Showing our soft underbelly is scary but also freeing

Thank you for the love you sent my way in response to last week’s post.

When I put the story about my birthmark out into the world, I didn’t know how it would land. But your comments and messages confirm two things: My readers are observant and kind, and my writing can spark powerful connections when I risk vulnerability in telling a story whose time has come.

Writing about something a bit hard can open not only the writer but also the reader. That opening is the magic that happens when we tell our story with both truth and, dare I use this old fashioned word, honour. Tell the story as it is, don’t hedge your bets. In so doing, you honour yourself and, crucially, you honour your reader by trusting them with that truth. 

The poet David Whyte says, “vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature.” Marion Roach Smith, author, memoir coach and teacher, says vulnerability is “everything” in writing. I say, when we tell our story, especially the hard parts of that story, we are exposing our emotional underbelly to the world. Being so vulnerable is risky, but the reward can be huge: Being seen by readers who recognize the risk we’ve taken and who then match it with their own is the gift of this writing lark. 

Getting started can be challenging. First, who will care? Second, which story is worth the effort? Third, when is the right time to put the chosen story out there? Fourth, how to tell it? Here, I remember the advice of memoir writer Abigail Thomas: “For me connecting the dots is not as absorbing as the dots themselves. I’m more interested in why certain memories stand out. Why these and not others?” This is helpful, because we don’t need to have the whole story — beginning, middle and end — in mind when we set out; we just need the desire to tell the story. The rest will come, though only if we begin. Here, again, I take Thomas’s advice: “Just start.” 

For me, the possibility of last week’s post began with the photo in the paper, but it took hold of me only when my friend Carmen texted me, “Great photo of you in the paper today!” Her comment touched me, sparked my thinking, and motivated me to put words on the page. The final result pulled together many dots (memories) from over the years that, together, tell one of the stories I have been living all my life. 

This is what I understand about being alive: I live as best I can every day. I ponder what happens. I make sense of it, in part, by sharing stories that arise from my living. This story telling is, in part, how I shape the world in which I spend my days. This is not always easy or straightforward. The writer Joseph Campbell says, “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave, that was so dreaded, has become the centre.” 

Author John Irving invites us to be courageous: “If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital. If you don’t feel like you are writing somewhat over your head, why do it?”

I think that Campbell is encouraging us to explore our vulnerabilities and Irving is suggesting that what is most challenging can be the most rewarding. I agree. Putting my story out last week netted me insight from readers about their own bodies and many of you told me about your response to first meeting me in person, to noticing my birthmark then, and how now it is simply part of me. These are conversations I have never had before. I loved every one of them, and I wouldn’t have had any of them without my telling the story in last week’s post. 

This writing business? It’s magic, I tell you. 

Now. What precious story are you going to put out into the world today? 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo of kitten by Nadezhda Nikolaenko on Unsplash