Writing: A Dangerous Thing
It’s a dangerous thing to challenge your inner voice and those critics who say you and your story are not worth it.
Marie: At first, it can feel dangerous to write your story. To be seen. To be the main character in a difficult situation.
The stories in our first bestseller are published for everyone, and what you do with them will have a ripple effect on the world we live in. These stories are here for the man who thought these were women’s issues, and for the women who, up to now, turned a blind eye. This is for those who felt disbelieved, unheard, discarded. They are for the survivors who can now walk tall and come out the other end of the experience.
Our Silent Voice opens the faucet for these stories to come through. Like as not, you’ve been changed by this book. The cultural narrative has shifted, albeit slightly. The next time this topic comes up, and it will, your words around it will be different; More compassionate, better informed, directly, or indirectly experienced. These stories have shifted something in you.
Janet: Poets & Writers published an article which I found fascinating, The Heart-Work: Writing About Trauma as a Subversive Act, Melisa Febos, www.pw.org/content/the_heartwork
The article discusses how an experiment, conducted in 1980 by social psychologist James Pennebaker, found that expressive writing about trauma strengthens the immune system, decreases obsessive thinking (maybe drinking?), and contributes, as Marie notes, to the overall physical health of the writer.
The article in P&W says “If you write about your wounds, it’s therapy. But it is a logical fallacy to conclude that any writing with therapeutic effect is terrible.” This relates to the sneer that nothing worthwhile comes from writing for just 15 minutes. It concludes that the subversive act is that which challenges the “oppressive power of gaslighting us into thinking we are dramatic, whining, attention-grabbing or beating a dead horse.”
Go to the link and read it. Melisa has a very strong point, and we agree! We cannot ignore the power and danger that threatens our lifelong belief that we are not worth it, or the cry of the internal voice that says you shouldn’t, or you’re just being silly. I kept my secret for over twenty years and truthfully, approached it as a nagging past. But when I took on the dangerous act of subverting my inner critic and writing it anyway, it was powerful.
It’s a courageous thing to write about your most vulnerable moments.
Our angriest, most triggering moments can feel dangerous at the outset – yet can reward the writer in many ways. Marie
Marie: Our project started with just the two of us learning about collecting stories, honoring the heartfelt work of other writers, publishing, social media, workshops – and how to do it all remotely during covid. Our premise is based on research that indicates that writing about painful emotions is difficult but can improve our mental and physical health. It’s a simple but powerful self-help tool that we took up and apply in our workshops.
Victims of abuse sometimes experience a kind of aphasia directly after trauma. Temporary or permanent, we don’t really know. When we write, we open ourselves as channels, conduits for the words that flow. These are the muddy waters.
We have published sixty-eight pieces in OSV: Break the Silence.
And, they are all from people just like you.
Janet: When I submitted my story written as poem to a poet, she said “You wrote it with compassion for the girl rather than the violence of the moment.” I was stunned. I’d written it as a list then searched for poetry forms. I didn’t know how to write a poem, but it kept forming into something other than narrative as I wrote.
A Sestina, The Party, has been published in Our Silent Voice: Break the Silence. More importantly, that story of gang rape in high school lives in a different form, outside my heart and mind. It is out there. It’s on paper, it’s published.
And in here… it’s quiet.
Marie: We ask you to join us in subverting the critic, throwing off the weight of the stigma, and begin to thrive on the other side.
We thank our writers for writing out, standing out, and speaking out!
Together we have found the strength to give silence a voice. Our shared humanity empowers us to move forward into resilience.
It’s a dangerous thing to challenge your inner voice and the voices who say you and your story are not worth it.
OSV: Fierce, Brave, and Loud, 2022
OSV: Break the Silence – Best Seller out now - get your copy here
“We invite you to join us in our request to be the loud voice of humans who are declaring their freedom from silence. We ask you for action, engagement and remembering.”