Bound for Kodiak: Memoir as Therapy

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.

~ John Muir

The countdown to Kodiak clock is winding down fast – as in tomorrow!  As there will be no internet there, I will not be posting again until my return. 

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eginning tomorrow, Friday, August 29^th, I will head out t othe Last Frontier.

For a week, I’ll be writing, relaxing, reading, and hopefully taking pictures of grizzlies and not getting mauled by one.

Oh, and did I mention there won’t have indoor plumbing?

Yeah. Roughing it at last!

Ever since I was seduced by her majestic mountains and clean, brisk air, I have longed to return.  So this trip is a dream come true for me and one I can cross off my bucket list.  And I almost gave up on it barely before I got started. 

All because of negative feedback. 

Ironically, I am going on this trip to work on my memoir.  Sending out those few, vulnerable little chapters was difficult ~ not because I’m afraid of constructive criticism.  But because the content is so raw and painful and intimate and personal.

It’s like stepping into one of my personal journals.  Or sitting in on a therapy session.

Memoir experts say that your memoir shouldn't be about getting revenge or a way to work through your issues.  But I say ~ just write.  Get it all out, vomit on the page, deep clean those memories and wounds and trauma.  Once it’s all out there, then you edit.  Tweak.  Delete.  Reword.

Use your writing as therapy all you want.  It’s only the final draft, the one that’s ready to go to the publisher, that should take your personal story, your personal pain, and make it universal.  Because a memoir is never just about you and your healing.

It’s your story of healing being a beacon of hope to someone else who may be suffering in a similar way.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Do you use your writing as a therapy tool?  Why or why not?

The Words We Leave Behind: What NOT to Throw Away

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy;

for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves;

we must die to one life before we can enter another.

~ Anatole France

June is the FLX/WordCount Blogathon!  Join us for 30 Days of blogging madness!

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hat do we leave behind us?

Specifically, what words do we leave behind?

Peggy Rosenthal has a thoughtful post over at Image Journal about aging, accumulating “stuff” and old journals and letters.

Reading about the tearing and ripping apart of old journals and throwing them out to be burned made me want to cry. 

On the one hand, I understand where she’s coming from: make things easier for the kids once she and her husband are gone; less to throw out.  It’s a charitable act, really.  No one should have to go through all that when they’re in the throes of grief.

Or should they?

What We Leave Behind Isn’t Just Junk

My mother could star in an episode of Hoarders, a show she watches avidly, proclaiming: “How awful!  I’m not THAT bad!” 

In her case, a lot of what she saves really is insane: broken things that she swears she’ll get fixed; items that will be re-purposed into something new. No, Mom, turning the microwave into a ice chest for the patio is not cool, it's white trash.  

The yards and yards of fabric that she said was her retirement ~ she was going to make crafts and sell them ~ has now become her detriment.  I swear the damn things mate like bunnies somewhere in the deep recesses of the craft room.

Image credit: Memories Wallpaper, Google search

But I’m glad she didn’t throw out the ledgers from my Dad’s foray into owning his engineering company.  Seriously, how is it possible that in just under 40 years, prices have changed that much?!  

Or the menu from the restaurant where they met ~ he, the suave and debonair owner with the European flair and she, the young and impressionable back woods waitress with a Southern accent and a braid of thick auburn hair that put Crystal Gayle to shame.

These at least aren’t just detritus from a life well lived ~ they are touchstones that bring the past to life ~ our version of a hologram.  And to touch them is to bring back both the past and the person who lived it.  I would hate for those precious memories to be lost. 

Although, dear God, someone please tell her that Good Housekeeping magazines from 1967-1986 are NOT worth the paper they’re printed on!

In Our Own Words

Accumulating things seems to be an American rite of passage ~ or a disorder, however you want to call it.  So of course I have my fair share.  My several sets of china will tell you of my love of food and hospitality ~ but so will the pictures of all those dinners and parties with friends. 

Each plate and cup and saucer could still act as touchstones to another generation I suppose, although it looks like my sisters will have to take up that clarion call.  No, if all that china got broken, it’s easily replaced.  The memories are safe, tucked away in words and images: in my journals.  In letters.  In blog posts.

The most important thing we leave behind us when we go is our love.  Our caring.  How we felt.  And the memory of that might fade once we’re gone. 

People always talk about how they can’t really remember a loved one’s face anymore.  Or the sound of their voice.

But a journal ~ now there’s a touchstone worth keeping.  There, we remember, in the moment, how it felt to see the Alaskan skyline for the first time.  How deeply betrayed we were by that one relationship.  How our heart pounded with terror as we spent a dark, stormy weekend alone without electricity. 

Just think how much emptier our lives would be if Leonardo de Vinci, Charlotte Bronte, Albert Einstein, George Sand had burned their journals.

The dark and the light, the pain and the hope and the redemption ~ threaded together by ink and the corpses of trees.  They died to give our memories something to cling to.

And that’s why ultimately I wish Peggy hadn’t ripped up those journals.  Such an incredible writer should keep the evidence of her journey ~ both as a writer and as a woman.  Wife.  Mother.  Grandmother.  That kind of talent may pop up a couple of generations from now. 

And how cool would it be for a little girl to learn that her Great-great-great grandmother Peggy was a writer who lived and loved and struggle to find her writerly voice too.

And how grateful that she didn’t leave her a ginormous stack of old magazines.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Read It: Peggy Rosenthal is one of my favorite writers and all her articles are thoughtful and thought-provoking.  I invite you to read and be moved.

L is for Love Equals Listening (And Lilacs)

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness.

We have no scar to show for happiness.

We learn so little from peace.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Back in January, I began the One Page a Day Challenge and immediately threw away my quill.  Now in April, I’m participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge and prepping for a Wilderness Writers’ Retreat.  I need ink, a stiff drink and therapy.

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oday I wanted desperately to be lazy.  This is what comes of a three day weekend.

Laziness and procrastination and a “I don’ wanna” attitude.

Are we there yet?  No?  Sigh.  How many more letters to go in this thing!?

I was going to just start writing about lazy days and summer.  But apparently Mother Nature may have the last laugh ~ again.  Might get snow ~ light, mind you, but still ~ tomorrow evening.  And that thought brought me right back to my original idea for this post: lilacs and the rewards of listening.

L is for Listening

We all notice the people who remember us:  the gift that is just what we wanted.  The dish that was made with our dietary restrictions, allergies, and intolerances in mind.  The words of encouragement that were said at the moment we needed to hear them.

It’s not terribly difficult to be that person.  I always listen when one of my friends says they like or want something, but I am super forgetful and so learned to write things down in my address book.  Favorite colour.  Favourite store.  Favorite food.  Love languages.  Personality types.

Shhh, don’t tell them I do that.  They think I’m magically gifted in remembering these things.  Google Contacts, how I love thee.

Lilacs, Easter 2011
Image credit: Mikaela D'Eigh

My father is not that type of person.  It’s just not his personality.  And that’s okay.  He provided a roof, a table, and food on it.  A grade-A education and the freedom to pursue it to the highest degree I wanted.

He is the stereotypical Eastern European: few words but many actions.

But one day, he listened.  And one day, he touched my heart like no one had before and only a couple of dear friends have been able to since. 

L is for Lilacs

About two months before the end of my sophomore year of college and a beautiful Spring day ~ the kind that doesn't come very often in Virginia: cool breezes and temperatures not yet in the humidifying eighties.  My parents and sibs were coming to visit and take some of my stuff back home that I didn't need.

On a phone call in the previous weeks, I had lamented that I would miss seeing the lilacs back home ~ they are notoriously short lived down here.  Imagine my surprise ~ and delight ~ when my father walked in carrying an armful of lilac blooms.

All so I wouldn’t miss seeing them that year.

L is for Love

It’s only been in recent years that my father has taken to saying “I love you.”  Something about reaching your late eighties and nineties is mellowing.  And it’s been healing ~ for both of us.

I love words.  They have power.  They have meaning.  They have life.  But I learned very early on that love doesn’t always use words.  Love speaks in actions too.  You just have to look for it.  And hold the memory close.

As for me, I’ll may eventually forget the particulars.  But I’ll never forget the time that Love listened, and brought me lilacs.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Darn allergies.  Acting up in the office again!  Ahem ~ so, what love language do you speak?  Do you know your loved ones’ love language?  Ask ~ you just might be surprised at their answers.

Memories: Sweet Sixteen and the Livin' is Easy

Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.

~ George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire

In September, I’m participating in the Sapphire Even Day Blogging Challenge and the Two Pages-A-Day Writing Challenge. 

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on’t look outside.”

Think that’s going to deter a teenager? It didn’t stop me from pressing my face against the glass.  But just-turned-sweet-sixteen year old me didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.  So I shrugged, rolled my eyes and went back to reading whatever classic or new fantasy book I had discovered.

The my mother came into my room and told me that I shouldn’t go downstairs either.  I raised an eyebrow and frowned.  “What is going on?” 

She giggled and clapped a hand over her mouth.  My eyebrow went impossibly higher.

“Nothing.  Just don’t go downstairs until I tell you.”

Then she made the mistake of looking out the window.  So of course, I stood up and looked out too.  And saw a big white truck driving through our front yard.

Weird.

But I had no clue why a) a big white truck would be driving through our front yard (seriously, dudes, what’s wrong with the driveway?!) and b) what could possibly be in the big white truck that my mother wouldn’t want me to see.

“Okaaaay.  Whatever.  I was reading anyway.”

She giggled again and went back downstairs.  I lost myself in my book for another few minutes, but when I heard males voices and a weird bonging sound (no, not that type of bong!), I left my book spread-eagled on my bed and like any normal teenager, disobeyed my mother.

Reality didn’t hit until I was almost to the bottom of the stairs.  The front door and the screen door were as wide open as they would go and three husky guys were straining to move a very large, very shiny black something into the living room.  It was wrapped in heavy moving blankets.  And the bonging sound had come when they bumped over the threshold.

Only one thing makes that sound.  And only one thing has that shape ~ a shape that couldn’t be completely disguised by the blankets.

“Oh my God.  What is that?!”

Dad was grinning like a kid with a new bike and my mother was joking with the moving guys.  My sisters were also in on the big secret and were jumping up and down and squealing like crazy younger siblings do.

“So where do you want us to set it up?”

I looked at my parents, a huge grin on my still surprised face.  “Over in the bay window, please.”

It only took them a matter of minutes ~ minutes that turned into one of those moments where time seems to slow to a crawl, voices become muffled, and you see everything through a haze of starlight and sparkles.  At least that’s how it seemed to me.  How in the world had they managed to buy it without my knowing?  We had all gone to the store together, I had tried out a couple of models.  They never talked longer with the sales guy, no sitting down, filling out papers, money exchanging hands.

They had managed to completely surprise me.  Some kids get a car on their sixteenth birthday.  But I wasn't interested in cars.

So my parents gave me one of my dreams instead:

Image Credit: Pinterest

 She’s no Steinway, but she sounds just as beautiful as she did on my sixteenth birthday.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Today’s Sapphire prompt was to share a favorite birthday memory.  What is yours?

Remembering 9-11-01: Grief and Memory

If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease.  We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.

~ Cheryl Strayed

In September, I’m participating in the Sapphire Even Day Blogging Challenge and the Two Pages-A-Day Writing Challenge. 

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ow quickly we forget.

It’s a defense mechanism, really.  If we remained in the same exact state of grief as when our loved ones first left us, we would probably go blind from crying. 

So the gaping hole left in our lives by the loss scars over, and we continue living our lives.  Scars are proof of a life well lived and heart well loved.  And it’s natural to begin to see them through a haze ~ not quite being able to remember the exact colour of their eyes, or the way their laugh filled a room.  It doesn’t mean we have forgotten them, but that we’ve forgotten the first stabbing pain of loss. 

We have finally integrated their leaving into our living.

Image Credit: Visit icandothings.com

It’s been twelve years since that horrific day in September.  To be honest, I can remember that I felt horrified and sad and shaken mostly because I journaled about it ~ capturing the moment and the emotion in pen and ink.  And because there are pictures that spark my memory.

Not because I still feel the same.  And not because that day is always in the forefront of my memory banks.

It is the way of grief.  To help us cope with the initial loss, the shock of never seeing our loved ones again.  And hopefully, once we’ve been touched by the hand of Death, we can remember to live life without fear and without regret.  Because we never know when or how the end will come.

It’s what our loved ones would say if we could hear them now.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

How do you cope with the loss of a loved one?  Do you find that the pain eases a little each year?  Are you afraid of forgetting them?