Writing to heal

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Last summer, while eating a delicious dinner at the Chilmark Tavern, my dining companion asked me if there were any recurring themes that come up in my writing workshops. Without skipping a beat, I said, “Yes, incest and sexual abuse.”

He was shocked. I wasn’t.

For years, almost every week there are one or two stories of women who had their boundaries violated in the worst possible ways by “friends” or family members. I know statistically there are more than 60 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse in our country. And those are just the ones reported.

“Have you written about this in your column?” my friend asked.

“I’ve thought about it,” I said, but I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about the workshops. It was bad enough some years ago when I heard my workshop described as, “that thing up in Chilmark where after women take it, they leave their husbands.”

I remember when I heard that, I laughed. But then I winced, because some of it was true. But lawyers also left their professions, married men came out of their closets, and introverts found their voices.

Writing the truth about the trauma that happened to you and how you are feeling about it can be a great catalyst for change. It can put up a very highly Windexed mirror.

Many women who take the workshop are over 50, and have carried their secrets for decades. Sitting in a sacred circle, revealing our hidden stories on the page, and sharing them (often for the first time) with a community of nonjudgmental listeners, and getting the story out onto the page allows us to let go of the shame.

My dinner companion asked, “Are women more wounded than men?”

I said, “No, the guys are hurt too. But we gals get to cry. So many of the men have written about being little boys and having their fathers tell them only babies and girls cry. I’ve heard the line, “Ya’ wanna cry? I’ll give ya’ something to cry about!” way too many times.

I asked him, “So where do you think those tears go?”

My friend replied, “It doesn’t sound like this is a writing workshop. It sounds more like therapy, this workshop of yours.”

“It’s not therapy,” I explained. “But it is therapeutic to use writing as a vehicle to get your story out of your body, where it’s been marinating for years.” I don’t know why I always use the word marinating. Probably because with me, everything comes down to food.

One of the prompts I give in the workshop is, Write about a time you felt one way and acted another. I can’t tell you how many people write about being in elementary school and not defending the kid who was being bullied. I can’t tell you how many grownups have written about being that bully.

But don’t get me wrong; writing workshops are much more than just writing about trauma and drama. The best ones have a perfect balance of bringing out the joy and sorrow. In mine, I swear we spend half the time laughing. And by the end of the week, we have discovered that compassion is truly our first language.