Writing Trauma - How It Worked for Us
Marie:
When I started this blog, I did not feel well and went to lay down. Then I made myself some tea and stared out the window before trying again. In my world, writing about difficult emotions and describing the trauma I’ve experienced is risky. I am more easily drawn to broadening my understanding by listening to the voices of those marginalized and those who have worked in the field of sexual trauma to alleviate the injustice and the suffering.
Writing my personal trauma is like an archaeological dig. I’m separate and alone. I dig down, bit by bit and find some small thing, and then go deeper, and dig some more, removing layers, revealing more. I very gently brush away the dust and debris. Take a breath, find some clarity, and with care lift the words up into the light. Then begin the analysis of artifacts and human activity with my pen.
“Another possible reason why writing about trauma might be helpful is that it affords us the ability to reprocess our experience from a safe place, enabling us to experience a type of mastery and control over the trauma, and overcome the sense of helplessness.”
The Benefits of Writing About Trauma | The Psychosynthesis Trust Jun. 27, 2017
Recently, I had the opportunity to read one of my stories to an audience in a literary salon. Writing the story was difficult, and reading it out loud took determination and concentration. My mouth went dry and I was visibly nervous. To say the least, it was very uncomfortable. But, it was a triumph. People heard me. People understood me. They were moved- it had meaning. Now, the experience is real. And now, it is written down, outside of myself – dug out of my heart, dusted off, and on paper. An indescribable feeling.
Janet:
It was not easy to write about my gang rape. In fact, that story I called The Thing was nicely packaged and tucked away. When I walked into a writing class with the memory of all the journals I’d burned, I was focused on writing a family history for my grandchildren.
In this class, I announced I wouldn’t write my story, just those of my ancestors. As the class progressed, and as I dutifully did the homework, the nicely packaged, tucked away Thing began to emerge. Like a monster, you never know what it’s thinking, or what will happen when it gets loose. You can’t gauge the danger to yourself or others because it is, after all, a monster.
Then…..a few things happened. I heard the words to a song in the background of some Netflix series, and the words in close caption were, “wouldn’t it be nice to disappear.” I moved to my laptop and started to write stuff down, list, words, feelings, color, smell, light, and dark. “Wouldn’t it be nice to disappear..” are the words I used the morning after the party, that summer 56 years ago.
My words were choppy and disorganized—the words formed sentences then, formed into a list. I looked up poetry forms and found one where the words are repeated, stanza after stanza, like a mantra hummed to the tune of begging.
Drifting upward, never falling,
It might be nice to disappear,
Up to the sky above the trees.
Swirling mist with small thin fingers
And softly float among the stars.
God, move close to grant an answer.
In an interview with Dr. Cindy Childress, Marie, and I asked her what trusted technique she used to stimulate writing about traumatic events.
“If it’s unspeakable or unsayable, you know it’s unreasonable to ask someone to magically write it down because they have a pen, paper, and a creative writing teacher. Any good writer’s process is to keep revealing, and when you pull back one layer, you find another….that is true of almost every writer.”
The Thing operated on me as a powerful energy source, affecting every breath I’d ever taken. I started to write. Fast, the monster hit me from the outside. In reality, sound and images were just behind me on the TV screen. But suddenly, I was there, tied up, my mouth covered. Taste and smell were as real as they were at the party; wallpaper designed as a wooded forest, metallic blood, throat squeezed, acrid sweat, and boys jeering laughter showing on the face of a man who would be a Supreme Court Justice. It acted like a brutal, vicious time machine.
“Some things are forbidden, so you need to understand the “NO” voice that comes up. I believe it’s extremely important to take a minute to discover who’s in the driver’s seat.” -Childress
In an article written in Psychology Today, Art Markman, Ph.D. writes,
“Research by my colleague Jamie Pennebaker and his colleagues suggests that one of the best therapies for this kind of psychological trauma is also one of the simplest: writing. People are asked to spend three consecutive days writing about one or more traumatic events.
The people doing the writing do not have to believe that anyone will ever read what they wrote. Making these traumatic events more coherent makes memories of these events less likely to be repeatedly called to mind, and so they can be laid to rest.”
Now, I’ve written about the thing. It’s not in caps anymore. It lives, along with other traumas that struggled to be known, free from my mind, existing outside of me, on its own, in its place, in a book.
Marie:
This is the reason we started Our Silent Voice – to provide a space for survivors to put things down; a safe place to leave their stories. A place to compassionately share our voices and ultimately lift one another up.