and were heartbroken when seeing the TV images of that beautiful, historic place swept away. I did a “before and after” layout, expressing my thoughts about that little town, using a photo of my previous layout and a photo from the internet of the skeletal remains of a small restaurant we’d visited. My deeper emotions then emerged concerning all of the helpless people in the Gulf, especially New Orleans, which I watched day after day on TV.
I’d tried calling the Red Cross, where no one answered, and then drove across two counties to the main intake location for Katrina refugees south of Nashville, where I witnessed utter confusion. I was told by a girl behind a desk to fill out a sort of resume if I wanted to volunteer. I glanced at it and said, “Look, I can cook, clean bathrooms, diaper babies, answer phones—and by the way, no one is answering yours—and I have a huge house where a family can stay.” She directed me to fill out the form. Later on that evening I saw on TV where a woman just grabbed the arms of a displaced couple from the Gulf, led them to her vehicle, and took them home with her. Her husband, she stated in the interview, would be taking the man to work with him. My husband said, “That’s exactly what you should have done.”
I would have to say my deepest, most profound feeling during and after Katrina was “helplessness.” I might add anger and frustration as well.
Pages from History
Political changes in history are events I like to place myself in, because they inspire some of my deepest emotions. I’m one of those people who are adamantly on one side or the other. I don’t saddle the fence.
I save newspaper headlines, or photocopies of them because newsprint is so acidic it doesn’t age well. I thought the Gore/Bush race, where we learned about “hanging chads” among other things, was a good source for an historical layout in my albums, and I titled it “Famous Last Words,” because Al Gore quipped in the article that his opponent would lead the country into a recession. I suspect we’d been spiraling down into the recession over many years, going back more than a few presidents, seeing as how our country likes to live high on the hog, but I still liked the title of my layout.
Then four years later, the election of President Obama was a totally over-the-top writing inspiration for me. The first African American President of America. How exciting is that? From our country’s history of slavery, to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s marches and famous words, and then his assassination, to ultimatelly seeing in the year 2008 perhaps one of his “dreams” come true?
It was not as much about whose side you were on politically as it was the fact that a black man was now in the White House. To me, it felt like there was a reason to hope perhaps anything could be possible on the far horizon.
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. ~From the television show The Wonder Years
Backyard History
Big events and disasters occur all over the world, and some of them take place in your own backyard, so to speak. That was the Nashville Flood this past May. In my lifetime, I’d not seen a flood like this. To view it with my own eyes, up close, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around. I also felt a huge gratitude for being able to make it home safely on the night of May 1st, during what looked like the heavens dumping an ocean on us.
I’d spent the day in an adjoining county for a scrapbook event, and that dark night trying to drive over an interstate at 40 miles per hour in a 70 mph zone, with practically no visibility, remains a lingering memory. What I saw the next morning when I awoke and turned on the TV looked like a foreign country. As close as 20 miles away from us people’s homes as well as the Opryland Hotel and the mall were being covered by the Cumberland River.
Disasters are not fun and they’re not good in any way, but they continue to happen, right along with the wonderful and beautiful things of this world. How do you capture your innermost feelings about these times? Writing about your memories of these events is healthy and has a way of shedding light on our lives.
What is Most Important
One major aspect of unearthing your innermost feelings at relevant times is that you realize what is truly important to you. You’ve, no doubt, heard people make this statement after losing everything in a crisis situation.
As humans, we are forced to identify a lifeline that stays hidden inside until the worst comes at us. The one thing we know we must hold onto. The priority in our life. Usually that is family. For some, it could be a beloved pet that takes the place of human family.
For others, it may be an invisible anchor, a faith they cling to. My paternal grandmother comes to mind when I talk about faith. That was my Grandma’s lifeline. Her faith got her through the worst parts of her life.
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home. Lyrics from Amazing Grace, John Newton
Those song lyrics are a source of peace to me when living through real crises and tragedies, and they help to inspire my writing .
If faith is a lifeline for you, try to write your feelings about how that came to be. Like me identifying my Grandma as the source and being able to write about that memory. Was there a time that you had to endure a crisis or tragedy? Have you written about that?
What historic events during your lifetime have you witnessed? Remember, you’re the only person alive who can tell your feelings as part of the story. No one else’s story or feelings will be the same. You are the author of your life story.
To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward. ~Margaret Fairless Barber, The Roadmender
Bettyann Schmidt
http://journey2f.blogspot.com
memoir writing
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