Healing in words

Imaginative Writing 2853 connected my mind and my heart.  Perhaps that sounds melodramatic but it is true.  For the majority of my thirty-seven years I had yearned to write.  To put pen to paper and write beauty.  I was in grade school when I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time and I remember my favorite line.  It was not discussing Scout's bravery or even the social issues that came to rest in my malleable young mind.  It was simply this, "Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

I read it again and again.  Harper Lee wrote a sentence about how hot summers were and about women sweating and her crafting of words made it beautiful.  I did not just fall in love with a book, I fell in love with words.  I read it aloud and heard the alliteration in noon, naps, nightfall as well as soft, sweat, and sweet.  I did not know it had a name, this lingual song that I could hear in words.  In Words.

What I found this spring was that I could use this writing down of words to settle my mind and clean out my heart.  There were things I could not yet speak of that I could write.  Things I could not work out in my head poured out of my pen.  I found and have continued to find that when I write I heal.  It is the way my mind works, it is the way I reconcile what I know to be with what I live now, with what I have lived through.  That is why it was so painful for me when I found myself afraid to write yet again.

The following poem was a big breakthrough for me, in healing and in understanding my need to be pleasing.  Always.  No matter the cost.  No matter the damage.  So just as words planted these things in my heart, words helped to pluck them out.  I knew that healing was waiting for me to let go because God does not heal what we cling to, what we obsess over, what we keep closer to our hearts than Him.  These words were the beginning of release.   They are not pretty.  They are not even especially emotional even though I hear the edge of anger.  They are just painfully authentic. 

My Grandmother’s Words

People will like you
if you make them happy.

I heard her words
Long after she said them.

Smile and stand up straight.

I never called them forth,
But they came all the same.

When I was your age I was thin.

Whispering spirits with steely
 Tongues cut deep.

No one loves you like I do.
Not even your parents.

I searched for the secret
Mark that flawed me.

Marry someone handsome-
you wouldn’t want ugly babies.

I stripped away bits of self,
Trading them for approval

You know nothing.

Until I was a secret
Whore working for love.

I could raise your children better.

I used to wonder why some tribes
Sewed shut the mouths of their dead.

I deserve more than you.

Now I know it was to bury
Their curses with them.

No one loves you like I do.

I won’t listen anymore.
I’ve sewn her mouth shut.

  

 

My first experience in workshop

Workshop (wûrk shop) n. 2. An educational seminar or series of meetings emphasizing interaction and exchange of information among a usually small number of participants: a creative writing workshop.

That sounds all cozy and fun, hmm?  Well, I had my first workshop experience this week.  We turned in our poems, copies were made, and everyone reviewed the poems and offered suggestions.  Does it still sound fun?  It was rather like standing naked in front of a room full of people who discussed all my saggy bits and bobs and then offered suggestions on how to fix them.  Constructive no doubt, but not really fun.  Honestly, it was very helpful and I am beginning to see how to further refine and sharpen what I may have thought was a finished product.  But editing, while constructive, is rather uncomfortable.  


Here is my workshop poem:

Insomnia

Eyes closed,
Body dead tired,
Mind racing,
I am hungry for sleep. 

Thoughts scuttle
Through my mind
Like spiders in a
Forgotten attic.  

 

Some nights I channel Dickens,
Endless apparitions
But with no hope of
Redemption in the end.  

A mockingbird perches on my chest
Serenading me in those dark hours,
Its song eating away my peace,
Its black eye piercing my soul.

The night wastes;
All is intangible
Nothing is concrete
It is useless to lie. 

In the gray morning I am spent,
But the trills of the thrush
Awaken a truth within me,
And I rise.

Post workshop initial edit:

Doubt

Thoughts scuttle
Through my mind
Like spiders in a
Forgotten attic.    

A mockingbird 

Perches on my chest
Serenading me 

In those dark hours,

Its song drowns

My words
Its black eye 

Pierces *.

The night wastes

And in the gray morning 

I am spent,
But the trills 

Of the thrush
Awaken *

And I rise.

What is interesting to me is that the poem started out literally about insomnia.  Our instructor made an off-hand comment about Dickens in class and something flashed in my mind...

Some nights I channel Dickens,
Endless apparitions
But with no hope of
Redemption in the end.

Because everything can seem hopeless when you go long enough without sleep.  Every doubt and remembrance seems overwhelming.  What if Scrooge was shown all his mistakes, but was not able to rectify even some of them?  So I am tucking away my verse about Dickens to use somewhere else. 

But then it changed.  Toward the end it was about self doubt (mockingbird) and inspiration (thrush).  They are literally symbolic for doubt (mockingbird) and poetry or song (thrush). Still yet, this may not be the final edit.  Who knows?  I do know that a writer must always be willing to edit, must always be willing to cut, and shift, and change.  Even when the cutting draws a little blood.


* I have no clue what to do here yet.

 

Quotes

I think it is from Alfred Souza- an inspirational writer as far as I can tell. I really liked this. I always tell the girls that you choose to be happy or unhappy and this is a neat illustration of that. I collect quotes by the way and would love for ya'll to post your favorites in comments. (I have a little journal I write quotes down in.)


"For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin -- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one. Happiness is a journey, not a destination.”


-Souza

Love,
Shawna

I never...

This is how I feel today...

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea,
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in Heaven,
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

Emily Dickinson