Note: I wrote this piece a few years ago after attending a writing workshop. Because I didn’t want to impugn anyone, I never finished it. Maybe it’s safe to bring it out into the light now.
“Writing is easy; you just open a vein and bleed.” …Red Smith
The instructor came with a good curriculum vitae – a New York editor, a writer for NPR, and her very own writing retreat in New England, so I was in, ready to hone my skills at “Writing from the Heart”, just as the flyer advertised. Her gray curls, untouched by hair coloring or hair brush, sprouted in a messy-on-purpose snarl on her head. Her costume of a rumpled shirt and voluminous wrinkled skirt enhanced her creds – she sure looked like a writer.
Her opening spiel was warm, funny, and self-deprecating, putting our minds at ease, even as our butts perched on wood slatted folding chairs became numb. She talked about writing as a way to release our pain, to explore deeply into our gut to dredge out and reexamine our lifelong hurts that weighed us down and made us so miserable, so insecure, so broken.
Hmmmm, I wondered. Was I miserable, broken, shattered by what life had dealt me? I didn’t think so, but maybe, as she suggested, I needed to go deeper. Angst nibbled at me.
The first prompt began: “Dinner at our house” and she asked us to go back into our childhoods and relive our dinner tables.
So I did.
I saw my parents, my siblings, the Formica table and the vinyl-covered chairs, the beef stew on our plates. I didn’t see any pain — except for my mother expecting me to eat carrots; or cruelty – except my brother calling me a dummy; or any abusive subtext dished out with our mashed potatoes. At our table, it was just dinner.
We workshoppers were each required to read – no holding back. So we listened and clapped. Why on earth were we clapping? We heard about:
- A father belittling a mother
- A mother spurning a daughter
- Another father, absent
- Another mother hidden under layers of lies
Food was unwholesome, lives were destroyed, and these women here on the wooden chairs were tormented by their pasts. Except for me, apparently.
I read my piece, half-ashamed of the normalcy of my life, half-afraid that I would be accused of denying the damage my parents had inflicted upon me. Guilt for experiencing a mundane childhood poked at me. When the instructor pointed out that it sounded like I had a safe, mostly happy childhood, I felt relief wash over me. I had feared that she’d discovered pent-up rage that now unearthed would need shoveling out. Or that she’d demonize my parents; why, I couldn’t fathom.
The mood turned darker after lunch with the prompt; “The hardest thing…”
I wrote about my mother, who, as all mothers do, was nearing the end of her life. At ninety-one, she’d had a stroke, and seeing her face this was hard. But I learned, nowhere near hard enough compared to the others. An elderly mother? That was the best I could do? It was no match for the line-up we heard: ugly divorces, the deaths of children, brutal, abusive fathers, debilitating illnesses, cruel mothers, cheating spouses, suicidal tendencies, and even the euthanization of a cat was more heart-wrenching than my wimpy little sadness. Even if I had dredged up my paltry little Stage One breast cancer experience, it couldn’t hold a candle to this onslaught of agony. I felt inadequately inadequate, too complacent for this room of lost souls.
The writing advice the instructor doled out was solid – strong verbs, specific nouns, crisp dialog, images that showed, not told. But her pop psych, not so much. After each ten minute or so reading, our leader would lean forward and pronounce her evaluation… “sounds like bi-polar”…“your mother was a narcissist”… In one on-the-spot diagnosis, she suggested the root cause of one woman’s fibromyalgia. Really?
I felt like I was witnessing a modern-day version of the 50’s show Queen for a Day, where the host, a sympathetic guy named Jack Bailey, listened to contestants compete for the saddest tale. A husband in an iron lung could be topped by a blind, crippled toddler only to be one-upped by a car accident that left a breadwinner paralyzed or a tornado that destroyed a family’s home in a trailer park. The applause meter measured the audience’s sympathy and the most pathetic storyteller was crowned with a fuzzy crown, donned with a faux-ermine cape, and had a bouquet of red roses thrust in her hands. Perky models waved their arms ta-da style at the new washing machine or wheel chair or adjustable hospital bed that would ease the suffering.
At the workshop, no one got a new refrigerator for laying bare their souls. One woman’s pain was so visceral that I could hardly face her. I feared her brittle edges would shatter at any moment, and we would be sweeping up her shards with a broom. Maybe writing workshop wasn’t what she needed. Oh honey, I wanted to say, I am so sorry. Have you seen a doctor?
This writing workshop had more to do with therapy than it did with writing, and the other participants, hungry for relief from their traumas, shared willingly. My life’s experiences were all sugar and spice compared to theirs. For this, I was grateful. But, as shallow as this sounds, I could have used some advice on creating a punchy last line in my story.
Hello, Lamppost 