Write Thru Crisis – Peaceful Justice

Personal Storytelling, ,

Write Thru Crisis – Peaceful Justice. The first time I helped someone out who’d been bullied I was a young teen in my upstate New York hometown. Years later, a woman named Marsha told me the story. Some neighborhood boys had lifted her by her overall straps and hung her on a picket fence. I apparently came along and took her down.

I don’t remember the incident. But I do remember how good it made me feel that I corrected this small injustice which loomed so large for her that she’d never forgotten it, or my act of mercy. Like most positive things about me, my merciful instinct originated with Grandma. “If you’re not making the world a better place, why are you here?” she would ask.

Grandma lived by those words, and my guess is that most of you do too. You have your own history of mercies, small and large, remembered or mostly forgotten, when the world was a better place because you were in residence. Moments when you lived by the messages we are meant to impart to others. “Don’t give up. You are not alone. You matter.”

In each of these moments we are agents of peaceful justice. Each of these moments is a story worth telling, worth bringing back to life and honoring. Some of your tales of justice are personal and private, like rescuing a little girl who’s been pinioned on a picket fence. Some are on a grander scale and public, like my daughter in the street, risking safety to shout out her truth.

My daughter shares her peaceful justice story in Twitter shorthand. I follow its episodes with pride and trepidation. I’ve seen video of police and soldiers, armed and ready, too near to her for my comfort. “Ready for what?” I ask myself and don’t want to hear the answer I fear.

Many of our stories of peaceful justice feature real-life heroes we love and admire. They live in our families, friend circles, neighborhoods, classrooms, workplaces. Their stories remind us of the potential for good we all possess, and lift us on a wave of hope. My favorites often feature the Hero in Your Mirror – you, and the gift you are to those you touch with your heart.

My granddaughter is another of my real-life heroes. In high school, she reached beyond her natural self-consciousness to lobby in Washington for social and economic justice. In college, she learned how to carry those causes further. Now, she is poised to fulfill her great-grandmother’s credo and make the world a better place.

These are some of my stories. What are yours? Who are your heroes? What are their deeds of mercy, their efforts for the betterment of others? Don’t forget to remember your own deeds too. Your life will be enriched by telling your stories. Humanity is enriched when we share our passionate and compassionate selves. Write Thru Crisis about Peaceful Justice.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Alice has spent most of her professional life in publishing, as book editor, literary agent, workshop leader, and author. She’s published 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (revised version coming soon). Her current work in progress includes Hero in the Mirror: How to Write Your Best Story of You.

Meet the good people who gifted Alice with their mercy and compassion in her memoir Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness. Available HERE.

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments

Inspiration, ,

Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments. Our grandson has always had a secret smile, playing behind his composed features and in his eyes. Irrepressible, even at five years old, no matter how much he intended to play a straight-faced joke on camera-toting Grandma who had just said, “Smile for me, sweetheart.”

I cherish moments. Moments in general and specific ones. I remember them and, when I want them to return, I illuminate them with the floodlight of my imagination and fill in the details. For example, I took a photograph of our grandson on a Saturday morning in the kitchen of our house on Vashon Island in Washington state.

The sun shone through the window, and Grandson was in full cartoon garb. SpongeBob SquarePants (the hat) and Thomas the Train (the pajamas) were Saturday morning pals for me also. As I passed through the living room, I’d catch glimpses of their antics from the corner TV table Grandpa Jonathan had built.

This photograph stands on a bookcase in our New York City living room today. Though our grandson of the secret smile passed age seventeen in April, this memento radiates very present delight every time I look at it

Plus, I can add more details to the scene. We’d painted the walls yellow to brighten the frequent shadows of Pacific Northwest rainy days. Fronting the couch, a ponderous low cabinet had a top that lifted for snacking and a drawer at the bottom where Grandson kept the curious items he’d collected from the local thrift shop’s trove of recycled treasures.

I picture the scene and urge the wattage to climb in my memory floodlight. I luxuriate in the warmth of that moment. The feelings surrounding it. The atmosphere of love and ease on those mornings, when no one had yet scurried out of night clothes into daywear.

Each of us has deposited such moments in our memory banks. Smiles that touch your heart. Flashes of beauty beneath the retina of your inner eye. You can revitalize them in an instant. No intense pondering is necessary. In fact, pondering is discouraged.

Instead, grasp the moment in midair. Cradle it in the palm of your hand. Allow it to ripple through your fingers, up your arm, into your heart. Add to your visual recollection the sound of birds chattering outside, the aroma of breakfast on the stove, the touch of sunlight from the window on your skin.

In other words, revel in sensual richness brought to life. Drop gently out of the present. Loosen its hold on your consciousness until you are fully embraced by that long-ago kitchen moment, or wherever the incandescence of your imagination has taken you.

Anticipate the thrill of preserving this scene on a page, but don’t go there yet. Linger. Savor. Enjoy. Recognize the rapture. Edge aside what is now for what was then. But, do so gently, in order not to disturb the still place where your psyche has allowed itself to rest.

When you’re ready, gradually return to your now. Before the details fade, write down the adventure of your visit to your recaptured moment. Afterward, favor yourself with these interludes often. All you have to do is turn on your imagination, direct its glow within, and there they are. Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Alice has spent most of her professional life in publishing, as book editor, literary agent, workshop leader, and author. She’s published 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (revised version coming soon). Her current work in progress includes Hero in the Mirror: How to Write Your Best Story of You.

Experience Alice’s own Floodlight Moments in her memoir Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness. Available HERE.

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

Write Thru Crisis – Salted Wounds

Storytelling, ,

Write Thru crisis – Salted wounds. Mother’s Day was a few weeks ago. My son once said, “This is a holiday created by Hallmark Cards to sell their product.” My response to that might be, “This is a holiday created by Morton Salt to sell their product.”

I am a mother who had a mother, and a grandmother who had a grandmother. All of which does have a Hallmark card side. Idyllic resonances that could prompt sweet, four-line rhymes. Plus, a Morton Salt side, associations with wounded places, some scarred over, some still bloody, all conflicted.

Meanwhile, on a grander scale, there is the Covid-19 catastrophe. Whether you believe this to be our century’s worldwide plague or a conspiratorial hoax, we are all in the midst of a Morton’s moment magnified. This situation rubs salt into every vulnerable, sensitive corner of our psyches, the places where we most long to be left undisturbed.

Unfortunately, crisis of any kind is, by nature, disturbing. Crisis is an impertinent, belligerent, often malicious finger, rubbing the Morton’s deeper in, making certain we experience its sting to the max.

Back to Mother’s Day, which I pick on only as an example. Like the Corona Crisis, Mother’s Day is a universal phenomenon, whether you celebrate either or not. We all have some relationship with motherhood. We are all in the grips of this crisis. We all have wounded places.

Animals are a good example of what to do about the last of those. When wounded, they find a place of refuge, a crevice where they can burrow in, lick the lethal elements from their wounds and, hopefully, heal. Each of us has a similar refuge close at hand, our personal stories and the telling of them.

Here, as examples, are two of my own refuge stories. Coroneal Mom’s Day was bittersweet for me. On the lighter side, I missed my son in law’s waffles. Last year, I stuffed myself so full of them, I had to lie immobile for an hour to recover. This year, he and my daughter stood six feet from me in the street, avoiding mention of waffles or anything else we missed.

On the heavy side, my mother suffered from mental illness. Which is why I spent most childhood weekdays with my kind, loving grandma. She passed away when I was seven years and three days old. Life before then and life afterward were very different realities me and, for some reason, this Mother’s Day has brought those times close to my heart.Grandma and Alice at Two and a Half

Obviously, each of these snippets requires much more detail to become an actual story. As I said, they are only examples, starting places in search of further telling. They are also crevices I may burrow into, salve my wounds with words, and heal, or celebrate. You can do the same.

What real-life stories does Mother’s Day 2020 call forth for you? No crevice is required, only a pen, a journal, and sentences. Or draw a picture, construct a collage, compose a lyric and some music to go with it. Whatever your medium preference may be, let it wash the salt away, dull the sting, encourage healing to happen.

And don’t forget the feelings, where method and magic meet. Share your stories, if you wish, at aliceorrbooks@gmail.com, and let me know if you would like others to experience them too. Share this post also. We all have stories to tell, as we Write Thru Crisis.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Alice has spent most of her professional life in publishing, as book editor, literary agent, workshop leader, and author. She’s published 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (revised version coming soon). Her current work in progress includes Hero in the Mirror: How to Write Your Best Story of You.

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.A Time of Fear & Lovinghttps://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/