Telling

I've just finished a memoir called The Telling by Zoe Zolbrod. It addresses an inquiry I've been having lately, a debate with myself and some of my clients - mainly in my own head, and not here in the blog, but from a totally surprising perspective. To sum up, I've started posts (and not finished) about a gist that is something like:

"When is it the right time to write about something and when is it not yet?"

Or, even more accurately:

"When is it the right time to SHARE what you are writing in regards to memoir, and when isn't it yet?"

Many, if not most, memoirs, reveal something the writer has not revealed to herself previously, or to others in more public contexts. Certainly, as in the case with Zolbrod, that "telling" is of a quite private matter - being molested by a male cousin when she was younger. However, even if the revelation is about how much we actually disliked our ex, or the way our mind actually works and is less virtuous-seeming to us than it seems to others in our life, confession, exposure, telling of any sort is a bit queasy-making, and is a part of the process of memoir, like it or not.

What is it you are trying to tell the readers? And is it something that is changed in the telling? In Zolbrod's memoir, she not only tells us about the molestation, but also about the act of telling - the book opens with her telling someone for the first time. Later, near the end of the book, she reveals that she has come to understand the act of telling ITSELF changed how she saw what had happened. At the time, telling the other twelve year old girl was an attempt to show her own sexual experience; instead, the other girl made it clear that what Zolbrod was sharing was inappropriate and icky, though she was not articulate about how that was so or why. Zolbrod hadn't particularly liked the molestation, but hadn't always hated it either, and so the quest to explore who, how, why, and even if we tell began for her, in parallel to her path of healing.

Zolbrod actually resisted therapy, paralleling her journey of growing up processing the abuse on her own with the trends towards naming, pathologizing, and demonizing both sexual abuse of minors and also the "false memory" movements - both for and against. She intuited that if she were to go to a psychologist, her memories might be altered, manipulated for the case of a therapists satisfaction; in the end, the single time she saw someone, the therapist barely noted it at all, as she describes here:

She blinked behind her glasses, rims the same silver-gold color of her short hair, lenses that needed cleaning. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said gently. “If you think it didn’t have much effect on you, you’re probably right.” 

So much for my fears that psychologists tended to see sexual molestation as the cause of any problem, which were stoked by the once widespread accusations that they pushed people to dredge up memories that weren’t even quite there. The therapist’s response was nothing like what I had feared all these years, which was that the sentences would be met with the leash-pulling certitude of a dog sniffing for a bone, with the imposition of a story that I didn’t recognize as my own. Trends in psychology must have changed since the eighties and nineties, the information about child sex abuse no longer unfolding and new. Yet I felt let down. In some ways, I suppose I was still looking for what I also had never wanted: a grown-up to take this tangled mass of yarn from my too-small hands, give it back to me balled up and explained, categorized if not taken care of. But I looked no further for a therapist who might have been able to help me understand this yearning. That kind of assistance was not to be.

This description of looking for what she never wanted blows me away. In fact, what blows me away the most in this whole memoir is Zolbrod's refusal to pinpoint her experience into a single cubbyhole. She explores her cousin's experience, her father and mother's experiences; she offers all sides then refuses to stand firmly in one spot. She will not be fixated; there is nothing to fix.

It's tempting to believe that we have to have an answer, something tied up nicely in insight form for the reader as a part of memoir. That we have gotten to a certain state of understanding and the reader will be satisfied with that as an offering. But, as I noted in this recent insidespace post, unanswerable questions are really the stuff of life, and despite the desire we may have to draw moral absolute firm and hard ground around things like childhood sexual abuse, it does reduce our experience excessively to talk about it in such dualistic language.

Zolbrod has many, many other things to say about the writing process, about abuse itself, and about telling, so I won't include it all here. But in the lines of what I have said already, Zolbrod shows great reflection in her process of deciding to write the memoir, to do it as a memoir, and talking to those affected by it in this paragraph:

My most electric writing occurred when I grappled directly with my own memories. My most clearheaded responses were to current events that raised issues of sexual abuse that resonated with my own past. I began swelling with the feeling that my own story was the one I wanted to tell. Anthony (her husband) supported me in this, even when my excavations into territory I had avoided all my life made me moody and tense, and even though he found it too painful to read what I was producing. His response contributed to a question I already had: for both myself and others, would my telling this story be more likely to heal, or help, or hurt?

This gets back to my original question - when is telling useful? And it has so much less to do with others, and more to do with what we actually intend to do with the telling. There's no one simple answer, but if you are wanting to tell in order to make a simple answer of your story, that is likely one hint that it's not a good idea for you to tell it. Not publicly. Not in memoir. 

Memoir is not "a take" on life. It should show complexity, honor with compassion all the parties involved, and include a depth and breadth of understanding. Ideally. That having been said, if you need to write it, just write it. Don't think about publication and whether or not you have equanimity. Just write it. Then, when you are ready, find someone you trust to share it with. It may turn out that's all you needed to do - write it and share it with one other person. Step by step, you can figure out how, why, and to whom you need to tell whatever it is you need to tell.

Ghost Memory

While on retreat with Natalie Goldberg this summer in France, I sat next to a woman who is trying hard to figure out how to write a memoir about her famous father. I feel for her. My parents are deceased and almost no one knew them, though of course they have friends and family who have survived them and are people I need to navigate while working with private issues. Whether or not one's memoir is a "we-moir" as Kirin Narayan's husband called her family memoir My Family and Other Saints, our families and friends are going to be involved. If any of those people are known at any phenomenal level - as famous or otherwise public figures - that makes writing about oneself, much less one's family, all the harder.

When I read an interview with Donna M. Johnson, I immediately went to my Kindle shop and bought a ecopy of her book, Holy Ghost Girl. Despite my best attempts to leaf through my issues of Writer's Digest and Poets and Writers, I cannot seem to find the interview that drew me in. All I can tell you is that it was about her process, and a reference she made to the difficulty in truth-telling, rather than about the quite-sellable tale of her growing up in the Terrellites. I am generally not drawn to tell-all/confessional memoirs. Most of my interest is in the ordinary/mundane life, regular Joe and Jane heroes who survive or simply live. However, her compelling paragraph about truth in memoir writing drew me to her story.

Under Story

Battement D'Ailes, Correze, France, June 2013

I taught a Contemplative Writing workshop in London a couple of weeks ago. It was, as always, a powerful experience - the students brought their stories and souls to the pages.

The power, the energy comes not so much from the revelation of secrets or shame, as I am coming to understand. The empowering comes, in fact, from seeing the understories - the stories beneath the stories. Getting past the things we tell ourselves about ourselves: the ongoing narratives of self, the self-hatred and criticism and resistance, even the clever renditions of what we have done in our lives; this all leads to a place of feeling like we have nothing at all to say.

At the end of the weekend program, a few students remarked - in their writing, in a discussion period - that they felt they were done. Not done with the practice or process, but done as in they had nothing more to say.

"That's a great place to be," I noted. "The perfect place. I wish we could keep going together tomorrow so you could see what appears when we think we are done." Contemplative Writing itself, like the Writing Practice of Natalie Goldberg that it is partially modeled after, says to keep going, during the 5, 10, 20, 40 minute period you are writing, no matter what arises. There is no done. Done is when the timer goes off, not when you think you are done. And the same extends to the larger scope of your practice and your life: when you think you have nothing more to say, there's more to say.

There are many adages for writing that prove to have even more depth for 
Contemplative Writing:
1. If you are not surprised, as the writer, then the reader won't be surprised.
2. Don't show, tell (meaning: describe, let the reader experience it, rather than just saying what is).
3. Universal is strong, personal that shows the universal is even stronger.
4. Devil is in the details.

All of these can be taken at the level of the word, or at the level of the mind. 
Leave it to Contemplative Writing to take it at both.

Example:
In my last talk for the retreat in London, I read from a piece I had written in which I mention that I carried grief like baggage for many years, believing it to be essential: a crucial part of who I was, and a necessary, undeniable facet of myself. I came to this insight over years, of course, not just over the span of one two-minute writing. But I had never encountered this prompt ("bags") at this moment, in that circumstance, towards the end of a retreat, thinking about how heavy my actual luggage was, and in a mindset where I thought I had nothing else to say.
The analogy/metaphor hit me hard - as it hit the students hard. In fact, it was so fresh that the most universal piece of feedback from all participants was that that insight - that I believed grief essential to who I was for so long and carried it around purely because of that belief - was something they would carry with them as a benefit from the weekend.

What was so powerful? That I got to the understory. That I pierced through the story I carried for so long - not the grief itself, but the story about the grief - and got to the under-story/belief that was the actual weight. What was personal was my own story about grief - what was universal was this way in which we carry things we don't have to carry anymore. I revealed a mythos - a personal myth - and by doing so, as happens with all myth, I revealed the wires, the puppet machine that shows how our minds attach to a story.

This is the most powerful thing memoir can do. I think it is the most powerful thing any writing can do, but especially memoir. 

It is not confession. It is not what is being shared, though that, too, carries its own potent. What carries the power within us, and what carries that power through to the writing is not the revelation of crucial details or the poetry of the words. It is the ability of the writer, as a human and as an artist, to reveal their own forms of self-deception and see the mind, and see words, for what they are: ever-changing, impermanent and exploratory. 

If we can see the mind in its process, as it tries to grasp and understand, if we can abide patiently as it rides its way out and through, until it reaches the point where it can actually show itself, then we have some really, really good writing. It takes time. It takes practice. But the wonderful thing is that the mind - and writing - are endless. There is no end to where we can go, even with our own stories.

Drop in. Write your way underneath - beneath even the level of shame you think is the most vulnerable place you can go. Write that. Write it many times until it exhausts itself. Then you can find what is truly groundless: your direct experience, previously un-explained.  
There you know you have truly begun.

The Dignity of True Self-Expression

"OP N" Chicago February 2013

I am studying to become a meditation instructor - I am one already, but one that maintains longer-term relationships with meditation students. I have a program this weekend, so I have been cramming on dharma in preparation for "exams" and other assessment tools coming up.

This morning, I read this passage in Chogyam Trungpa's guide for Shamatha instructors. While this is a limited text, this passage does not impart anything secretive, so I believe I can share it. It connects in really well with the ongoing conversation here regarding the role of "confession" in memoir:

A lot of people fall into the trap of confessionalism. You begin to tell people how bad you were, how terrible the trauma was that you have gone through..You feel the students will think you are an honest guy, and you have vomited everything you have to vomit. Somehow this seems to be very deceptive in some sense; it builds you up, showing how honest a person you are.. (This is not very dignified).. You are comparing notes between two people in jail, and somehow that doesn't seem to be the point..Obviously there should be first-hand experience exchanged, but at the same time one shouldn't indulge that particular style of winning someone's confidence. That's a double twist of some kind -- that purity and at the same time a lot of personality trips are involved.
-Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Manual for Shamatha Instructors

I like that - "the trap of confessionalism" and "you have vomited everything you have to vomit." I have spoken here before about the importance of not hiding important details - how the readers know when the writer has not shared important information, can feel the lack or the lie. And yet, if we have some idea that by sharing it all we have fulfilled a role for the reader, we have sorely missed out on nuance and respect. 

When There's A Ball and Chain On Your Pen

Smiley Versus Skull, Mar Vista, LA, January 2013

I have for your reading consideration another writing by a student of mine. This was in response to my "intention prompt" for the last of our session together. This student has been writing with me for a couple of years now, and has grown, frankly, leaps and bounds. She came in ready to break open the division between her inner logical self and inner artist, and in addition to my classes has done many other courses with local folks who do complementary work to mine (dance, drawing, etc).

Her reading lead to a very important conversation - the beginning of it, anyway - about how we treat trauma in writing, when we are airing our shameful laundry and when we are simply witnessing or processing, and when airing laundry is what is needed. Anyway, without further ado, I'll simply post what she wrote. It's very good and pithy, and hopefully, a provocative addition to the conversation I started here in this blog.

Comments are welcome! And thanks again to this student for her relentless but gentle exploration of personal process. It benefits us all, even when we feel awkward about asking these questions.

“Empty” is the word that came up before Miriam finished reading the prompt.  Its a word for all years.  It’s a good word, a good place to be.  It’s positive, it’s happy, it’s a vessel to fill with joy and color.

I get the strong feeling sometimes that what I need to do is empty myself.  That this is the cure for feeling bottled up, encumbered with secrets, and that until I divest myself publicly of all my sins I’ll never be authentic, I’ll always be hiding something, I’ll always be dishonest. 

Recently, I’ve felt otherwise.  That this urge to spill all the dirty details is just shame disguised as honesty.  That it’s too easy to believe that a public confession of the gory details of my perceived failures in life will somehow be ultimately freeing.  How many days have I spent sitting in this writing class wondering when I’ll ever have the guts to spell out my particular set of lapses and addictions, losses and indulgences, mistraveled paths and roads not taken?  That it’s all about hiding is what it seems to be not about.

Why not write from the open space, the lovely EMPTINESS that has opened up like a well, deep and blue, peopled with stars of gold, with millions of silent voices urging me on to fling color, to rhyme words at odd angles, to paint over portraits with my own vision, to speak out and listen to the ringing of my own voice across vast spaces that until recently were not accessible, were out of reach behind tall fences topped with barbed and electrified guard dogs of shame and self denial and self doubt.

I’m not really that interested in the personal details of other peoples’ dark journeys -- well, okay, maybe in a voyeuristic way -- but what is illuminating about their journeys is the energy they write about them with, and where that energy takes them.  That’s where the value lies. 

So, I’m thinking NOW that this urge of several years to spill it all, describe each shard as if it had something important to reflect back, is a red herring, or WORSE, it’s a continuation, it’s the same, same old, it’s the trick where I act out of contrition, I air my smelly undies, display the embarrassing stains, describe the specific muscle weaknesses that allowed various spiritual and moral sphincters to loosen and it’s all really just prostration in public before the SAME FALSE GODS, FALSE DEMONS that I bowed down to during my secret life in the darkness.

That’s not freedom.  That’s writing with a ball and chain on this pen.  Jump into the emptiness!  I know this is right, this is true, even though it’s so slippery I can hardly keep it on this page.

Dust

Graffiti in a country highway tunnel, rural Vermont

 Processing our own "issues" is an invaluable part of writing memoir. It may not be true to fiction, though some would argue it is (see Alice Miller's The Body Never Lies) or non-fiction, but beyond a doubt, what we have not "worked on" will show itself in our writing in memoir.

In my blog post Confession Vs Expression, I began parsing out this distinction in published work. But published work has so many factors at play - more than I can parse out, though I plan to do so on this blog with published memoirists: editing process, the size of the press, etc.

So I want to now, and also in the future, use some very raw and fresh examples from my writing classes. Just last week, one popped up. It's a perfect piece to read and discuss, as we did in class, and as I will do here.