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Оглавление1 Composing through Trauma
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It (2.1.14–19)
Claire, a bright young student in my graduate course focused on writing about trauma, insisted that she “didn’t have anything to heal from.” At semester’s end, she did not turn in the long narrative and analysis of a traumatic event. I had constantly assured her that “traumas” reside on a continuum, from the most severe to the least serious, and she could choose topics heavy or light. She finished most of the assignments, but when it came time for the final project, in which writers combined and synthesized their various writings into a single piece, she did not turn anything in. I had to assign her a grade of “Incomplete.”
What most concerned me was that her calm, rational observations about why she could not complete this project caused me to question the premise of my course. Would there be future students who simply have nothing to say about any kind of trauma or issue, regardless of its degree of severity? Claire had struck me as an honest, forthright person, so maybe others felt the same way but said nothing? I’d long known that writing about trauma is not for everyone, nor should it be. But this didn’t stop me from worrying that this course—which the other twenty-two students seemed to find valuable—could not happen again. A few months after the class ended, Claire sent me this email.
Hello Dr. Fox,
I know my name is probably the last thing you wanted to see in your inbox. I want to talk to you about my paper. It’s finished, and I was wondering if I could still turn it in. To be honest, my real concern is about the content of the paper. Dr. Fox, I let it out. I let it all out. What you are going to read is the bare bones . . . plain Claire with nothing extra. I debated for a long time if I were going to write about what my logic was telling me or what my soul was propelling me to write about. I know this sounds corny and clichéd, but it’s the truth. I initially told myself that I was going to write about the relationship between my brother and my mom and the fistfight they had when I was eight. It just wasn’t coming out, because I had another subject pressing on my mind. It has been a subject that I wanted to talk about for years, but have been scared of the repercussions. Dr. Fox, I talk about repeatedly being molested . . . by my brother. Just last year, I would not have even thought about writing that down, but the floodgates have been opened and I can’t shut them. This has been both easy and difficult for me to write. It was easy because there was so much that I wanted to say. (Personal Communication 2003)
Claire’s case solidified three important lessons for me. First, it ingrained in me that writing about trauma is not for everyone. Second, it’s not for everyone at certain times. We can suggest and nudge people to write about trauma, but we cannot force them. (I didn’t try to persuade Claire to do anything she did not want to do, and grades were off the table, but the fact remains that she was enrolled in a college graduate course.) Finally, this situation underscored the fact that writing about trauma does work, much of the time, and for good reason: The positive effects that writing has on wellness have been documented through qualitative and quantitative research studies, conducted over time, with different populations and rigorous methods.
In “Writing as Physical and Emotional Healing: Findings from Clinical Research,” Jessica Singer and George Singer (2008) provide a comprehensive review of clinical research on the positive effects of writing on a variety of maladies. The authors review how writers, by using expressive language and self-disclosure, can mediate the adverse effects of physical traumas, including the Epstein-Barr Virus, blood pressure, cancer, chronic pelvic pain, HIV, and physical recovery from surgery. Stephen Lepore and Joshua Smyth (2002) and other researchers have concluded that expressive writing is linked to a general improvement of our immune systems. More specifically, James Pennebaker (1990, 8) summarizes the physiological benefits of expressive writing, which include
better lung function among asthma patients and lower pain and disease severity among arthritis sufferers (Smyth et al. 1999), higher white blood cell counts among AIDS patients (Petrie, Booth, and Pennebaker 1998), and less sleep disruption among patients with metastatic breast cancer. (De Moor et al. 2002)
Singer and Singer (2008) also evaluate research results of writing’s positive effects on psychological issues, such as depression, the loss of jobs, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and intimate-partner violence (IPV). Lepore and Smyth (2002) and other researchers have concluded that expressive writing is linked to a general improvement of our immune system. Here, too, Pennebaker (2004) offers a more specific account of expressive writing’s psychological effects, as one of experiencing
immediate feelings of sadness but long-term effects of happiness; lower levels of depressive symptoms and general anxiety; improved performance in school; enhanced ability to deal with one’s social life; reduced feelings of anger; increased employability or success in job interviews; and increased feelings of connection with others, [or] social integration (8–11).
Expressive writing therapies are used in major medical organizations, such as Duke University, North Carolina; the City of Hope Cancer Center and The John Wayne Cancer Institute, California; and Piedmont Hospital, Georgia. Writing is used in the treatment of physically and psychologically abused women, AIDS/HIV patients, soldiers experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and suicidal people (Anderson and MacCurdy 2000).
In current and clinical contexts, there’s little doubt that composing through trauma positively affects our physical and emotional health. While these “new scientific facts” provide assurances to many people, we shouldn’t be surprised at how writing has forever helped us. For eons, writing has breathed life into human culture. Writing systems using graphic symbols to represent the sounds of a language seem to have evolved independently in Mesoamerica (650 BCE), China (1250 BCE), and Mesopotamia (3200 BCE) (Schmandt-Besserat 2006). Writing is the basis of government, law, religion, economy, science, art, and technology. In huge and grand fashion, writing has been key to the development and survival of the human race.
We’ve always regarded the values of writing as self-evident. After all, through the mists of time, we had only to look around at the rich, written products surrounding us—from the magnificent library in ancient Alexandria, to the timeless beauty of Shakespeare’s King Lear, to the strength of a Milton sonnet, to the brilliance of Mark Twain, to the insights of Joan Didion. We know the inestimable value of writing because it has forever sustained us, guided us, and moved us forward.
Our Storied Past
Composing through trauma works because it’s been effectively practiced throughout human history, including by some impressive minds. Thomas Jefferson, for example, penned a long dialogue, “My Head and My Heart,” in which his two internal forces debated with each other over his deep affection (if not love) for Maria Cosway, a young married woman he had met in Paris when he served as the US Minister to France in 1786 (Brodie 1974). The dialogue comprised the bulk of Jefferson’s long letter, beginning with his sadness at seeing Cosway leave France for her home in England.
I was at home. Seated by my fireside, solitary & sad, the following dialogue took place between my Head & my Heart:
Head. Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.
Heart. I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel or to fear.
Head. These are the eternal consequences of your warmth & precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever leading us. You confess your follies indeed; but still you hug & cherish them; & no reformation can be hoped, where there is no repentance.
Heart. Oh, my friend! This is no moment to upbraid my foibles. I am rent into fragments by the force of my grief! If you have any balm, pour it into my wounds; if none, do not harrow them by new torments. Spare me in this awful moment! (493–94)
While the most common form of writing through trauma is direct, expressive language (discussed later in this chapter), all forms of writing can be therapeutic: from poetry to drama, from letters to obituaries, from lists to PowerPoint presentations. An imagined dialogue is a more creative form that emphasizes interaction and thinking, as one voice responds to another, allowing ideas to evolve and become more comprehensible. Jefferson’s imaginary dialogue served as a kind of “bridge”—from his internal conflict to reality, from his feelings of fragmentation, to a greater sense of wholeness. I believe this dialogue provided Jefferson a bit of “distance” from his struggle, hence allowing him greater control.
Several decades later, another US President engaged in poetic language, which was, in all likelihood, a way for him to express and distance himself from personal trauma. Here are the final three stanzas from his nine-stanza poem, “The Suicide’s Soliloquy,” identified by historian Richard L. Miller (Shenk J. 2004):
Yes! I’m prepared, through endless night,
To take that fiery berth!
Think not with tales of hell to fright
Me, who am damn’d on earth!
Sweet steel! Come forth from your sheath,
And glist’ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!
I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last—my only friend!
This poem was first published in the August 25, 1838, Sangamon Journal, by a twenty-nine year-old Abraham Lincoln. Scholars agree that Lincoln suffered bouts of serious depression, twice talking about suicide to his friends. Compared to today’s standards, the poem is over-wrought, but that was the style back then. Nonetheless, its imagery and metaphor are starkly effective.
Imagery and metaphor have long been staples of writing for purposes of healing. They work because our minds themselves are metaphoric. We use such a poetic language as another “window” for describing problems and finding solutions. Poetic language, especially metaphor, can transfer meaning from one experience or concept to that of another. Casting our thoughts in imagery, metaphor, or imagined dialogue, as Jefferson did, can loosen or remove the issue that is tied to us.
One way that poetic language accomplishes this is by its interactive quality: Its ambiguity often suggests more than one possible meaning, so it forces us to think, to consider more than one alternative. When we see options (as readers and as writers), then we are invited to think independently. The specificity of poetic language largely bypasses linear, logical thinking. This concreteness also helps us bypass resistance, if we have experienced the same message in generic terms. Therefore, (and to conjecture for a moment) Lincoln may have directly told himself that suicide was wrong; his friends may have explicitly told him it was wrong, or may have even commanded him not to think about it or do it. Let’s assume that merely telling him does not work, nor would telling him again be effective. This is the point where the indirectness of poetic language may be most effective; Lincoln implies, but doesn’t say, he would commit suicide.
Nearly a hundred years after Lincoln, another US President, Harry S. Truman, engaged in extensive writing that he called “longhand spasms” (McCullough 1993). When facing complex issues and vexing problems, Truman would often check in, alone, to Kansas City’s Hotel Muelbach, where he would write his way out of the problem. Following is an example of such writing from early in Truman’s career, when he served as a Jackson County Judge (now referred to as a “County Commissioner”).
This sweet associate of mine, my friend, who was supposed to back me, had already made a deal with a former crooked contractor, a friend of the Boss’s . . . I had to compromise in order to get the voted road system voted out . . . I had to let a former saloonkeeper and murderer, a friend of the Boss’s, steal about $10,000 from the general revenues of the county to satisfy my ideal associate and keep the crooks from getting a million or more out of the bond issue. Was I right or did I commit a felony? I don’t know. . . . I’ve got the $6,500,000 worth of roads on the Ground and at a figure that makes the crooks tear their hair. The hospital is up at less cost than any similar institution in spite of my drunken brother-in-law, whom I had to employ on the job to keep peace in the family. I’ve had to run the hospital job myself and pay him for it. . . . Am I an administrator or not? Or am I just a crook to compromise in order to get the job done? You judge it, I can’t. (McCullough 1993, 499)
While Truman’s language here is far less poetic than Jefferson’s or Lincoln’s, I admire it more than theirs. First, Truman was a plainspoken man, with more than a trace of a now-disappearing rural Missouri accent. These facts led many people to dismiss Truman as a “hick,” similar to the way Lyndon Johnson was often perceived, due to his Texas drawl. This is far from true for both men. Truman was more literate and cultured than most of his peers; he just never took pains to show this side of himself. He constantly read history and loved Shakespeare. He was an intense student of classical music, who wanted to be a concert pianist. When traveling, Truman took his own record player and LPs, or long-play albums, of classical music with him. The second reason that I admire Truman’s habit of writing through trauma is that he chose to write in common, everyday language—expressive language. It’s not pretty or stuffy or preachy. It’s direct and honest. It doesn’t hold back.
Expressive language is the “matrix” from which all other forms of language are born—from academic and scientific reports to business contracts and poems (e.g., Britton 1975, 11–18). The main reason is this: Before you can write in language that is manipulated and cast in specific ways for a specific audience (e.g., a lab report aimed at molecular biologists), you have to be able to explain it first to yourself or to a close, trusted friend (explaining specialized vocabulary when needed). If you can’t clearly explain it to yourself, then you’ll have a helluva hard time explaining it to a specialized reader. In short, expressive language is the kind in which we think. Its uncensored, trusting, and informal qualities are what make it malleable, flexible. This, in turn, allows us to generate more and different thinking.
Expressive language and writing about trauma share many characteristics, which you’ll find in this excerpt from Truman’s writing. For example, he begins with concrete, observable details, sticking close to his reality (“6,500,000 worth of roads”). While he emphasizes the personal, he keeps the larger context in his view (accomplishing projects for the public good). Truman also connects feelings to specific events, as a kind of evidence, and he connects one incident to another. He asks questions of himself and twice expresses frustration at not answering them directly, though here he suggests his answer merely by posing the question.
He later answers an implied question by explaining why he had to hire his inept brother-in-law. Truman is also flexible with time, including observations of the past and present; he also implies his concern for the future, in his satisfaction with the new roads and hospital. Truman describes some tension by including positive and negative observations and events. He also uses ironic, direct, and colorful names for people (“sweet associate”; “crooks”; and “saloonkeeper and murderer”); he uses fragments or incomplete sentences, contractions, lists, and the first-person pronoun “I” and second–person pronoun “you” for addressing the reader. All of these are common characteristics of expressive language and writing about trauma.
As far as I know, Truman never explained how or why he engaged in such writing. His label of “Longhand Spasms” suggests a certain dismissal of such writing. On the other hand, he must have believed in its value because he practiced it throughout his life. Historian David McCullough’s (1993, 499–500) description of one instance leaves little doubt about Truman’s purpose:
Truman had had all he could take. Alone at his desk upstairs at the White House, on a small, cheap ruled tablet of the kind schoolchildren use, he began to write. It was the draft of a speech, a speech that he had no intention of giving, but that he needed to get off his chest.
I don’t know if anyone ever praised Truman for his literate and insightful habit of writing through trauma, but I do. I’ll just chalk it up as another quality for which this modest man never received credit. The major difference between today and the times of Jefferson, Lincoln, and even Truman is that writing is no longer the province of the elite or educated few. Composing about trauma is now simply more available to everyone, including Claire, whom you met at the opening of this chapter.
Our Storied Present
Throughout that semester, Claire had insisted that she had no real traumas to explore in writing, until a couple of months after the course ended, when she sent me a thirty-six-page paper describing and analyzing her repeated sexual abuse inflicted by her older brother, whom she revered:
I adored Kent growing up. I wanted to be just like him. I didn’t want him to join a gang or get arrested. I simply admired his independence and toughness. I felt safe when he was around. (Course Document 2003)
The following excerpt recounts the first episode when Claire was about seven years old. She and her sisters were “playing house” with Kent. With Claire’s younger sisters sent out of the living room by their make-believe father, they laid under a blanket stretched between the living room couch and a coffee table to form their bedroom. Claire describes how they talked to each other as pretend parents:
“So honey,” I began to say, “How was your day at work?”
“Fine,” he said with his back facing me, “I had a long day and I’m tired.”
“Okay honey, go to sleep,” I replied in a motherly way.
I turned on my side and pretended to go to sleep when I heard Kent moving around. I could tell at that point he was looking at me, and it felt like he was closer to me than before. I was always cautious when Kent was silent and near me. He was always trying to pull some kind of prank. I quickly turned toward him, to see what he was doing. He was laying on his side, raised on his left elbow, facing me.
“You didn’t give me a good night kiss,” he said playfully.
“Ugh,” I replied automatically, “That’s nasty.”
“Well, that’s what mamas and daddies do and you said you wanted to play house.” I stared at him suspiciously, but he had a point.
“Not a real kiss, just a little one. We’re just playing,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Okay,” I said cheerfully, “just a little one.” I kissed him on the cheek. It didn’t hurt and it didn’t feel too weird. I had kissed Kent on the cheek before and plus I had kissed DeShawn Perry last year in 1st grade under the jungle gym. At that moment, Darla started complaining about Trish messing with her in the other room. Without thinking, I jumped up and reprimanded Trish. I walked slowly back to my pretend bedroom. I was hoping that Kent was asleep. He wasn’t. He was lying on his back with his head resting on the pillow and watching me as I crawled in. At that moment, I realized how small the room was. I didn’t say anything to Kent and laid down with my back facing him. He broke the silence.
“We didn’t finish,” he said quietly. He was practically whispering, “Mamas and daddies do other things.” I knew he was talking about sex. Mama had the birds and the bees talk with me seven months ago. I looked at him and then the light blue ceiling. It was semi-transparent so I could faintly see the white tile of our real house. I guess my silence signaled him to go ahead. He climbed on top of me. He started moving his body up and down, just like the people on TV before mama turns the channel. My clothes were on and so were his, but for the first time I realized he had a penis. I knew that boys had different genitalia from me, but I had never thought of that in terms of my brother. It seemed like forever he rocked on top of me. The weight of his body caused my chest to hurt and I wanted him to get off. I didn’t say anything. He rolled off of me and put my hand on his penis and held it steady. I held my breath; I was scared to breathe and more scared to move. He began to fondle me as I lay stiff. I kept looking at the ceiling.
Kent could tell I was nervous. He looked at me and said, “Remember we’re just playing.” I nodded but I knew we stopped playing. He didn’t sound like a daddy, I didn’t sound like a mama, but instead we reverted back to brother and sister.
I always hate myself when I think back on that day. I could have ended it all right there, but I didn’t. What makes me more ashamed is the reason why I didn’t stop it. While I was lying there, I knew what we were doing was wrong. I knew that I should have run out from under that blanket and called Mommy and Daddy, but I didn’t. I let Kent do that to me. For many years, I told people and myself that I was frozen with fear. This was the truth, but it wasn’t all of the truth. I was scared of what Kent would say or do to me if I left, but I was scared also because part of me enjoyed it. I remember now that I had a window of opportunity to get out of that situation. Darla and Trish started fighting again, and I went to pretend spank them, then I quickly returned to Kent, to finish our business. (Course Document 2003)
As Claire stated earlier, this was painful for her to write; it’s even painful to read. While there are far more differences than similarities among Jefferson, Lincoln, Truman, and Claire, they are similar in their risk-taking and courage in writing about these topics. It is not surprising that Jefferson, Lincoln, and Truman have long been cited in the top tier of America’s leaders. I suspect that Claire will be regarded as a top educator. Their writing quoted in this chapter shows fluency with language and vigorous thinking—two extremely important and entwined processes that I’ll take up next. Following this, I’ll briefly explore three additional pillars of writing about trauma: form and structure, other symbols, and other people.
Fluency and Thinking
About her writing of repeated molestations, Claire stated, “As I began writing, more and more incidents began to pop in my head.” This is the magic: Words trigger thoughts, and thoughts elicit words, and so, the cycle continues. The most basic reason, then, for Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s, Truman’s, and Claire’s using writing as a means of comprehending, organizing, and therefore, better controlling their traumas, is a simple one—they could write and write easily. They were used to it; they were comfortable with it; they trusted it.
They were confident that, through writing, they could impose some semblance of order on chaos. Composing through trauma works because writers can generate visible language, which in turn prompts thinking, which in turn leads to more and different writing, and the cycle of fluency continues. We often think of “fluency” as referring to how much language—spoken or written—we can produce. But, this is only half of the equation as generating language also means generating thought. The two cannot be separated, even though we have managed to do so, for a very long time. Consider the following writing, completed by a fifteen year-old boy.
I have a question for you dad is it wrong to love someone who you hate so much to want to die and hope to be released, and to be saved what would you say if I said I don’t think it would bother me to watch you die at my feet does that make me insane? Or am I just lost and confused about who I am supposed to be am I the monster the world outside of me and my beast portrays me to be do I kill to survive or take the cowards way and hide when the world looks at me what do they see a coward a hero or just a lost and abused soul so dead so dark my heart no longer beats with life as I sit there wishing that I could die I am so fucking weak inside of me I feel gone do I have this right to want to watch you bleed and fucking scream for turning me into a beast? I have a question for you before you leave when I was so messed up on my drugs that I was almost dead inside did it hurt you or did you just laugh at the thought I was hurting deep inside. (Anonymous, from state government youth services instructor, 2006)
Most readers will find much to criticize here. Sadly, the first criticism will likely be, “This kid can’t write! What lousy grammar!” While I love grammar as much as Professor Poindexter or Mrs. Grundy, it’s always the easiest response to glom on to, stopping us from seeing any larger qualities. When we neither know nor care about something, we look toward an authority—the rulebook. Another common response to this writing will likely be, “This spoiled, self-centered kid is not taking any responsibility for himself, blaming his father for everything!” This may be wholly or partly correct. I have no idea. The third common response is likely to be, “This is not real writing; it’s a rant, a mind-dump—just another piece of Dear Diary trash.”
Of these three common responses, the last one is closest to the truth. But, it’s misguided because there is nothing wrong with “rants,” “mind-dumps,” or even “Dear Diary Trash”—if you believe that fluency and self-disclosure promote thinking and health, as abundant research tells us (e.g., Pennebaker 2004; Singer and Singer 2008).
“Mind dumps” may not be pretty, but they start the generative sorting-out process, which leads to a less fragmented self. While we may not like what this young man says or how he says it, at least he’s fluent enough to begin the process of the writing-thinking cycle. Would his writing improve if he supplied and evaluated evidence? Definitely. Would his writing benefit if he revised, qualified, and elaborated his ideas? Absolutely. But if we don’t have language fluency first, then we’ll never get close to thinking and revising and reflecting—and a less fractured sense of self. How, then, are language and other symbol systems connected to thinking?
While I never separate these two crucial processes, they are commonly put into different boxes, often on different shelves. Among many others, Judy Willis, though, links writing with higher-process thinking:
Consider all of the important ways that writing supports the development of higher-process thinking: conceptual thinking; transfer of knowledge; judgment; critical analysis; induction; deduction; prior-knowledge evaluation (not just activation) for prediction; delay of immediate gratification for long-term goals; recognition of relationships for symbolic conceptualization; evaluation of emotions, including recognizing and analyzing response choices; and the ability to recognize and activate information stored in memory circuits throughout the brain’s cerebral cortex that are relevant to evaluating and responding to new information or for producing new creative insights—whether academic, artistic, physical, emotional, or social. (Willis 2011, 1)
The language most often used for critical thinking, as well as “healing”—what Willis describes as “evaluation of emotions, including recognizing and analyzing response choices”—is, you guessed it, expressive language, the very “Dear Diary Trash” we love to hate. In addition to those expressive elements that Truman demonstrated in the earlier passage, expressive language is also marked by condensing or packing a lot of meaning into a few words, which only the writer can completely unpack.
Another primary characteristic is asking yourself questions and trying to answer them, even providing several possible answers. Along with speculating and hypothesizing, other elements include expressions of doubt and qualification, litany or listing, and metaphor. In short, thinking on paper or screen. Expressive language is much like Lev Vygotsky’s (1986) concept of “inner speech,” one of the major ways in which we think (Britton et al. 1975). In the following excerpt from Claire’s paper, she wonders about her sensations when being raped. We can see the cogs and wheels in motion. We can hear her thinking on paper.
I’m trying to figure out why I got pleasure from that. It could be that I enjoyed the time with Kent. He hated me, Darla, and Trish so much when we were little. But, I adored him. I wanted to be just like him. I thought he was cool and that he knew everything. Maybe that’s why I did it. I don’t know.
I’m lying. I’m lying. I’m lying. I do know why I did it, but I’m scared of how people will judge me if I say it, write it, or even think it. Putting on this “I need his attention” act is just to cover up and suppress the truth. I’m embarrassed about how I really feel. But if you must know . . . I did it because I enjoyed that tingling feeling. You know? That tingling feeling? The kind they warn children about on “The More You Know” commercials? Well, those commercials implied that the tingling feeling was bad and that it would hurt you. It didn’t hurt me. . . .
I feel as if something is wrong with me. How could I allow a family member to turn on me? The thought of it sickens me to my stomach. I keep trying to tell myself that I’m not weird and that if anyone or anything touched a woman’s privates, she would get excited, right? My body was responding normally, right? For whatever reason, this explanation doesn’t settle with me. How could a little girl like being molested? I know what you’re thinking, “You were only seven. You didn’t know any better.” Well, that’s what I kept telling myself for years, but it’s not working anymore. I’m old enough to assess the situation. Do women like being raped? If they do, is it still rape? I finally realized that I was old enough to know it was wrong, and I was old enough to make a conscious decision to return to him. So, what do you think? Do I still deserve your sympathy . . . empathy . . . or whatever it is?
. . . .
When other people share their experiences, I keep my mouth shut. Generally, they feel that something was stolen from them. I can only empathize. I don’t feel that Kent took something from me. If anything, I gave it to him. I was a willing participant. Does this qualify me as a victim? (Course Documents 2003)
Such expressive language may not supply easy answers or resolutions to dilemmas (though it happens), as we want Claire to learn about the social and cultural forces that have conditioned women to submit quietly to men. Nonetheless, expressive language does lift burdens off of our shoulders, rendering problems visible, giving them shape and form, so that we can better see them and define them and analyze them in different ways. This unburdening, in turn, helps us distance ourselves, rhetorically and emotionally, from the trauma in question. In an opposite way, expressive language also functions as a more direct conduit to our feelings, emotions, and thinking. Demystifying problems makes them less scary. It is an act of unifying or “suturing” our splintered selves, so that we can become more whole (Anderson, Holt, and McGady 2000, 58–82).
When we somehow distrust our readers, we not only censor ourselves, but we also produce fewer words, in total, as well as fewer words per minute (e.g., Elbow 1998). This lack of fluency often means that we cut short the time and language we need to arrive at our intended meaning. That is, visible language generates more language and more thinking, in turn extending the thinking-writing cycle. We need to generate enough ideas in our writing to discover exactly what it is we want to say, what we most need to write. If we lack fluency, then we’re likely unable to generate enough detail to more fully comprehend it and to analyze it, or to revise it in productive and healing ways.
The reverse is also true: When we indeed trust our readers, we gain confidence in ourselves as writers, have reduced fears of evaluation, and hence increase our production rate. The writers in this study always trusted their readers (if they were even thinking of their readers), and therefore were highly fluent, providing extensive diaries, email messages, and website postings.
Being committed to the topic we’re writing about also affects our fluency and thinking. We have to be invested in our subjects, cognitively and emotionally. This occurs when we have complete freedom in our choice of topic, purpose, and audience, as did the writers explored in this book. Under these circumstances, we can become deeply absorbed in our activities, to the point of becoming unaware of the passage of time and of our immediate surroundings. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) calls these “flow experiences,” which become intrinsically rewarding for us—the best kind of motivation, which, in turn, promotes writing fluency and thinking.
Even the processes we engage in as writers influence our production rate and thinking. Research on composing processes reveals that writers constantly engage in mentally shuttling back and forth between larger “global” plans, such as audience appropriateness and organization—and smaller “local” concerns, such as word choice and syntax (Perl 1994; Flower and Hayes 1989).
When we compose for purposes of healing, we likewise grapple with words and ideas, tugging and pulling between many types of oppositions, including: (1) the whole idea, tone, or attitude we wish to convey versus the individual parts; (2) the past time period in which the traumatic experience occurred versus the current time period; (3) the need to focus on negative experiences versus the impulse not to sound completely negative; and (4) the experiences we wish to show in our writing (i.e., sensory images and details objectively conveyed) versus the meaning we want to tell or summarize, via using generalizations and adjectives. In such writing, we also engage in analysis (breaking wholes into parts) and synthesis (forming wholes from parts). These simultaneous mental actions create tension or “critical thinking,” as well as creative thinking (John-Steiner 1997; DeSalvo 1999).
Thinking, then, resides deep in the heart of composing through trauma. In the people you’ll meet in the chapters ahead, you’ll see them courageously engage in a host of specific thinking strategies, such as making decisions about identity, motivation, audience awareness, genre, rhetoric, and imagery. You’ll also see how these writers wrangle with how they are alike and how they differ from other people, as they try to fit themselves into their radically altered realities brought on by their trauma. You’ll see these writers grapple with all types of “oppositions” or tensions, as they try to gain some resolution on more level ground.
In doing all of these things, they tap into their inner stream of consciousness—witnessing it, focusing it, and suspending it. It’s important to clarify that this type of thinking is indeed “higher-order” thinking—maybe the highest of all types of thinking, because logical deduction and induction become merged with reason, emotion, and spirituality. In the combustible heat of writing through serious and immediate trauma, all of these big guns fire at the same time. Have no doubt: Expressive language, fluency, and thinking are the first pillars of composing through trauma. Of course, anything as complex and unwieldy as this needs other support beams, a few of which I’ll take up now.
Shape and Structure
Composing through trauma works because it’s flexible enough to thrive without structure, as well as to be shaped (later) into any genre. Shape and structure greatly help everyone: They contain meaning in recognizable vessels, helping readers to understand the whole message. Shape and structure also provide some familiarity, safety, and confidence for writers. Even though a piece may not be intended for anyone else to read, a defined shape can increase the writer’s feelings of wholeness wrought from fragmentation or chaos.
However, you can seldom begin with a form or a shape in mind when writing about trauma. Fluency must come first, or else you have nothing to mold into a shape or assemble into a structure. It really is as simple as that. If you begin with a structure or a form in mind, then everything you do is tailored to fit within your pre-fab mold. This approach will stunt or smother your ideas and thinking before they have a chance to grow and bloom. In many ways, then, the point of composing through trauma is to avoid structure and form, as long as possible, because structures tend to force us into tidy little boxes of closure—“the right answer” or “the point.” While forms can help readers understand our meaning, they do not necessarily help us discover our own meaning, unless, of course, we are satisfied with our discovered meaning and somehow want to mold it into a more definite shape.
It is also true that we often perceive a lack of organization (and thinking, purpose, and even sanity) unless a writing has a clear thesis at the beginning, followed by a few paragraphs of evidence and a conclusion paragraph. Discourse can be organized in many different ways, and just because a message does not conform to this particular, deductive sequence doesn’t mean it was composed by a willy-nilly writer. It only means the reader was trained to see one pattern in a world of infinite design possibilities. Consider the following piece by Jake.
I will tell you about the fear, and what I did about it.
In my dream, there is an owl flying around the restaurant, circling above our heads, or maybe just mine. I can’t tell if I’m alone or not. When I say to the owl, “Get out,” a voice dripping with sarcasm and hate repeats my words from off screen. Suddenly I know, in that instant and positive way that knowledge arrives in dreams, that it’s the devil and he’s in the bathroom. Then there is a couple, standing, arms linked, younger than I am. Their faces are familiar. “How do I know you?” I ask them. The girl answers me, and though she is directly in front of me, her words are miles, even dimensions, away. It sounds like she says, “We told you this would happen,” and the boy gives her a warning look, like I’m not supposed to know. “Know what?” I ask. Another instant flash of dream knowledge arrives—I have, in fact, seen them before, and they are both dead. This startles me into consciousness.
I hear myself breathing, gasping, gulping. I try to open my eyes but I can’t. I try to turn over, but I feel heavy, or that I am held down. I try to move an arm, a foot, a finger, an eyelid, anything. It’s all shut down. I’m still struggling for air. I become somewhat detached from my panic and think, “What the hell is happening?” Then I’m back to panicking again. Alarms are going off in my head. Panic. I should be able to move. PANIC! I don’t know how long it lasts—twenty seconds? Three minutes? Half an hour? I summon up all the strength I imagine that I’ve got and prepare to rock myself into movement. Have you ever had a door shut on you, and when you try to open it, realize that someone is holding it closed? So you get a running start to blast the door open, but the person holding it has let go, anticipating what you are about to do, and you almost kill yourself trying to get out? I nearly fall out of the bed trying to turn over, but I am mobile.
A mixture of fear and confusion swirls in my chest as I turn on my lamp and grope for my glasses. Where is it? My nightstand is a clutter of magazines and notebooks, scrap paper and empty glasses. Fumbling, sweeping, my hands are bricks. One thought repeats itself, “I know it’s here, I know it’s here,” trying to keep obvious questions from forming. I know it’s here, but it is buried beneath more and more temporal matter. There. I locate that familiar reptilian red skin on the bottom shelf, gathering dust. I seize it, the Holy Bible. It falls open wherever it will, and I tear into it like a sinner on fire. Looking for some kind of soothing communication from the Almighty, I flutter the fragile, onion skin pages until I come across Isaiah 54:6, which reads, “‘For a brief moment, I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,’ says the LORD your redeemer.” A modicum of comfort drips into my shaking skin, an IV divine. Maybe there is meaning behind this. Is this event some kind of wake-up call from God? Has my recent behavior disturbed Him? Do I need to get myself right?
When this happened I was 17, and I assumed that I had had a physical visitation from some being, benign or malign, I wasn’t sure which. This was the beginning of a sometimes terrifying, sometimes amusing, always educational journey in which I learned much about “cloth-like dolls,” night terrors, the grays, fugue states & waking dreams, God, the Devil, and me. (Course Document 2003)
Most of us would say that this piece has no discernible shape or structure. We’re not sure what the point is. Is it about Jake’s fear of dreams? His regret and/or return to formal religion or belief in God? His fear of a “visit” from aliens? (“Grays” are described on the Internet as aliens responsible for abductions of humans and cattle slaughters. Of course, the Grays are also described as a short-lived rock band and a professional, independent baseball team.) The point here is that this piece has no point. It doesn’t need to, because it’s exploratory. If Jake had begun with a clear point or thesis, then we would know that he had already made up his mind; that he had already discovered his “truth,” and he only wanted to communicate it to us. But, if you don’t understand your trauma, if you can’t make any sense out of it, then you have to “write your way there.” Exploration, then, is the first rule of writing through trauma.
Nonetheless, there is form in Jake’s piece. First, it’s a narrative; it tells a story. Stories are an ancient, durable form of entertainment; they transcend all barriers of race, class, gender, environment, and age. Narratives occur within a time frame, often chronologically. They usually serve a purpose, come from a specific point of view, and contain selected information, while leaving other information out. Narrative is fundamental to composing through trauma because it relies on specific events represented in imagery created with words, as well as actual images, such as photos, paintings, or videos (explored in the following section). Guy Allen (2000) summarizes why narratives are key to composing through trauma:
Stories, Buford writes, “protect us from chaos, and maybe that’s what we, unblinkered at the end of the twentieth century, find ourselves craving.” Buford goes on: “Implicit in the extraordinary revival of storytelling is the possibility that we need stories—that they are a fundamental unit of knowledge, the foundation of memory, essential to the way we make sense of our lives. . . . We have returned to narratives—in many fields of knowledge—because it is impossible to live without them” (279).
Rebecca Dierking puts it this way:
Siegel (2007, 308), looking at narrative from a neurological standpoint, found that narrative is not just a story, not just a distilled memory, but “a deep, bodily and emotional process of sorting through the muck in which we’ve been stuck” (2012, 50).
As crucial as narratives are for sorting through trauma, they can also help us to spin our wheels in the same old sludge. The savior, chronology, is also the culprit here. We think and live according to the iron clockworks of sequence. Chronological order forms deep lines in our psyches, and breaking this pattern can be hard. Chronology can meld us to the same ways of thinking about a trauma. Because traumatic memories are so strong and so rooted in time sequence, creating a narrative in a non-chronological order can help extract us from this rut. For this reason, much of the writing in my course does not depend on time. I suggest that students use flashback and flash-forward—and never begin at the beginning. Of course, within these blocks of discourse, narrative still prevails, but the primary chain is broken and new perspectives of making meaning often arise.
Another form or structure Jake uses is less visible to most readers, but is very common to writing about trauma. Different researchers (e.g., Wilma Bucci 2002 and Louise DeSalvo 1999) have identified this rough pattern in writing about trauma: (1) sensory detail; (2) linking these details to the event, which provoked these details; (3) blending these details and events into a narrative; and (4) analyzing and/or reflecting on the details and events. Writers do not set out to follow this form; it’s just that this rough shape is commonly found in such writing, after the fact.
Jake’s piece begins with a few intriguing sensory details: an owl circles above his head; an unknown voice sarcastically mimics him; he speaks with a young couple whom he recalls is dead. From there, he moves to the event itself—his struggle to wake up and orient himself, find his glasses, fumble through the pages of a Bible, and read a passage. He briefly analyzes why he is writing; it gives him a “modicum of comfort.” He continues to reflect briefly in the final paragraph. Like any writing process or product, there’s often a lot of recycling of elements. For instance, sensory detail often occurs throughout the piece, as it does in Jake’s writing. In all, form and structure reside in Jake’s piece, but it flies under the radar, so that it cannot stunt or hijack his ideas, distracting him from his search to identify and understand his trauma. At many stages of composing through trauma, we don’t need any kind of form or structure or recipe to follow—just a willingness to get it out, to create.
Forms and structures can be helpful but are not needed as we work to demystify a trauma. However, once we have generated an abundance of material that we have thoroughly developed, probed, questioned, offered possible answers to, analyzed relevant secondary sources and integrated them into our own thinking, casted them into different genres, and all other ways of perceiving them from multiple perspectives, then a structure can further help us gain distance and perspective on our issues.
Chih-Ning Chang is an intelligent, hard-working language expert who chose a demanding form to express her trauma, after she had thoroughly processed it in many different ways. Following is her poem, which she later converts to a video:
I am defeated
And I refuse to believe that
I can make a difference
I know it is hard but
“Dreams come true”
Is a joke and
“Nobody can change the fate”
So I told people
I don’t trust myself
My life is broken because
The monster
Is more powerful than
My strength
The monster stole my identity and hope
I would be lying to you if I said
I will have a great future ahead
Before everything I must know
Failures are inevitable
Why is it?
Shame and insecurity are so ingrained in me
I don’t think
My life will be filled with joy and the sense of great achievement
My self
Is controlled by
The fear
There is no way to turn things around
It is foolish to presume
I will succeed
If only I could reverse the perception, my life would be different.
(Course Document 2008)
Chih-Ning, whose second language is English, wrote this poem in response to the “Monster and Angel” prompt, in which writers wrote a poem or a letter to their monster or trauma and then literally deconstructed the monster and re-assembled it into an angel. Chih-Ning chose to do this as a palindrome, which makes sense read from top to bottom, as well as from bottom to top. In her video, the poem appears in white font on a black background as she reads it aloud to soft, tinkling piano music. The monster version reads from top to bottom, scrolling downward, to emphasize the trauma. The poem’s final line signals the opposite meaning: that the positive quality of the angel, is about to begin. Next, the same poem appears on a pink background, illustrated with a flower, as Chih-Ning reads it from bottom to top, the upward movement serving the positive message.
The palindrome is a demanding master. Chih-Ning was able to recast her trauma into this stringent form for a few different reasons. First, because she had completed and revised several projects focused on her trauma, she felt grounded and confident enough for this new challenge. She knew her message inside and out and was prepared to compose it in a different way, for a wider audience. Second, like other international students who had been educated in school systems that rarely or never allowed students to experiment or “play,” Chih-Ning vigorously seized the chance to do so as a graduate student. She had just encountered the palindrome form on a YouTube video and had to try it out for herself.
In this context, the “tight” structure of the palindrome was perfect. It extended or further distanced Chih-Ning from her original trauma, which consisted of arriving in America from her native Taiwan without a means of financial support and experiencing severe culture shock throughout her first year in her new home. Like many forms, her palindrome demanded a lot of control—over the structure of the content, and, I believe, over the original trauma itself. In this case, her verbal and visual palindrome became a kind of artifact that she could now place on a shelf and reflect upon from a greater distance than ever before—a kind of end-point in her composing and healing processes about this episode in her life.
Much more can be said about the roles of shape and structure in composing through trauma. Here I’ve only sketched the two extremes—loose form and tight form. But lots of useful techniques reside somewhere in the middle. I’ll only note one of them now: subheadings. In the throes of “getting it out,” most writers don’t consider the simple use of subheads, and well they should not. But they are a wonderful first step toward coherence when writers think about them on their first re-reading of what they wrote. They only have to look for “chunks” and add a subhead where they see them. Adding subheads benefits the writer as much as the reader. In a few words or phrases, the writer can see and grasp the whole complicated discourse she has just poured out. This can help unify or synthesize the writer’s message to himself, thus motivating him to go one-step further and then maybe another step, until, like Chih-Ning (and Jefferson and Lincoln), they approximate the greatest distance from their original trauma.
Other Symbols
Composing through trauma also works because it can be communicated to ourselves and others through any medium, not just words, creating a broad spectrum of meanings to a wide range of readers. In addition to written language, Chih-Ning used other symbol systems in her composing through media—video, music, and actual images. I’ve long encouraged the use of visuals in tandem with writing about trauma. Like Chih-Ning, writers also sometimes choose to integrate videos, music, song lyrics, and even advertisements into their pieces. In Chapter 4, you’ll meet several people who effectively integrate visuals that they create themselves or find on the Internet, often manipulating these images in some way, to address their own purposes.
For many years, I’ve fiercely believed in any form of imagery. I continue to believe that any imagery represents the most basic building block of thinking and communicating—the DNA of language, media, and mind (Fox 1994; Fleckenstein, 2003). Traumatic memories are mainly stored as images (e.g., Sheikh, 2003), so when we write, we connect them to the events, people, and places which generated them, ushering them into the light of day, the first step in demystifying the trauma. When you think of imagery within these contexts, its influence is equal to or greater than that of the word.
Semiotics is the study of meanings in signs and symbols, especially in language and images. Although it’s poorly understood by most of us, it’s the wellspring of using words and images to write about trauma. Semiotics extends from the ancient Greeks, to John Poinsot’s A Treatise on Signs in 1632, to Umberto Eco (1978). From Leonardo Da Vinci, to William James, to the Gestalt psychologists, we have learned much about images and visual thinking. Cognitive psychologists also focus on the significant role played by mental imagery in thinking: Stephen Kosslyn, William Thompson, and Giorgio Ganis (2006); Ulric Neisser (1976); and Gavriel Salomon (1994) share Allan Paivio’s (2001) conclusion that perception and imagery are at least as fundamental as language when it comes to how we think. In short, words trigger other words, as well as images—and images elicit other images, as well as words. Suzanne Stokes’s (2001) meta-analysis concludes that, “using visuals in teaching results in a greater degree of learning.” Vera John-Steiner’s (1997) case studies of the thinking and creative processes of professional scientists, artists, musicians, writers, and others, documents the rich interplay of visual and verbal thinking in these accomplished professionals. Visual thinking also helps people who are learning English as their second language (Kim 2010, Fox and Kim 2011). Platforms such as Second Life have been vigorously adopted by education, business, libraries, museums, and other professional organizations. (See, for example, the “Virtual Worlds Group” of EDUCAUSE at www.educause.edu).
Other research has explored how imagery directly affects physical and psychological issues. Anees Sheikh and others review imagery’s effects on blood pressure, blood flow, sexual response, body chemistry, ocular changes, electro dermal activity, electromyography (EMGs), and the immune system (Sheikh, Kunzendorf, and Sheikh 2003, 342). Other topics include imagery and cancer, smoking cessation and weight management, cerebral laterality, music, and pain management. It’s long past time to recognize these basic research findings that clearly point to imagery as central to thinking. As Rudolf Arnheim summarizes, “We think by means of the things to which language refers—referents that in themselves are not verbal but perceptual” (Arnheim 1986, 207).
Even more relevant here, trauma, language, imagery, and memory may be connected: These have to do with the notion that trauma produces a mental picture that is stored but not accessible to the cerebral cortex. In 2000, Marian MacCurdy examined how traumas are sensory, and that the body reacts to them whether or not the conscious mind can apprehend this information.
Traumatic memories become locked in a part of the brain that is preverbal and are often accessed unexpectedly. These images pop up sometimes unbidden when we smell hear, see, or touch something that takes us back to the time the traumatic event occurred. It is these images that must be accessed if a story about the trauma is to be told. (Singer & Singer 2008)
Images communicate more directly and quickly, helping writers to crystallize their meanings. When writers use both images and language and then share their writing with a small group of supportive people, then fireworks are more likely to ignite.
Other People
Writing about trauma is one of the most private and singular activities imaginable. Such writers begin (and often remain) isolated. Eventually, though, most writers greatly benefit from involving other people. Because working through trauma by composing involves other people in so many ways, at some time, they have to become part of the equation. Because composing about trauma is undeniably personal and risky, we’re often not comfortable with “self-disclosure.” Nonetheless, the most human of all kinds of communication demands other humans. A small, prepared response group anchors our writing about trauma, demonstrating for us that we are not alone, that whatever worries or misgivings or confusions beset us can be understood by others—others who can help in abundantly different ways. This is the core principle of small response groups: the individual internalizes the behaviors of group members, thereby widening her repertoire of how to write, how to think, how to behave.
Getting started is simple: gather a handful of like-minded spirits who can meet on a regular basis to share their pieces—their ideas, plans, drafts, revisions, images, and even responses to common readings. Each group figures out what’s needed to communicate effectively. It takes time for people to build rapport and trust each other, so they should begin with non-threatening tasks, such as sharing why they’re interested in composing and trauma, what led them here, or discussing influential and relevant readings.
There are no rules for the register or level of formality in which anyone can speak; the only rule is that writers somehow communicate with their group members by responding as a human being, not as a grammar cop. About the worst feedback they can give to someone who’s just written about her terminal disease is, “In line two of paragraph one, you need a comma after that subordinate clause.” Far down the line, the writer may choose to revise for a wider audience and a specific purpose, such as publication. If and when that time comes, then that comma comment may be appropriate. But even before looking at grammar and mechanics, other useful responses include some basic principles of general semantics: Are some words too general and vague? Does the writer present ideas only in black and white terms, leaving out any middle ground? Does the writer make blanket judgments instead of qualifying what she says? What is the ratio of words with positive meanings and connotations to those that are negative? Most of the time, though, we have to respond with empathy, as one human to another. Nothing less.
In small groups, everyone has to be prepared to accept anything. What is offered to our peers depends upon us, upon how much we want to disclose at any given time. It’s natural to disclose more detail as our level of trust grows. Initially, some group members may fear that such writing will re-open old wounds, as they interrogate and excavate an unspeakable moment. This discomfort is not unusual. However, I’ve learned from others and my own experience that such discomfort is short-lived. In the long run, most people find that it was worth it.
Another concern that can surface early on (or fester, if unspoken) is our awareness that popular culture is drenched in confessional dramas, from the television program, “Cheaters,” in which wayward spouses confront each other, to YouTube confessions, to the politician or evangelist “coming clean” for past transgressions. This backdrop of popular culture can trivialize the serious efforts of sincere people trying to help themselves by composing about trauma. This is a hard obstacle to deal with, but it’s worth putting on the table for groups to explore and discard. We need to keep in mind that there are clear differences between public confessions for ratings, profit, and instant fame, on the one hand, and for personal, contextualized disclosure for personal growth, on the other hand.
Not just popular culture can influence our composing about trauma. Larger cultural forces, of course, can play a role, too. These are issues that can definitely help writers see that “they are not alone,” that such forces exert a kind of gravitational pull on all of us. I firmly believe that learning about such forces—biological, environmental, and cultural—should be integrated into our composing about trauma, but not until the trauma’s specific events, places, people, and feelings have been well developed and processed. At this point, it’s time to “enlarge the context” by researching relevant facts and issues, and then integrating them into our narratives.
One writer, for example, wrote about her adoption when she was an infant. After she’d thoroughly explored this issue, I suggested that she investigate the entire adoption issue for the population in the state and region where she was adopted, as well as the same timeframe as her own placement: What were the requirements for adoption, on both sides? What were the most common reasons, circa the late 1950’s, for babies to be put up for adoption? What was the social and economic context during this period of her new family? This look into outside sources positioned the writer in a place and time, clarifying and broadening her issues. Mainly, this enlarged context weakened or diluted her anxieties.
Another writer focused on the shame and ostracism suffered by his family when his younger brother was arrested for using marijuana. They lived in a small, conservative town in the Midwest. This situation needed to be enlarged, so that the writer could understand that, in many other areas of the country, and with different groups of people, a pot-bust would not be considered a huge deal, for many reasons.
Claire, who, as a child, was repeatedly molested by her brother, gained a wider context and more understanding when her writing explored the possibility that her parents suspected what was going on, but did nothing to stop it. After all, she reasoned, they were a very successful and religious family, well respected within their urban community; their mother avoided conflicts and did not want to upset their family’s life; and Kent, her brother, had reason to feel that his father loved Claire and her two younger sisters more than him, as he did not receive a new bicycle when they did, even though he had long wanted one.
Claire also explored her trauma’s larger context when she described a midnight conversation with her sisters, Darla and Trish, which happened four years after Kent first raped her. The whole family had returned late from a Pentecostal church service in a neighboring state. Since it was summer, the girls were allowed to stay up even later, as their parents went to bed. They agreed to watch a television program featuring a real judge and courtroom—“reality TV.” In this program, a ten-year-old girl was suing her sixteen-year-old brother for rape. Claire sits in the dark, fearful of showing her tears of embarrassment.
I lay on my belly on the side of the brown and white flowered velvet armchair, hoping that it was too dark for Trish and Darla to see my depressed countenance. Neither of them knew what had happened between Kent and me. I had been keeping it a secret. I knew that Darla wouldn’t understand, and I thought that if I told Trish, out of concern, she would tell Mamma and Daddy. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk adding to the pile of dirty laundry our family had developed. Darla was sitting in the loveseat diagonally to my left, by herself, and Trish was seated on the couch in the back of the room. The dim light cast shadows on their faces. I watched them from the shadows of the armchair as they watched the program. It almost seemed as if they were in deep thought of their own. . . . I was actually trying to hold my breath to prevent the need to cry from setting in. A few tears came out, but I was too hidden for Darla and Trish to see.
The TV judge gently coaxes the young girl to admit that her brother had raped her, as Claire continues her narrative:
The atmosphere in the living room changed. Darla began coughing. I could tell she was faking. She couldn’t handle the intensity of the silence either. Trish was in the back of the room leaning on her left elbow and rubbing her temples. She always did this when she was nervous or about to cry. . . . The show went off and all of us were still attempting to mask our embarrassment. Finally, Trish broke the silence.
“Did Kent do anything to y’all?” she asked softly with a slight smile on her face.
She wasn’t smiling because she was amused, but because that was the only way she could hide her humiliation. We all smile when we get in trouble, from Daddy on down. She didn’t have to clarify. We all knew what she was talking about.
“Yeah,” I whispered. I knew Mamma and Daddy were asleep, but I still had to whisper. I was scared to hear myself admit to it aloud. I imagined sirens and bells going off soon as the words left my lips.
“Did he for real?” she asked, relieved to know that she wasn’t the only one.
“Uh-huh.”
“How many times?” she asked softly, now smiling with excitement.
I don’t know if my boldness to talk about this came from being so relieved that someone had been through the same thing, or that they were willing to talk about it first. Either way, it was easy to talk about it. “Four times,” I said, feeling embarrassed again when the words came out of my mouth. “How many times did it happen to you?” I asked Trish, as if I was trying to retaliate.
“I don’t know. A lot of times.” The room became silent again. I looked at Trish and she took a deep breath trying to hold it all back. “What about you, Darla?” she asked quietly. I forgot Darla was in the room. I was too wrapped in fear, excitement, and connecting with Trish that I failed to think about how this one, minute conversation would impact Darla. “Did Kent ever do anything to you?”
“Yeah,” she replied, shrugging her right shoulder as if she was guessing.
“How many times?” Trish asked.
“Once,” she replied. She put her head down and began to cry. I didn’t move to comfort her. I didn’t know how. It was too big for a hug and a pat on the back. Trish and I sat there and watched Darla cry. She was only nine.
Claire then explains how this molestation specifically influenced the lives of her younger sisters. While this conversation brought the three sisters closer together, I also have to believe that self-disclosure helped each of them begin to mend. As Claire stated in another message to me, casting the entire trauma into this powerful narrative helped her move forward in life. Claire also noted that she was seeing a counselor now and doing well. (At this writing, Kent was serving a prison term.)
In composing through trauma, making all types of connections is crucial for mending the rupture. Connecting from a micro-context to a larger one is often over-looked if writers get lost in the tangled details related to one specific trauma. Every exploration of trauma should look inward very deeply, as well as outward. Sharing trauma narratives with trusted individuals or in small groups is vital to making them work, to “bringing them home” to readers and writers. I would never think of not consulting a trusted friend and not using small response groups in my classes. At semester’s end, students unanimously cite the bonding and trust with group members as being nearly as helpful as their composing in word and image. Richard Miller (1994), Mary Louise Pratt (2002), and others call this a “contact zone,” which demands commitment and participation from everyone. As Pratt states, “no one is excluded, and no one is safe” (129).
Whether made up of students or homemakers, accountants or steelworkers, the give-and-take of response groups is crucial for understanding and learning. As Janet Lucas summarizes, “without contact—without disclosure—there is no contact zone, no point where cultures can meet, clash, converge, and understand” (Lucas 2007, 370). The operational word here must be “understand.” Composing through trauma and engaging in disclosure, to ourselves, and, whenever possible, to trusted others, remains the brightest jewel in the head of the venomous toad.
