Writing as Healing (Part 1)
Writing what you can't remember, healing shifts with aging parents, restorative imagery, and more
As I prepare to teach Somatic Writing as Healing, I’m rereading our textbook Writing as a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo. Like magic, healing happens in the body. That’s why Beth Brewer (LCSW, RYT) and I have designed the class around the 5 senses: touch, taste, hearing, smell, and sight. Each week we’ll explore writing that focuses on a different sense. Beth will also be keeping us grounded through meditations and leading us through somatic exercises.
The word “healing” is thrown around so much, I want to define it more succinctly. What is healing? How can writing be healing?
“What is healing but a shift in perspective?” Mark Doty
But how does shift happen? One specific way writers can make shift happen is by creating what DeSalvo calls “an image of restitution.” She explains how “the act of writing about something painful can help right a wrong that has been done to you.” In Julia Feraca’s poem about her authoritarian father, an image of his “frayed and tattered trousers” creates such an image. DeSalvo writes that the image “defrocked him…robbed him of his power.” It also allowed Feraca to look at her now elderly father with compassion. This in turn empowered her to have a better relationship with him. Shift happened.
I thought immediately of Sharon Olds’ poem about her parents in “I Go Back to May 1937.”
I Go Back to May 1937
By: Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.Sharon Olds “tells” the reader some necessary information in the title. This information grounds the reader so that the imagery of the poem can get wildly imaginative. It also raises questions such as “Why does the speaker want to go back to May 1937?” We’re intrigued and read on to find out.
With the “formal gates of their colleges,” Olds makes the setting clear. She balances ordinary, even “telling” or communicative speech with poetic language. The ordinary “ochre sandstone arch” becomes a portal to another world. In this world the “red tiles glinting like/ bent plates of blood over his head” signify that the father is in danger. The apocalyptic imagery creates a sense of impending doom. This moment of defamiliarization jolts the reader awake.
In this opening and throughout, Olds fulfills DeSalvo’s first quality of a healing narrative: “A healing narrative renders our experience concretely, authentically, explicitly, and with richness of detail.”
However, often trauma survivors can’t remember significant events in their life. If you can’t remember something, how can you write about it at all, never mind with “richness of detail”?
In this case, Olds harnesses the power of her imagination to create the scene. She has full poetic license to do so as she was not present; she has not even been born yet. It’s quite possible she used a photograph of her parents as inspiration. Photographs are great ways to begin to write about what you don’t remember, as long as you are in a safe space to do so, and have the right support.1
Olds employs what Mary Karr calls “sacred carnality” or in other words the “show, don’t tell” guideline of using the 5 senses in imagery. The specificity of “ochre sandstone arch” and “red tiles glinting like/bent plates of blood over his head” make us believe the scene is real. The realistic detail of “ochre sandstone” allows us to make the poetic leap to the more fantastical “red tiles glinting like/bent plates of blood over his head.”
Olds also fulfills another quality of a healing narrative: her narrative is balanced. As DeSalvo writes, “A healing narrative is a balanced narrative. It uses negative words to describe emotions and feelings in moderation, but it uses positive words, too.”
The word “light” has a positive connotation of ease when her mother holds “a few light books at her hip.” This contrasts with the heavy “wrought-iron gate.”
Olds deftly continues to balance “positive” and “negative” words, or light and heavy: “the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its/sword-tips aglow in the May air…” The word “open” has a sense of possibility. “Sword-tips aglow” is both menacing and beautiful. The weapons that can cut, wound, kill are also lit up, almost numinous. The word May has a positive connotation as it’s spring when the world is reborn.
The “sword-tips aglow” reminds me of the Swords suit in the Tarot. Olds uses her intellect to cut through the foggy aftermath of trauma. She is a Queen of Swords who will eventually resurrect her child self at the end and empower her in a restorative image.
Olds then launches into a lot of “telling,” but it works as she has balanced it with so much “showing” imagery earlier. In this section, she fulfills this aspect of a healing narrative: “A healing narrative reveals the insights we’ve achieved from our painful experiences.”
By looking closely at her parents as young people, Olds realizes they were just innocent kids who didn’t know what they were doing. This is a hard-won insight if one’s parents were abusive, neglectful, or otherwise harmed us when we were kids. It doesn’t excuse their behavior, but it does create a shift in our perception of it.
This shift perhaps began in the work Olds did in describing the scene and characters of her parents fully. But here she “tells” us her insights plainly:
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
The next line delivers on what could have been a Chekhov’s gun: why does the speaker want to go back to 1937?
I want to go up to them and say Stop, don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman, he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do
She wants to stop her parents from getting married and having kids. If she could prevent her own birth, she could prevent the pain that they inflicted on her later. Though on its face this desire sounds harmful, a speaker driven by any desire shows the life force. A passive speaker, whether in a poem or story, will fall flat with the reader. When a speaker is driven by desire, we feel the burning of that desire too.
Note that Olds does not demonize her parents. She has insight into their characters: “she’s the wrong woman/he’s the wrong man.” She chooses to see their mistakes as born out of a bad match. She also acknowledges not just the pain they inflicted but the pain they experienced as a result.
Even in the phrase “children,” Olds acknowledges that pain was also inflicted on not just herself but her sister. She doesn’t indulge in self-pity. This, again, is hard-won insight that leads to compassion for self and others.
To be clear, I’m not saying that you should force yourself to forgive anyone who has abused you, including your parents.
Especially in early drafts, unleash all of your feelings onto the page without censoring them. No toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing here in what DeSalvo calls the “generative” phase of writing. You can always go back and choose how you’d like to shape the work later. The “balance” DeSalvo refers to can be created without forgiveness or even empathy for people who have harmed you.2
What I am saying is that in this instance, it sounds like Olds made an empowered choice to forgive her parents.
How did she do this? She looked at their bodies in detail in one moment in time and felt compassion for the bodies, the fragile bodies we all live in. Notice how she does not recount her parents’ trauma here or her own with “richness of detail.” She chooses what to “show” and what to “tell.” In this poem, almost all the horror is in the image of the “wrought-iron gate” and “plates of blood.” By “telling” or summarizing the most traumatic parts of her story, she spares herself and her reader from being re-traumatized.3
The piece ends on a witchy note: the speaker decides she is the one who will enact her own conception through poppet-like dolls, and creates a restorative image:
...I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
This is a restorative image because Olds reclaims the power and chooses to live. Through the work of writing the poem, she has come to a life-affirming place without sliding into sentimentality or toxic positivity. The image is still one of violence but Olds — specifically her child self — is the one wielding the power. She reduces her parents to “paper dolls and banged them/at the hip.” The word “strikes” has a negative connotation of violence while the word “sparks” has a positive connotation of life.
Time in this poem is spiralic. The speaker sounds like an adult who time travels back to 1937, a time before she is born. Then she resurrects her child self who magically appears again before her own birth to invoke her own conception. You can jump timelines in a poem!
The last line is triumphant though embittered: “Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.” She’s come to a place of acceptance of the past because she has the power to tell her own story about it. And so do you, dear reader!
Does this mean Olds never again felt triggered by her parents? No, of course not. But judging from the full life she’s led and her many accomplishments, writing was and continues to be healing for her. My guess would be she developed healthy habits around her writing, ones that we could use as a model.
In her book, DeSalvo compares healthy habits of writers such as a work/life balance with unhealthy habits of writers who overworked themselves like Sylvia Plath. She stresses the importance of studying your literary models not just for their writing style but for how they lived their lives.
The vulnerability of the naked bodies on the cover of Olds’ book The Dead and the Living reminds me of The Star.
The Star signifies hope, faith, and healing. According to Mary K. Greer, The Star is the teacher card to Strength. During our 2024 Strength year, it will take courage and strength to continue or begin a healing journey. But you don’t have to do it alone.
Join Dr. Erica Anzalone (yours truly) and Beth Brewer (LCSW, RYT) in our upcoming Somatic Writing as Healing class. Save 25% with code HEAL25. Offer ends 2/29. Go to www.witchlit.us to reserve your spot today.
We’ll be discussing how to take care of yourself when writing. However, the class is not intended to be a substitute for therapy.
I’ll be looking at how Christine Hyung Oak-Lee creates balance with “positive” and “negative” words in her piece on SA called “Mint.” She does not forgive her rapist, but the narrative is still healing and balanced.
In other poems, Olds does write about both her own and her parents’ traumas in graphic detail. My point is — how much you “show” and how much you “tell” is up to you. Also, how you “show” is a choice. By using fantastical imagery, Olds conveys horror without having to relive the specific traumas.