Lovely, powerful piece of writing! Yes accessing traumatic memories for writing is tricky ground isn’t it? I remember being prompted to recall a simple, but haunting moment from childhood at a travel writing workshop I attended years ago. I was in the back of a taxi, my feet barely scraping the floor of the car, while my mother was on her way back from the hospital after a suicide attempt boasting that next time she’d have more luck. Recalling that so vividly in writing and being encouraged to do so probably wasn’t too good for my mental health at the time, but perhaps it was worth purging it like that in the long run?
Gosh, that is a very shocking and awful memory for you to have. We think we are ready and prepared for these things but they affect us in multiple ways. I am always of the belief it is better to face stuff because it has a way of coming after us in unhealthy ways if we don’t. But that’s not to say it’s easy. I do believe writing helps though. I hope you’re now putting those difficult parts of your past to use in your writing
Thanks! Yes I do hope to one day. Maybe on this very platform, and fairly soon actually. I tend to agree that writing helps in the end with every difficult aspect of life really. It's a big part of how I make sense of the world - and it gets all the thoughts out of my head too, at least for a little while!
Yes the absence was what kept coming back to me, and I love how those memories that persist are there to teach you something. This memory was perfect for what I wanted to explore. Although I didn’t really know it until I wrote it down
Ah Lily, a wonderful letter. What a terrible set of circumstances to have come into at that house. The thing is, when you talk about whether or not to press out the creases whilst you unwrap those memories - it just seems to me that you’re kind of left without a choice on the matter; don’t you think that if you don’t allow the memories to flow through, pain becomes attached to them? Not only pain, but some level of negativity or ‘badness’, like when a child is told, ‘don’t touch that.’ Well, you have to touch it, don’t you? You have to press your fingers over the creases and iron out the grooves every time. If you try and shelve it, a taboo automatically attaches itself in some way - however small it may be. So you let it come into your mind from the left, like a hot air balloon in the sky - let it drift to the middle and slope off naturally to the right. What we are as mortals are a collection of our memories and that’s how it should be. Perhaps Lily, you haven’t noticed it as something obviously but maybe your feeling is an element of guilt: That there you were - alive in that house, with your living family. But what preceded you was not the same. Such a huge loss. Perhaps a little bit of guilt was there? Who knows. Lovely to have read this.
Thank you for your kind words and close reading Sally. And I love your description of the balloon and to allow the process to be fluid, not hidden. Guilt is an emotion I have felt a lot of, being the one who instigated my separation from my husband, and so I am familiar with that. But it’s also a question of privacy. The family’s disaster was in place - a metaphor in fact - for my own splintered marriage, and the question I still deliberate over is what right do I have to expose the inner workings of this brokenness when those I love are at the centre of it. It’s that question that is at the nucleus of my and Anna’s letters. I’m going to try to get closer to answering it in my next letter on Wednesday. Thank you for reading
This resonates with me, as I too, write about grief & the breakdown of my marriage through the lens of the loss of my home. I tried to take as little as possible when I left, thinking if it "looked like" I hadn't left it wouldn't feel as bad. My children reminded me years later I had only made it worse by making it seem like nothing mattered to me. Everything mattered.
Thank you for sharing your story. You can read mine over at @suzannebgillette
My goodness. I feel like I'm being afforded glimpses of a life that carries its own traumas, just as the family in the photograph. This letter makes me want to write about something that I return to often thought it, too, happened to another family. Though it barely touched mine, I was forever changed by it. Remain cognisant of the ways it has influenced who I am as a mother and a wife. The need – at a particular time – to 'fold those memories away' for the sake of myself and my girls. But, maybe I'd like to write this time now, too. Five years have passed, nearly. Maybe that's enough time.
This is exactly the reason we started this series, because of how difficult it is to write about these very intimate things because of our children. But we're working through that on the page and Anna has some interesting things to say about it in her letter in reply, going out on Friday. It's such a tricky ethical and deeply personal question
Yep, I completely get it. The ethics of writing your own life when others who haven't asked for you to write about theirs is even more fraught when it's your children. Do you remember the old column in the Saturday Guardian Family supplement written by a mother / memoirist / novelist that eventually was pulled after her son started to struggle with addiction that she feared had been made worse by her writing?
Lovely, powerful piece of writing! Yes accessing traumatic memories for writing is tricky ground isn’t it? I remember being prompted to recall a simple, but haunting moment from childhood at a travel writing workshop I attended years ago. I was in the back of a taxi, my feet barely scraping the floor of the car, while my mother was on her way back from the hospital after a suicide attempt boasting that next time she’d have more luck. Recalling that so vividly in writing and being encouraged to do so probably wasn’t too good for my mental health at the time, but perhaps it was worth purging it like that in the long run?
Gosh, that is a very shocking and awful memory for you to have. We think we are ready and prepared for these things but they affect us in multiple ways. I am always of the belief it is better to face stuff because it has a way of coming after us in unhealthy ways if we don’t. But that’s not to say it’s easy. I do believe writing helps though. I hope you’re now putting those difficult parts of your past to use in your writing
Thanks! Yes I do hope to one day. Maybe on this very platform, and fairly soon actually. I tend to agree that writing helps in the end with every difficult aspect of life really. It's a big part of how I make sense of the world - and it gets all the thoughts out of my head too, at least for a little while!
Me to, and always has been. I look forward to reading your work.
I LOVE this Lily. Memoir through letters. Terribly sad and I understand the way you talk about absence inside a marriage x
It’s so beautifully written isn’t it... so much to think about. I shall reply!
Can’t wait for your reply, Anna!
Yes the absence was what kept coming back to me, and I love how those memories that persist are there to teach you something. This memory was perfect for what I wanted to explore. Although I didn’t really know it until I wrote it down
Ah Lily, a wonderful letter. What a terrible set of circumstances to have come into at that house. The thing is, when you talk about whether or not to press out the creases whilst you unwrap those memories - it just seems to me that you’re kind of left without a choice on the matter; don’t you think that if you don’t allow the memories to flow through, pain becomes attached to them? Not only pain, but some level of negativity or ‘badness’, like when a child is told, ‘don’t touch that.’ Well, you have to touch it, don’t you? You have to press your fingers over the creases and iron out the grooves every time. If you try and shelve it, a taboo automatically attaches itself in some way - however small it may be. So you let it come into your mind from the left, like a hot air balloon in the sky - let it drift to the middle and slope off naturally to the right. What we are as mortals are a collection of our memories and that’s how it should be. Perhaps Lily, you haven’t noticed it as something obviously but maybe your feeling is an element of guilt: That there you were - alive in that house, with your living family. But what preceded you was not the same. Such a huge loss. Perhaps a little bit of guilt was there? Who knows. Lovely to have read this.
Thank you for your kind words and close reading Sally. And I love your description of the balloon and to allow the process to be fluid, not hidden. Guilt is an emotion I have felt a lot of, being the one who instigated my separation from my husband, and so I am familiar with that. But it’s also a question of privacy. The family’s disaster was in place - a metaphor in fact - for my own splintered marriage, and the question I still deliberate over is what right do I have to expose the inner workings of this brokenness when those I love are at the centre of it. It’s that question that is at the nucleus of my and Anna’s letters. I’m going to try to get closer to answering it in my next letter on Wednesday. Thank you for reading
This resonates with me, as I too, write about grief & the breakdown of my marriage through the lens of the loss of my home. I tried to take as little as possible when I left, thinking if it "looked like" I hadn't left it wouldn't feel as bad. My children reminded me years later I had only made it worse by making it seem like nothing mattered to me. Everything mattered.
Thank you for sharing your story. You can read mine over at @suzannebgillette
It matters too much, I'd echo. And thank you for sharing that with me. So much grief. I will check out your publication.
My goodness. I feel like I'm being afforded glimpses of a life that carries its own traumas, just as the family in the photograph. This letter makes me want to write about something that I return to often thought it, too, happened to another family. Though it barely touched mine, I was forever changed by it. Remain cognisant of the ways it has influenced who I am as a mother and a wife. The need – at a particular time – to 'fold those memories away' for the sake of myself and my girls. But, maybe I'd like to write this time now, too. Five years have passed, nearly. Maybe that's enough time.
This is exactly the reason we started this series, because of how difficult it is to write about these very intimate things because of our children. But we're working through that on the page and Anna has some interesting things to say about it in her letter in reply, going out on Friday. It's such a tricky ethical and deeply personal question
Yep, I completely get it. The ethics of writing your own life when others who haven't asked for you to write about theirs is even more fraught when it's your children. Do you remember the old column in the Saturday Guardian Family supplement written by a mother / memoirist / novelist that eventually was pulled after her son started to struggle with addiction that she feared had been made worse by her writing?
Yes I think that was Julie Myerson who has just published a novel called Nonfiction about a mother with a daughter who has addiction problems 😳
That's exactly who it was. I had forgotten her name.
As Lily says, this is a big topic for us, as mothers, ethically, emotionally, legally (!)... you will hear more about exactly that on Friday.
Can't wait for that, Anna and Lily.
It has a good ring to it!