Tuesday, June 7, 2016

How I Miss the Writing

How I miss the writing. It's been over two years since I've written here. Nearly a year since I've written anything. How strange. I had every intention of reinventing this space (once again) into something meaningful, if only to me. My mother's death and my tribute to her marked, in a way, the beginning of an end. Reinvention silenced this space while I wandered away from writing altogether.

I sought out a writing life in 2005 because I had a story to tell. I went back to college with the intention of writing a book. A book of our life, my mother's and mine. Over time, during my writing classes, my truth evolved into a larger truth, and evolved, yet again, into fiction. Into other stories. Even though Mom's story has always been there I've never quite been able to write it. Words lie in wait, but I'm never able to string them together into anything more than sentimentality and passages with little stamina beyond a graceful, articulate moment. Mother's story has defined me as a person and as a writer. It has also stalled me and allowed me to doubt myself time and time again.

Now I've lost my mother, I've traveled to her homeland in Thailand, and I've birthed a daughter. I'm irrevocably altered. How crazy is the universe that I now find myself in life on the other end of what I thought defined me as a writer, being the daughter of my mother. I'm now the mother of a daughter and nothing quite looks the same. 

Words to the page is how I processed things until Mom's death. I tried to use writing in grief, but somehow, for some reason, the words ran out. So, I stepped away. Grieved outside the words. I think I grew. I hope I did. I needed something to happen to me. I think it has.

I'm feeling out the words now. Experience has changed me. I'm not even remotely the same writer I was before. The many stories I began before death and birth touched my life are stalled out because I have yet to find my way back to them. I'm redefining what Mom's story means to me--what my mother, my travels, motherhood, my daughter, and my writing mean to me. I hope exploring words reconnects me back with this act I love and realize I lost. How I miss the writing.



4 comments:

  1. The only thing that I could ever write during a period of grief was a mournful poem. Mind to hand to paper released some of the sorrow that abides in me. Your stories will change just as your perspective has. A door was shut, another opened, walk through it with happy anticipation for what waits on the other side. Embrace tomorrow and the changed you with gusto to share with the new generation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for that. I am trying to find my feet again.

      Delete
  2. Love this. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of this new place as you feel out its yet-undiscovered corners.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No promises it'll be much more than a snarky regurgitation of the random thoughts in my head, but we'll see how it goes.

      Delete