Writing Through the Storm

Writing is a way to connect to your deepest self, your intuition, and your own inner guidance. It can also clear the decks when you feel troubled or dismayed, it can be a way to express outrage and release worry, it can be a way to express sorrow and not hold onto it. For many of us who write on a regular basis, writing has saved us. It not only gives us an outlet, it fosters self-awareness and self-empowerment, through truth-telling. It can open the doors to what we are afraid to confront and it can do so in ways that are gentle, such as poetry, changing our voice to third person, or writing a letter to ourselves with our non-dominant hand. Sometimes when we are in the midst of a crisis, trauma, or upheaval, we want to write but our words seem inadequate. How do we find eloquence when feeling overwhelmed, shocked, or outraged? How can we be emotionally vulnerable rather than adding static to the airwaves? 

Take a look at this essay called Punch:  https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/447/punch  and ask yourself why does it work so well?

      This brief essay is 618 words. It goes from the personal to the universal quickly. First we understand a history of family violence -- this may be something we recall from our own families. Or we may simply remember a slap, a scream, a spanking, a threatening environment. Then Robertson write with raw honesty about the urge to hit his own child. A teen-ager. Who with teen-aged kids hasn't experienced this moment when it takes all you have not to use force...either from a reaction to their disrepsect or from the desire to make it stop or from the frustration that you aren't getting through? I am someone who vowed never to use violence, who dedicated her life to making peace, and yet there was that moment when I slapped my teen-aged son, unable to restrain myself because I was so angry. Robertson writes about it with grace and ends with the big question? If we don't stop it, who will? 

      Brief creative non-fiction gets straight to the lesson learned and does so within a wider context. Not only does Robertson have a realization about himself, but the dynamics of living together that extend far beyond his own family.

    Just as I have begun a post about writing as a way to anchor ourselves through the storm or perhaps beam out light from the lighthouse through the storm and want to remind you that we are in a very treacherous storm. We are in the midst of cultural change that will upend our sails. We are in a powerful storm of racism, sexism, and homophobia. We are in a storm of intolerance for immigrants who seek a better life and intolerance on the public roads and sidewalks for those who we share them with. A storm of bad manners and bad habits, of addictions to the screen and instant news, whether it be true or just gossip. And a storm of health issues: from autism of our children to dementia of our elders, and lacking the support we need to improve their daily lives. A storm of loss and a storm of lack. And a storm of fear.

      How will you weild your pen in these days of change? Will you share your story, will you find a way to be articulate, vivid, engaging, and insightful without being irrational, self-centered, or myopic? Outrage turned to something that uplifts us to try harder, sorrow that lights up our compassion, trauma leading to understanding, crisis that is an opportunity to have dialogue. I dare you to give it a try!