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.
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.
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Hits pretty close to home, Alice. For some, holidays are hard even during good times.
To cope, I’ve been writing and studying. Taking time for me and time for my husband, who’s cooped up with me. 😉 I miss people. I’m a major introvert and it’s taken six weeks of isolation to begin to feel that. lol But I deal with some kind of mini-crisis every day. Not even talking about big ones. Writing is what gets me through.
I live in a fantasy world, but I am not crazy. I’m a writer.
Thanks for this post.
Hi Kayelle. One of the gifts we writers share is the ability, and the tendency, to drop into another world whenever we choose to do so. You’re absolutely right. We aren’t crazy, we’re writers, even when all we appear to be doing is staring into space. That can be a special buffer for us through these crisis times. Which is why I would like to share that refuge with non-writers too, so they can have their own alternate world to access when they need it. All it takes is a notebook and a pen, or whatever. I hope to encourage that whenever and however I can. Blessings. Alice
Alice, I’m probably the strange one. I write no matter what’s happening in the world. It’s what I do and what I am. For me Mother’s Day is a Hallmark card day. I gave my mother respect and love every day and needed no special day. My children have followed that pattern. I just write.
Hi Janet. You’re not strange, you are highly disciplined. As you say, you are a writer, not only in what you do, but in who you are as well. In this new blog series, I’m hoping to enoourage those of us who haven’t yet reached that level of discipline and commitment. Or maybe just those of us who find the current state of the world a stymying influence that causes our writing voices to go silent in something close to a state of paralysis. I would also like to inspire non-writers to discover the refuge that writing can be, how meditative an experience it is to leave time and space behind and immerse yourself in whatever is coming to life for you on the page. You are an example to us all of how fulfilling that adventure can become. Blessings. Alice