I’ve always admired fiction writers who can magically construct something from their minds out of nothing and those gifted individuals who can write so eloquently about history or other people. Then there are those authors that inspired me most—the folks who write from their own experiences. When tragedy and loss knocked on my door for the first time, I finally had something to say, lots to say. After a painful divorce of a ten-year marriage and the death of my father to cancer, I had nowhere else to turn but to stories, and eventually, the page.
As I struggled to understand my own grief, I was drawn to stories of personal transformation through adventure and fire whether they spoke in words or photographs, like Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, Canyon Solitude: A Woman’s Solo River Journey Through the Grand Canyon by Patricia C. McCairen, and My Dakota by Rebecca Norris Webb. My own life experience at the time had me living out of my car, traveling around the country to see family and friends. Reading the experiences of others finally led me to turn to the page, to write my own story.
Journal after journal, reminders on post-its and napkins, voice memos, and notes on my phone were piling up. I didn’t want to forget any part of my trip and the words were pouring out of me! Upon stepping back to see the disarray of all my thoughts, I decided to collect them into one place, in one single Word document. Choppy at first, just a bunch of random scribblings, I organized them chronologically, which began to seem like groupings, gradually becoming outlines of could-be chapters.
“Oh, my dear Lord,” I remember thinking, “I believe this is a book.”
There were no grand plans to ever become an author. The desire came out of a primal need to record my feelings and thoughts around the dark unfurling leaves of grief growing rapidly in the deepest part of my soul. As writers, it’s crucial for us to write what we know to be true in our own lives and write this from the deepest core of who we are. What’s uncomfortable to think about? What frightens us? Challenges us? What makes us think and function differently? What are we inspired by in this life… dare I say, passionate about? Why were we brought to this ball of green and blue in the first place? The reason these questions are important is because we can say with assurance that our individual experience is also universal in many aspects.
For me, it took the form of writing my own experiences down so I wouldn’t forget them, which turned into telling my personal story in a memoir to be an offering for others who find themselves in a similar pain. There were times while going through grief that I felt so alone—completely isolated from all other life, but as I learned time and time again, I’m not. As I’ve found through stories from my family, friends, and once strangers, we all encounter this personal point of redirection after the loss of someone who was a great presence in our life at one time or another. Of course there is loneliness, even depression, and excruciatingly difficult times, but we can choose to reach out and hold someone else’s hand through it. We can share our stories with one another.
The most crucial lesson I’ve learned about the art and craft of writing, is to keep at it, even when there are lulls or periods where we just can’t bear to look at it anymore. I hit many of these bumps while writing my first book, Free Way: An Adventure Through Loss, a memoir about my journey to all 50 states in the USA after a divorce and my father’s passing. It took about five years to live and write. I’ve found that these slow moments make the writing stronger, giving me time away to let the story breathe. When I’ve come back to it after a slump, there has always been something needed that I would’ve missed otherwise, whether it was the omission of a sentence or section, change of word usage, or a glaring error I had skipped over many times.
Words have immense power. Give yourself time and space to let them flow. There’s no time limit or deadline. Your story will come if you let it in… allow it to move through your life, from body, to mind, to pen.
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Rachel is an artist from St. Louis, MO. She is currently working to self-publish her first book, Free Way: An Adventure Through Loss. You can connect with her on Instagram @_photonomad_ and find out more about her work on her website at www.RachelHelden.com.
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