Writing tools for when the only way out is through
Which is always, unfortunately, Fledgling Newsletter #73
How are we, chickadees? This has been the longest year ever and it’s only been a few weeks. The loss, the destruction, and the Neil Gaiman of it all, amirite? Now, a great Fledgling leader (though he doesn’t know it) has left this earth, (I’ve been sharing this David Lynch Atlantic interview with every Fledgling Course writer since the very beginning), while today another kind of leader takes power with his signature fear mongering.
At the end of last month I filmed a writing meditation about personal landmarks, encouraging us to write about the spaces that made and shaped us, while sitting around a table at my undergrad college where I met some of my very best friends. I never could have realized, soon many people would lose the ability to ever return to their most beloved landmarks. Now this video hits different. Though I moved from Southern California to Colorado when I was very young, many of the Californian personal landmarks I still visited are no longer standing. Still, I’m grateful my family in both Malibu and Altadena still have their homes.
These fires have made me feel so helpless. I’ve seen some beautiful offers from artists who will draw your personal landmark lost in the fires. This is such a powerful gift. Now, I’d like to offer you a way to resurrect and “draw” those landmarks yourself.
I used to run a trauma writing course based off of the research of psychiatrist James Pennebaker. I had to break from offering this course as I found I didn’t quite have the emotional stamina to make it a regular part of my workshop schedule, though they are some of my most cherished Fledgling memories. Time after time I watched people chip away at their healing before my eyes.
Below I’m sharing the entire curriculum for Fledgling’s Wing Mending Course. I can’t think of a better time to share this.
Humans are incredibly durable, able to withstand immense emotional and physical pain. It’s not necessarily the brutal and traumatic events of our past that manifest into long term mental health conditions; its the bottling up of those events. If we don’t ever speak through what happened to us, the events solidify. We hold it in our bodies (who are famous for keeping the score) and our hearts and heads, so that they repeat on us in ways we may not even recognize as being related to the traumatic event.
Here I’ll leave you with the three steps of writing through past trauma, with a few Fledgling prompts to go with them.
What: I have seen these prompts unravel something deep within Fledglings time and time again. I have allowed them to undo my own knots time and time again, many times resulting in work I have published, and more importantly, a permanent emotional release. I hope they can help you work through something, too.
How: I suggest choosing a prompt from each section and writing expressively first, transactional second, and saving poetic for last. You can also simply pick and choose what resonates with you, but I have found going through each step is where the processing happens. I would write to one prompt then give yourself a day to a week to write to the next. Also, please make sure you have a loved one to reach out to after writing if you need a friend. Or better yet, write to one before a therapy session. You might also consider getting a group together and doing this with friends who have some grief or trauma to unpack, too.
Step one — Expressive writing:
“I remember” is a beloved Fledgling prompt used again and again in both Fledgling and personal writing sessions. Borrow the repeated words of Joe Brainard’s cult classic: “I Remember,” writing them at the top of your page and just seeing what follows. When you get stuck, drop a line and write, “I remember” again, finishing the sentence again. Repeat this, allowing yourself to jump around in time, to expand on some sections, and leave others very short.
Using a handheld mirror (preferably) or sitting in front of one, study your face in the mirror for two minutes with no distractions. Then write for five minutes about everything you saw from concrete (fine lines) to abstract (last night’s glass of wine) as a poem/list/story/however the words arrive.
Use the four steps of nonviolent communication to distill your traumatic experience into a request you can provide for yourself. This is kind of like getting on your knees to look your crying toddler-self in the eye and get to the bottom of how you can help. It can be hard to look past the overwhelming emotions after a trauma, that lead to building harmful narratives in our minds (i.e. “Everything I succeed at falls apart.”). Nonviolent communication urges us to take a look at what actually happened and to find out how to move forward.
Observation: Write in the most objective, basic terms possible what happened. Ex. I checked my phone at 3:30 pm and found a lot of text messages that seemed worried…
Feeling: List the physical and emotional senses coming up after the stressful event that may signal our needs. Ex. Now I feel anxious and nauseous and I don’t want to look at my phone…
Need: Brainstorm what you could do or attain to improve on a situation or a mood. Ex. I need to be in a calming atmosphere where I can have a break from bad news…
Request: Here’s your opportunity to locate what specific action could fulfill your needs in the form of a question. Ex. Could I ask my cousin if I can come over for a cup of peppermint tea and a movie? Could I turn my phone off and ask important people to reach out to her if they really need me instead?
Step two — Transactional writing:
Write about what happened in the form of four letters. Start with A and move through to D. Give yourself only 5-10 minutes for each.
Authority figure (police officer, professor, boss…)
A close friend
Someone else involved in the experience who might have a different perspective on it than you
Yourself as a child
Think of someone (in your life or a public figure) who has survived the same type of trauma you are experiencing and write to them. This can be a letter, a poem. You can tell them a story. Consider how best to show them compassion.
Step three — Poetic writing:
Bring something organic and delicate with you to your writing session (you might consider sitting outside). A flower, a leaf, a lit candle, a silk scarf, a feather, even a dryer sheet. Spend 1-2 minutes simply sitting with it, meditating on it. What parts of it remind you of yourself, of your experience? Pick off petals, play with wax, interact with the item. Then place it down and allow yourself ten minutes to write whatever comes to you to write.
Choose a symbol from the past that reminds you of a traumatic event. It could be a location, a song, a smell, an object…Start by describing that thing in great detail, not letting yourself stray away from it for at least a couple of paragraphs. Then allow your work to expand away, seeing where your mind naturally takes you, even if that is a fictional story or a poem about something adjacent but not quite about the trauma you experienced.
Call for your words: Speaking your trauma (writing counts, too) is a great first step toward healing. Don’t underestimate the power of sharing, too. If you’d like to share a bit of your story, write to a prompt above, and reply it back to me. I will share whichever stories I collect, either anonymously or attributed to you depending on your preference.
And lastly, something to read:
a personal favorite poem that has helped move me through trauma time and again
Instructions on not giving up
byAda Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.