Writing Ourselves Whole. Jen Cross
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The essays in the book are gathered into five sections between this introduction and the conclusions: Initial Preparation, Story, Voice, Witness, and Self-Care. These sections aren’t strict confines; more like loose collectives, or affinity groups—you’ll see a lot of overlap in themes and ideas throughout.
In Initial Preparation, we begin to lay the groundwork for our writing practice, what it means to write ourselves whole, and why we would ever want to try it.
The Story essays tangle with the work involved in finding, finally, the language for the unlanguageable: the unspeakable, the unspoken, and the unheard. It has to do with deciding to find the words for the stuff we were told would never be believed. This is the part where hands are on the page or keyboard, the alone work part, the communion with self, finding words for embodied and disembodied experience, and dis-ordering what has been sanitized, made too neat and nice so that others listening will be comfortable.
In Voice, we get into what it means to take our narrative back for ourselves, to say (in writing and out loud) what we were never supposed to say, and to allow our bodies, finally, to “speak” those stories that they have held for so long.
The Witness section contains writing about creating and sustaining a peer-led sexual trauma survivor writing group: what happens when we write together, how to navigate some of the challenges that arise, how to sustain yourself and your group.
In the Self-Care section, we think about both how to use writing as a self-care practice, and how and why to take care of ourselves as we write these beautiful and difficult stories of ourselves.
The Conclusion essays aren’t terribly conclusive—more like launching pads, explicit invitations to begin now, and then begin again and again, to find words for your own stories: as poetry or prose, as fiction or testimony, in any form you wish, and write yourself complicatedly, messily, fragmentedly, gorgeously whole.
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Please take care of yourself while you read, and while you write. There’s explicit language about sexual violence, and about living in the aftermath of trauma, in these pages. Please be easy with yourself as you read, stop when you’re uncomfortable, and write when you feel drawn to write. You have enough time; please don’t feel you need to rush yourself to get it All Done Now. Think about ways you can take care of yourself during or after your writing, and consider how to be kind and gentle with yourself during this time, how best to receive the support you’ll want, and make some mental plans for that.
Some ideas for self-care: call a friend who can listen to you without trying to “fix” anything; talk to a therapist; go for a run; punch a pillow; journal at a café (maybe treat yourself to an almond croissant, too); call someone from your writing group; play with your dog or cat or ferret or another animal in your life; visit the ocean at high tide and yell along with the thunderous waves; make chocolate-chip cookies or a big batch of buttered popcorn; prepare a whole meal that tastes good and feeds you well; rest; put on your favorite music while driving and sing along at the top of your voice; look for four-leaf clovers; go dancing; take a hot bath; write in your journal; snuggle with stuffed animals; spend an hour in the sun with a good book; take a “nature bath”—that is, a walk somewhere that you can be immersed in nature; garden or find another excuse to dig your fingers into some dirt; watch the birds; smell the roses (really!); bake bread; make yourself a cup of strong tea or just exactly the sort of coffee you prefer; go for a bike ride; binge-watch a ridiculous TV show; find an old movie that is sure to make you cry, and then one that makes you laugh…
This is just a beginning, of course. What else is on your self-care list?
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What I hope for every single person reading this is that you write: if not inspired by the words, then by the energy behind them. Writing has saved and changed my life. May it do the same for you. Begin now to write yourself whole. Gather your own circle of writers in which to share your stories. And throughout, please, be easy with you.
suturing the rupture: what writing about trauma can do
This is my aftermath, this writing. This is where grief or something more unlanguage-able has brought me. Medicine is supposed to ease hurts, soothe spasms, turn the knots inside out, is supposed to quiet the voices, allow focus or a little joy or peace return, is supposed to settle the stomach or senses or skin, is supposed to make something better. This is homeopathic practice: writing brings me into the pain, the misunderstanding, the trauma, the loss, and turns them around for me to examine. There is an inoculation, a lancing and letting off of infection, a suturing together again. There is deep medicine in this, in bringing the terror up, shining a light on its vulnerable edges, then letting it back down. And there is an offering left in the aftermath, a transcription of procedure, a tracing the outline of a fragile, fractured, healing psyche and body. This artifact shows all the stages we go through: what we were, what fire we went through, how we shadowboxed and strove through to the other side to find what remained of our soul and pulled it back through to live again. (2013)
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Trauma has impacted nearly every single person I know, directly and/or indirectly. Is this true for you, too? We may take trauma into our bodies and lives through our parents’ physical violence, or sexual misuse or molestation, through their name calling or threats or mind games or psychological torture. It may be an assault by a stranger, someone who took us by surprise on the street or in our home. It may be a natural disaster, like living through an earthquake or hurricane. It may be a physical illness, like cancer. It may be living under white supremacy, and/or other forms of oppression. It may be living or fighting in a warzone. It may be the legacy of our parents’ or grandparents’ traumas, our ancestors’ experiences of political, cultural, or intimate violences.
Merriam-Webster defines trauma as, variously: an injury to the body (as a wound, a cut); a “disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury;” and an emotional upset. The word trauma derives from the Greek word traume, meaning “a wound, a hurt, a defeat.”
A disorder state. A defeat.
In my workshops, I define trauma, quite broadly, as any experience which confounds understanding, and which leaves a person feeling silenced: either without access to language to describe it, and/or unwitnessed/unheard/shut down when they attempted to speak about the experience. I think of a traumatic experience as one that causes damage to bodily or psychological or spiritual integrity, one we’re not able to immediately integrate or process, that overwhelms, and then transforms, our understanding of ourselves and our reality.
A traumatic experience is generally thought of as something out of the norm—except, of course, for those living with incest or domestic violence, living in war zones, or experiencing political