I take a risk when I write, period. Risk that I might say something I can never take back. Risk I might say something that someone will recognize, like the time I wrote about going to the Taj Mahal with R. How we met in the lobby of our hotel before sunrise, and how I was embarrassed to be seen with him in his pleated gray slacks, thin leather belt, and striped Polo shirt. How I thought he looked like he was dressed for a morning of golf at the country club, not for a rickshaw ride at dawn.
I take a risk when I write about sex, when I talk about money or politics. Those are the big ones, questions of how much I make, what I’m worth, the way we calculate all that in dollars.
I take a risk when I say I never wanted to be poor. My parents were poor. Poor never leaves your bones. It resides in your DNA, stays with you the same way brown eyes and olive skin stay with you. Nothing you can help, checking the price of the bathroom rug, buying things only on sale and only at least 50% off.
I take a risk when I write about my body, the fact that yesterday I shaved my legs for the first time in months. I clogged the razor and exposed the bumps on my skin where I’d scratched until the pores rose like freckles on a strawberry.
I take a risk when I write about my skin, the living organism that covers more area than any other part of my body, write about its color (a sort of cappuccino), about its consistency (smooth, soft), its elasticity (firm but losing firmness, especially sagging breasts and sagging skin under my arms).
I take a risk when I say I’m growing old, I’m the age where I first had memories of Mom, strong memories, lucid and vivid, of her knees and calves, which are mine now.
Writing is a confession, a small booth that smells of musty wood and Old Spice. Father Cassidy, who smells of bourbon and ashes, who has sweet breath and sour, a big belly and gentleness.
I take a risk when I wonder aloud, did he ever molest anyone? I can’t help but ask myself that question every time I think of old priests from my youth. He used to pinch my cheeks, but I remember nothing more unsavory than his boozey breath.
I take a risk when I admit I never brought charges against the man who did molest me, even though I knew he probably dated women with young girls long after he divorced my sister. I should have protected them, should have taken more of a stand, although, yeah, I was protecting me.
Sometimes, and here’s the real risk, I think we all get what we get. The cards are dealt for a reason. I could have gotten an ace or a pair of queens, but instead I got a joker, a deuce, and that became who I became.
I’m not saying I deserved it, no more than any one deserves violence or abuse or cancer. But sometimes there’s nothing any one of us can do to change the course of life.
-related to post, WRITING TOPIC – TAKE A RISK
YB, I never like being the first to comment on a post, however this post was “Wow” wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! As you know, I plan on writing my memoir’s. Not to be published, but to share with a chosen few family member’s who will pass it on. I spoke to my Mother about this & she is against it. How disappointing that conversation was for me. My Dad would be all for it & I intend to talk to him also. Life was tough for my Mother. She grew up poor & I have an uncle that I do not love. He hurt our family many times & I will never forgive him. He deserted our family early in my life & much as I would like to forgive him, I cannot.
My Dad’s family was much more prosperous & although they both grew up up during “The Great Depression” (what was so great about that?), their lives were world’s apart.
I had a sheltered life, most likely a result of my parent’s lives.
My risks came after I moved out & was on my own. Some of which I am not proud of. I like to think of risk as a leap forward. The past cannot be changed. It is what it was…D
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Wow! What a great piece. I need to digest it some more before I comment again but I just needed to say – WOW!
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Great comments on this Writing Practice. ybonesy, I’m glad you went with it, and kept working through the resistance. It inspires me to do the same.
I read this last night and wanted to sit with it as well. It struck me at a deep level. I started thinking about the difference between writing risky practices from a genuine place (as this one feels) and how solid that can feel, and then some writing I read that is written for shock value (or just spews everything out). This one feels rooted. Right there. And somehow integrated with your experience of living through something and looking back. Thanks for taking the risk.
diddy, that’s really interesting about the differences between the reactions of your mother and father. It’s so good you are having those conversations with them. It opens doors, but sometimes not to good memories for some.
Yesterday I listened to more of the recordings I did last June in Georgia and South Carolina. There were some very tender and healing moments between me, Mom, and GL. It’s hard to go back and risk looking at what happened, talking about it, taking the chance of opening to hard feelings. But I would not trade those moments for the world.
As writers, I guess part of the risk is in asking the hard questions. Or even being willing to go there.
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Thanks, R3 and diddy.
A risk is a leap, diddy, taking a leap of faith. Thanks for your comment. Good point about the “Great” in Great Depression 8) .
It will be interesting to see how you involve your family or not in the writing of your memoirs.
The reaction of your mom reminds me of a childhood friend whose mother was extremely private. And proper. She always made her daughters send thank-you cards and the kinds of polite things we never did in my family. (Still, to this day, I don’t send thank-you cards — and I’m not proud of that — I’m just saying, those things get inculcated at a young age.)
Anyway, this family had huge secrets. The father had a whole other family. There had been violent sexual abuse that hadn’t been dealt with through therapy or anything. Holding all that in made my friend ill. She had a breakdown and then a string of lifelong illness.
I wonder if it’s sometimes easier to write about family after parents have died. I don’t know. I believe I’ve heard that before from writers who have written difficult memoirs.
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As writers, I guess part of the risk is in asking the hard questions. Or even being willing to go there.
So true, QM. There is a risk in lifting the veil of our lives, period. And it can be healing. It can also be traumatizing. Definitely a double-edged sword.
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YBonsey, I think it is easier to give space to deep thoughts about your parents once they are dead. While alive, that parent child relationship keeps you from expressing dissonant thoughts or being too independent in your reasoning. It wasn’t until both my parents were gone that I could finally examine the relationships and events of my past without feeling guilt or disloyalty or fear. The down side to this is that there is no opportunity to check my experience against their experience of the same events and reason out the truth. Yet, my experience is the one that holds the real weight. Very good post.
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I took a risk creating my piece, History Repeated, but it paid off.
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yb, yes, that reminds me that it took me half my life to feel strong enough inside to go back and take the risk. It took years. And even over the Writing Intensive last year, I still had big feelings of fear surfacing. I had to keep writing through all that. I never would have ventured into this territory at an earlier time in my life.
I have read of other writers, too, who will not write about their parents while they are still living. I just heard it on an Anne Lamott tape, that she doesn’t write about her mother.
For whatever reason, I am choosing a different route. I want to talk to family members, ask the hard questions while they are still living. But it means that I am exposed as well. All of this truly is a double-edged sword. Each writer needs to do what is right for them.
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Jackie, we must have been writing our comments at the same time! You summed it up nicely – the upside and the downside of going back and asking the hard questions, then writing about them.
I definitely go through times of feeling guilt or disloyalty or fear and then wonder, can I really do this? I guess that remains to be seen. But I’m going to trust the writing process and where it takes me. I hope that’s enough.
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Ybonesy – you wrote a grounded and honest piece in this one. Not easy to talk about those things that one perceives as risky to expose about oneself. It’s kind of like offering up a particularly vulnerable part of a soft belly. And I like the sense of reticence in this writing, the lack of self-dramatization. That may be what makes it so difficult to write on a topic like this – just stating what is without stooping to excesses. G
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Thanks for the comments.
G – yes, there is that balance of just stating what was or is and not bringing in all the other stuff that sometimes swirls around it. Or, if you do bring it in, to do so in a way that helps the story and doesn’t detract from it. I will say, and QM can testify to this, that my experiences with sexual abuse, which I dealt with largely during my time living in Spain, are still hard for me to break through to and write about. Consequently, my writing about Spain is often blocked.
Jackie and QM, I was thinking about this earlier — writing about parents and having parents alive while you write about them. My parents are alive, and much of what I am doing now with them is mining those memories, or, as Jackie put it, checking my experience against theirs. I have four older siblings, too, who help me fill in the blanks. I guess I won’t know how far I can get until I start to try the actual writing. We’ll see.
LB, I remember when you did that piece, and you got one or two comments questioning it (a LOT more applauding you, though). I thought it was excellent, and I admired you for taking the risk.
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YB, as R3 pointed out this post does take some time to digest. I commend you for your honesty. It must have been difficult to divulge your sexual abuse experiences, but facing the bad things is a way of beginning a healing process. Life has good & bad. That’s just the way it is. I think we must be true to ourselves, no matter what.
I sometimes think about bad memories & feel as though those thoughts are vomit from my brain. And then I think about all the good memories & they far out weigh the bad…This was truly a remarkable write from you. D
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Our deepest hurts at the early stages of life stay with us, but the telling of the story can ease the pain.
You braid so many images together, like a lyric poem of self-exposure, so that the pain becomes more of a song about the past. Acceptance is in your words – you have accepted what has happened, who you are, knowing that you didn’t invite each moment. That’s what I hear. Pain, acceptance, and transcendence, because you are telling us the stories.
I liked the boozey breath line. Good adjective.
I bet your mom has nice knees. 🙂
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Ha! She does. I have her hands, too.
I thought about the posts you and others do on Confession Tuesdays. There is something healing about telling.
Thanks again, diddy. You’re so right about the no good, no bad, just is. That’s such a basic aspect of writing practice.
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yb, I now know you are a very brave, as well as wise woman!
You are very strong and yet, tender, at the same time. I admire you for being willing to let “any and all” read about your life. While it is true that we “get what we get,” it is how we play the hand we have been dealt, that matters. I believe that we are given choices in the way we decide to play those cards. I feel sure that the bad circumstances that came into your life were faced squarely, with eyes wide open and a clear conscience…and that the overwhelming majority of your decisions were good ones! May God Bless you!
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Thanks, oliverowl 🙂 .
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YB, I count this piece among my favorites from you. It is so honest and pure…as if you allowed us to step within your mind and heart for a spell.
So many things you said connect with me. I have been told many times that I should write a book about my life. If I ever do it will have to be after some of the characters are no longer sharing this world with me. Until then, I am writing it with through my art…unbeknownst to some of them.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
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[…] The following passage is a 10-minute free-write I just completed, based on the writing topic presented on red Ravine. Read ybonsey’s free-write here. […]
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Thank *you*, gypsy-heart. I love the idea of you writing your story through your art.
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Thanks for posting this – writing about things that are risky is one thing, actually publishing them is another! This is a very powerful piece – one difficult thing after another building up in intensity.
I do admire your courage in putting this up – and I hope this helps to heal some of the blockages you describe. As you say, we can’t decide what cards we get, but I think we can learn to accept them and play the best game we can.
Courage seems to be contagious… having read this I’ve decided to take the plunge and publish my own second piece on “taking a risk” – this time on anger – which is more raw and risky than the previous one I wrote, though still not as open as yours!
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Right on, lirone, for taking that plunge. I just read it and could relate to the dangers of anger.
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