Why DO we Write? 📖

Why DO we write, anyway?

When I was twelve, maybe thirteen, a tattered folder held scraps of paper that I had trusted to hold my poems, but I didn’t know what to do with them until the day my sister found the cows first. You see…after school, we would head out into the pastures to call the cows in for milking. Sometimes they were close by and other times they wandered. I can’t recall for sure, but I imagine I told her, “I’ll check the back pasture” because I really liked walking the farm road to where it opened up into our biggest field. That day, there was not a cow to be seen there, but I heard my sister calling and the low murmurings of the ladies far behind me. I knew they were walking single-file to the barn, udders swaying with the weight of their offering. She can bring them back today, I think, it’s not my day to milk. No need to hurry back to the barn.

There I was, in my favorite field. I wandered, where the world got quiet. I crossed its wide expanse and ducked into the woods beyond, grateful for the cool shade. For once, I had time, so I went farther than ever before until I came to a dense thicket. Intrigued by its structure of low, arching branches, I explored, relieved there were no thorns. Hunched over, I walked until suddenly I was in a space where I could stand! The quiet excited my imagination. I was alone. No one would find me here. I imagined a rug, a stump for a chair and some boards for a desk. When life got too loud at home, I could escape. I can write poems and once a week, walk to town and sell my poems. $5 a piece would be enough to buy groceries. 

Oh, what a life I could live! 

Within a week of exiting CTL, the cultic group I fell into and wallowed with for eighteen years, a friend handed me a 7 CD set of the audio-book The Neurobiology of We by Dr Dan Siegel. I played one of those CD’s so many times that I swear, the disc started to wear thin. Siegel is passionate about supporting trauma survivors to create a coherent narrative out of their experiences. The cornerstones of his work include attachment theory and a rich understanding of how the mind works. His career as a psychologist included research that revealed: 

“The best predictor of a child’s security of attachment is not what happened to his parents as children, but rather how his parents made sense of those childhood experiences. And it turns out that by simply asking certain kinds of autobiographical questions, we can discover how people have made sense of their past— how their minds have shaped their memories of the past to explain who they are in the present.”  Dan Siegel

In my mind, the revolutionary aspect of Siegel’s work rises out of the mind's flexibility when we are presented with confusing or traumatic experiences. The process of creating a coherent narrative, of making sense of our past, can promote profoundly helpful results that can, as Siegel promises “liberate your present and empower your future.”

When I was burning a hole in that CD ten years ago, the phrase “creating a coherent narrative” was a mantra for me. I was in utter despair by how scrambled my mind, my psyche and my emotions were. Through the kindness of a wise friend who handed me that 7 CD set, I started to explore the written word as a lifeline – and I’ve continued to do so, despite the fact that I struggle with writing (more about that another day).

In my early twenties, I dumped most of the contents of that tattered folder - what I believed to be silly, adolescent poetry - in the trash. A little niggle nudged me to keep the folder and a few of those papers, but oh, how I regret that impulsive rejection of my innocence. A beautiful window into my psyche blew like scattered leaves in the landfill until meeting up with rotting fruit, broken glass and rusty tin cans to decay.

Today - fifty years after my dream of a poet’s life faded, I get to bring back this memory. Through words, I connect with that adolescent self who ducked into a thicket and fantasized a new life. These words ARE a door, Dr. Siegel would say, not only to revisit my adolescent psyche, but more importantly, to 'liberate my present self and empower my future.'

This is why I write. How about you?!? I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

*Here's Dr Siegel's reference