Telling Herstories: The Broad View

Turning Points

Life is a series of decisions made at the crossroads of our journey. Every decision takes us down a different road where we experience the consequences--good and not-so-good ones--that result. In other words, life is not a straight line, from birth to death, but a roadmap full of twists and turns. Some roads are chosen for us by our parents or some other authority; others we choose for ourselves; still others may be roads we travel with our peers. Some roads are well marked; others are dark and secret. Some are experienced with family and friends,and some are explored alone.

So how does a person make sense of her life experiences so that she can begin to shape her stories? One the best ways, in my opinion, is to make a list of turning points. A turning point is that crossroad that marks a difference in your growth as a person--that time in your history where you changed in some significant way.

For example, the day you had your first period. Before that day you were a girl, maybe even a tomboy. But then your menes came, and your body changed. What prepared you for this day? Were you looking forward to becoming a young woman, or had your mother warned you of "The Curse," so that you were dreading this day? How did you feel... powerful? scared? confused? Did you talk about it with your friends? Maybe you were the first one or the last one in your group to go through this rite of passage. Explore your feelings as well as the facts that you remember about those early days.

Other turning points can include whatever is important to you: skipping school and getting caught; failing algebra (or making the top grade in the class); first paying job; death in the family; facing a bully... The turning points are yours to list.

But then examine them. Why do they stand out in your memory? Is there a pattern? Did facing adversity shape you into the strong woman you are today? Write about it.

Flooding the senses

There is nothing like a trip to Europe to flood the senses of a Texas small town woman. My trip to Italy, one week before the earthquake, was memorable indeed.

The Pope opened his window and blessed the crowd in 27 or so languages as my friends and I emerged from the Sisten Chapel. Turns out it was International Women's Day, and he was blessing us. Yes, I felt very special, even though I stood among tens of thousands of women. Crowded but civil under a clear Roman sky.

I won't recount my adventure here. This is a blog about lifewriting, not travelogue, but I will say this: The only way to truly understand the world is to see it. I studied world history, Roman mythology, the major religions, etc., but until I walked where Caesar walked, until I actually saw Michelangelo's's David, until I meandered through the Catacombs, knelt in the church St. Francis rebuilt, until I sat in a gondola as it slid through the narrow canals of Venice,until the aroma of garlic and oregano and basil teased my taste buds to attention, until the taste of Parmesan from Parma melted in my mouth, until my own eyes witnessed the exquisite architecture of antiquity... until those ten days in Italy, it was all second-hand information.

In the meanwhile, the journal I have is full of pictures, postcards, menus, and scribblings to bring up those memories that I believe are now a part of my DNA. Nothings beats first-hand experience, but the memory fades unless prompted, and my journal is the key to my memories of Italy, 2009.

Journaling to Italy

When you read this, I will be on a plane headed for Italy for a 10-day vacation. (To say I am wildly excited is an enormous understatement.)

My friend Karleen Koen sent me a journal for the trip. She wrote in the accompanying card, “It doesn’t matter what you put in here… just put something!” The thoughtful gift prompted me to think about the importance of keeping a journal while traveling. The journal enables me to revisit Italy after I return to Texas, and the descriptions of place will give me the seeds for developing memoir pieces, essays, poems, travel and culture writing, etc.

Because I’ve been to Rome before, I know how sensual the city is. I believe Florence, Assisi, Sienna and Venice will be equally so.

I have written the five senses inside my journal because I want to be aware of how I taste, see, touch, hear and smell my surroundings as I move through this country and experience its culture.
Through my senses I will experience a heightened awareness of my journey. I will be more fully present in the “now.”

I should focus on the experience rather than the documenting.  I don’t need to record much—I can record snippets, employing the economy of words that a poet or a Zen master wannabe would use, so that “shimmering images” ignite with the flash of memory.

Karleen is right; it doesn’t matter what I write as long as I keep some kind of record to elbow my ability to recollect (as in re-collect) the memories of my trip.

Au revoir.

Reliving the past with forgiving eyes

I found a journal yesterday that I had kept during the courtship with my now ex-husband. I sat in the garage and read it all the way through. I can barely believe it's been thirty-three years since I penned those pages. I thought I'd burned the journal. I'm glad I didn't. The thing is, thirty-two years is an awfully long time, time enough to see the past with more forgiving eyes.

I've had countless conversations with women about our private journals. Should we keep them under lock and key? What will our children think when they find them after we're gone? One friend said, "You aren't the same person you were in 1977, and your son know that because he knows how he's changed and grown through the years. Don't cut him short. Besides, he'd read your journals after you die only if he wanted to know you better and to understand your interior life. It could be one of the greatest gifts you leave him."

Finding my lost journal and reading it gave me an opportunity to see myself--really see myself and have empathy for that 31-year-old single mom who was so dazzled by a second chance at love. I kept waiting for shards of pain to cut through to a deep yearning for "what might have been," but instead I felt a peaceful healing. 

This experience reminded me how important it is to be authentic in my journal writing because as I dipped into the passages again I could see how much I have learned. It was as if I were reading about someone else. Which is true, for I have grown into a different person shaped by my experiences.

'Quick writes' can jump start stories

A quick write is a timed writing on a topic. Usually you write for 7 or 11 minutes.

The reason for such a short time is that by writing quickly, you shut out the internal critic. (You know who I'm talking about--that voice inside your head that criticizes everything, especially the creative process, especially YOUR creative process.)

When you're up against the clock, you have to write fast--almost without thinking (thus silencing that internal critic). What you get out on paper is fodder to cultivate into a fully developed written piece.  Sometimes what you write surprises you, and you have to take time to reflect and ruminate why these particular thoughts or attitudes bubbled up from your unconscience.

For example, you may be writing furiously about the first time you voted and suddenly you feel tears tightening the back of your throat and you look down and see that you have written...

I voted but I didn't think my vote mattered. Daddy always told Mama how to vote and he tried to tell me, saying that women didn't have enough sense to decide who could be president. But when I got inside the voter booth and no one was watching, I voted for Kennedy instead Nixon, and I never, never, ever told anyone. Before now. Today I voted for Barak Obama, and again I am afraid to tell anyone. Why? Why is it so hard for me to speak up who I vote for, to say my vote matters, that I matter?~Anonymous participant in college writing class, Nov. 4, 2008

Now that, my friend, is worthy of reflection.

Writing prompt: Write about a time you felt invisible. You have 7 minutes. Go.

Connections

Back in the late 1940s I remember, countless times, hanging over the front seat of the family car, as my father drove through the summer night (no air conditioning in those days), and beseeching my mother, "Tell me a story about when you were a little girl."

And she would.

Perhaps it was about her adventures growing up on a farm, or maybe it was the story about getting her tonsils removed but not getting a new tricycle as older brother Jack had, or it could be the story about traveling in the family car on the way to a vacation spot, just as we were doing, but on dirt roads instead of paved ones. There were many, but these were my favorites.

I think what I loved most about those stories was knowing that my mother had been as little as me, and that the things she experienced were things I was sure I would experience, too, because the way she described her feelings were almost exactly how I felt as I listened to her stories. 

When I began facilitating my OWL-circle about 55 years later, there were several women who were sure no one in their family would be interested in hearing stories from their lives. They soon found out differently! In fact, one woman now serves as "Grandma" to her granddaughter's Girl Scout troop. (Her duty is to bring her notebook of life stories to overnight camp-outs and read to the girls before lights out.)

Many of us think we have led fairly average lives, which we think are uninteresting to others. But the truth is actually the opposite. Our average lives represent the times in which we have lived, and there is a connectedness that comes from those experiences that is unbreakable.

Consider the changes in the common day-to-day experience that have occurred in your lifetime. Take the telephone, for example. When I was a girl, we (like so many families) had one black telephone that was attached to the wall in the hall and we shared the line--called a party line--with other users.

Oh how I remember as a small child listening in to those conversations. "I can still hear a voice saying, "Martha, I think someone else is on the phone. Hello?? Is someone there? Get off the phone, do you hear? This is a private conversation." Of course I didn't--I was fascinated by the secrets they were sharing--so I stayed mouse quiet until the gossipers continued.

Right now, if you are one of those who remember those times, you are experiencing that feeling of connectedness. Or, if you're younger and have no shared recollection, you may be thinking how strange that time must have been compared to your experience with a pink Princess Slimline phone and private line in your bedroom. Or more recently, but soon to be outdated, a wallet sized cellular phone with unlimited txtmgs. 

The point is, sharing our life stories is one of the ways we share our traditions and rites of passage.

Writing prompt: How old were you when you got your first telephone? How did the telephone impact your life?