LifeStory Briefs

If yours is a story of pain and darkness, writing that story can be a part of the healing process. In a wonderful little book called Living to Tell the Tale, Jane Taylor McDonnell tells us that the “crisis memoir” can be an important form for writing through our pain. In Writing as a Way of Healing, Louise DeSalvo offers some important ways to use writing as a therapeutic tool.

But a good example can often help us more than a half-dozen books. If the story you have to tell might be called a “crisis memoir,” please turn to Nancy Rigg’s story on page 5 and read it now. When you’re finished, return to this page and we’ll talk some more.

“Go Back! This is Dangerous!”

Nancy’s brief memoir about her fiance’s death is a powerful and moving expression of her love, and her loss. It is powerful, in part, because Nancy tells her story with great economy and precision and yet with great richness of detail. Consider this:

I had never seen anything like the Los Angeles River after two weeks of drenching runoff . I later described it as a flash flood in a box. It was a churning, violent, mesmerizing mass of muddy water rampaging at about 35-45 miles per hour downstream.

“A flash flood in a box.” Exactly. And later on, in the paragraph that begins “When you see a child in peril…,” you will find dozens of details packed into a fast-moving narrative that captures the scene and captures the reader, too. The force of the water is “powerful beyond imagining,” and Nancy has told her story with the same kind of swiftness and power.

“Some kind of resolution….”

One of the things I like best about Nancy’s crisis memoir is the way in which she moves from loss and pain to resolution. In the paragraph that begins “People have often wondered…,” Nancy moves forward, out of the moment of gut-wrenching, life-changing disaster, and into the rest of her life. She writes about the recovery of Earl’s body. She also writes about allowing the “vexing ‘why’ questions to float in the realm of the unknown and unknowable.” By allowing herself to live with the ambiguity, she moves toward wholeness and health.

A Healing Story

If you have a painful story to tell, here are some things you might aim for as you write.

• Put down the experience as fully, completely, and honestly as you can, with as much detail as you can manage. Yes, all the detail—what happened, when, where, how, why, who— leaving nothing out. And then write it over again, adding the pieces you forgot the first time. And then again, and again. The more you tell, the more you will heal. Later you can work for economy. For now, write to tell the whole story.

• Tell how you felt, as well as what happened. Our responses are just as important as the events, perhaps even more. Have your feelings changed through time? Write about that, too. It’s all part of the story.

• Tell the good, too. In moments of pain, something positive occurs. The child that Earl died to save was rescued. Nancy and her father shared a precious moment of sorrow, Nancy made a promise to help prevent other similar deaths, to share her story as a “guide for all those others out there who have nothing to lend them comfort.” Telling the good helps to balance the pain.

• Tell what you’ve learned. Pain teaches. What did you gain from your loss? Your story isn’t complete until you’ve explored that part of it too. And as you do, you’ll discover that the healing you’ve been seeking has already begun.