Oh my goodness, it’s good to be back in front of a blank blog post page! And that’s not to say that I haven’t been writing…

I am finally coming up for air after committing to keep my head down on Chapter 17 of Remember the Birds, an intention I set on Monday of last week. It might sound like I’ve been working on it for only eleven days, but I promise it’s been much longer than that. I first started this attempt two and a half months ago, addressing the same topic that challenged me endlessly when I first started working on this book over three years ago.

Why would something take so long you ask?
It’s a good question with an answer that I only recently discovered.

Last Monday, I went to the Gold Writers’ Check-In at the London Writers’ Salon, the online writing community I belong to. When called on, I spoke of the blog posts still waiting in the wings wanting to be written and then brought up the nefarious Chapter 17 while wincing and summoning the following statement:

“I’m going to work on Chapter 17 and only 17 until it’s finished. No pleasurable writing, no blog posts or long winded social media as I know I’m using it as a distraction to keep me away from what I’m dreading.”

As the words fell out of my mouth, I felt a gut punch right to my solar plexus. It was akin to the feeling I had 11 years ago when I set the intention to finally quit smoking. Doing so felt like having to say goodbye to an old friend so that I could take on the seemingly arduous task of healthy living.

So why the similar feelings towards writing this chapter?

Because it had been so damn hard. So elusive. And no matter how many times I attempted it, I just couldn’t write it in a way that rang true when I read back through it.

Something just wasn’t right…

But still, I dedicated to showing up to the drudgery no matter how much I hated it for the better part of two weeks while either laughing at the ridiculousness of my predicament or scoffing in irritable frustration. The accountability of my writers’ group witnessing my plight was both helpful and maddening.

A fellow writer friend suggested I read Melissa Febos’ book Body Work – The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, so like a good impulsive book buyer, I ordered it. It arrived three days ago and I have already devoured half of it. The information contained within is both validating and liberating, encouraging me to keep unraveling what has challenged me for the past three years.

“I don’t believe in writer’s block. I only believe in fear.”

Melissa Febos, Body Work

So what exactly is it that I was afraid of?

It was a question with a few valid answers, some easier to see, accept and address than others. The first fear that appeared to me was that I was afraid of hurting the person I’d be writing about, the one who shared that period of time. Valid, yes, but easily addressed by having a conversation with them and certainly no reason to shirk away from telling this part of my story.

That was Thursday of last week, just four days into the intention I set…

I then sat at my computer with multiple pages open, each with a different version to work on. I cut and pasted and threw away, reworded, edited and tried to make what was left make sense. There was so much I liked and so much I didn’t, but no matter how long I sat there or how hard I tried, I didn’t like what I had written. There was something about the tone that didn’t feel right, details that didn’t add to the story and others that had been omitted, but as far as the exact problem of what was going on, I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

“I have found that a fulfilling writing life is one in which the creative process merges with the other necessary processes of good living, which only the individual can define. The holistic approach is pragmatic in the sense that it ensures the discipline, because while I sometimes resist the work of writing, I resist my own psychic suffering more, and writing has become for me a primary means of digesting and integrating my experiences and thereby reducing the pains of living, or if not, at least making them useful to myself and to others. There is no pain in my life that has not been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.”

– Melissa Febos, Body Work (excerpt from the Author’s Note)

And then nine days after the gut punch, I heard a very faint voice coming from a place deep inside of me which insisted on whispering its critical opinion about that time and what I was doing.

I have done a lot of growing in my lifetime, especially the last four years. I no longer live with shame or have tapes that play driving home the self-condemnation. I am way past that now and can intellectually discuss just about everything that I’ve ever been through, but intellect and emotion are not the same thing and that voice still exists in the ethers trying to remind me of all it once told me.

I will do my best to explain in a way that you can follow.

What I realized this past week is that no matter who I am now, the current who who is writing this book, is not the person who should be telling certain parts of this story.

Therefore, the biggest reason why the writing wasn’t quite right wasn’t the fear of hurting other people, but the fear driven place committed to keeping me safe by using criticism and shame to scold me. And as much as I’ve turned down the volume on that voice, it’s still there and sometimes whispers subliminal messages and it manages to shape the writing. It adds adjectives that help sculpt judgment and omits seemingly simple things like sharing that a certain someone used to make me coffee.

Hopefully, I haven’t lost you…

If you are wondering how this plays out, sit down and write about a very personal experience. Write it as if no one else will ever see it but you–as a matter of fact, promise to burn it.

After you finish, write the same story again, but one you commit to sharing publicly.

How has the story changed? Who are you? Who are they? Do you feel the need to explain or lay blame in even the most quiet of ways or in some suggestive way or without naming names?

If you practice this over and over and can walk away from a piece without something nagging at your conscience, reaching a place of perfection, not of grade or literary acumen, but one that is not shaded by prejudice making it is as honest as you can make it, then you have accomplished a story that is not only worth telling, but one that will hold others’ attention.

So, how have I managed to apply this knowledge to the writing of Chapter 17? Well, as with anything, awareness is the first step and the second for me is approaching it with genuine and loving curiosity.

What exactly am I feeling and where is it coming from?
Is it internal dialogue that is shaping my view either by shaming myself or blaming others?
Can I stand tall with my bones and fill the skin that the Creator gave me?
Or am I shrinking from not knowing then what I do now that hindsight is 20/20?

Armed with these answers, I’ve gone back in time and allowed the woman I was in 2019 to speak, letting her voice tell the story.

Over the years, I’ve come to look forward to the point in my own writing at which continuing seems both incomprehensible and loathsome. That resistance, rather than marking the dead of the day’s words, marks the beginning of the truly interesting part. That resistance is a kind of imaginative prophylactic, a barrier between me and a new idea. It is the end of the ideas I already had when I came to the page–the exhaustion of narrative threads that were previously sewn into me by the sources of varying nefariousness and innocuity. It is on the other side of that threshold that the truly creative awaits me, where I might make something that did not already exist. I just have to punch through that wall.

Melissa Febos author of Body Work – The Radical Power of Personal Narrative.

It’s been 50 months since Josiah was murdered and so much has taken place in that time. The external journey that so many have witnessed holds a flame to the one that’s internal. I took advantage of the therapy that was offered as part of my Victims’ Benefits and have chosen to stick with it despite there being times that I showed up questioning where it was going. The journey has been similar to the writing–so much to uncover, so much liberation from all that was no longer working.

Thanks so much for your continued support!
Liz