Writing

Why a blog?

It is no secret to those who know me well that I enjoy writing. Indeed, those who know me well are the recipients several times a year of essays I’ve written on various subjects as well as the recipients multiple times over of e-mails chock full of words on a number of subjects. I like to write. I am compelled to write. I keep a notebook with me during all waking hours, to jot down the words that start forming. Sometimes I get out of bed at night to track down pad and pen when thoughts start flowing.

But I have not always written. Back in high school I received A’s on written work, essays and term papers and the like. But I was not required to take English classes in college, so I didn't. Then after college, I wrote for business purposes, e.g., reports for court, chart notes on clients, and so on. But I did not write for pleasure. I did not begin really writing until about six months after Philip died, though one would not describe the initial purpose as “for pleasure.”

Initially writing was very purposeful, part of a much bigger process, of integration. For a number of years prior to Philip’s death I had had to measure every word, and I became accustomed to using very few. Living with one who is suicidal oftentimes requires  “walking on eggshells.” Philip’s emotional state was such that the slightest misspeak - or perception thereof - would affect him. He would begin, to use his words, “spiraling into that deep dark hole,” at the bottom of which was annihilation. I learned that the only way to possibly prevent this occurrence was to remain silent. No matter what, to remain silent. No idle chatter. Little discussion of work issues. No attempt to explain or defend when accused of insensitivity. No attempt to discuss the deepest longings of my heart. There was risk to every word uttered. Additionally, living with one who was actively suicidal required for me a closing off of feelings. I could not allow myself to feel all there was and continue to function day in and day out. So I did not allow myself to use internal words either, for feelings at least. I shut down.

It was not until I entered counseling and began the process of making sense of all that happened that my words began to return. One day I discovered myself pondering the issue of grief, trying to put my finger on exactly what it was I was feeling. My attempts to do this adequately demanded that I write down what it was I was struggling with. I crossed out, erased and re-wrote until I had it just right. And thus began the process of sorting my feelings via use of the pen.

Around this time I also discovered the solace provide me by the words of others. I felt less alone in my pain and grief as I read the words of those who had made this journey before me. I felt comfort in knowing that I had not been singled out for tragedy, that many had experienced similar pain before, and alongside, me. My writing shifted. I began writing not only for me but for us. I began to write those thoughts and feelings that I believed to be common to many of us as we attempt to make sense of life.

I find at this point that I write for these purposes and more. I continue to write solely to sort my thoughts and feelings. I write when it feels as if what I am encountering must be common to many. When traveling, I write to share my adventures with friends and to describe the beauty of what I am experiencing. I write to share my joy. And I write sometimes just to share me, because I want to be known. Most of the time I write because I am compelled to. I can’t not.

Writer and theologian Frederick Buechner speaks many of my favorite words, and I particularly like what he says about telling our stories. I share with you some of his words now:

"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. "

~~~~~

"I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition – that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are – even if we tell it only to ourselves – because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about. Finally, I suspect that it is by entering that deep place inside us where our secrets are kept that we come perhaps closer than we do anywhere else to the One who, whether we realize it or not, is of all our secrets the most telling and the most precious we have to tell." (Telling Secrets)

Thanks for listening.

Donna