When grief and rage feel overwhelming, writing helps us get a handle on the impossible
Hey, hi. How are you? I'd like to know, really. Send me a note if you feel up to it. If not, that's ok, just know that I'm thinking of you. And, this week, I also want to tell you a bit about how I’ve been.
You may, or may not, have noticed that last week I didn't send out an article on Wednesday. Since 2019 when I started regularly writing and sharing insight on writing, creativity, business, and marketing I've only missed sending a Wednesday post a handful of times. I’d say fewer than ten. Even when my mom was in the hospital, I sent out something.
Last week though, I just couldn't.
The truth is I was still distraught at another murder of a soul in this country by the hands of the federal government. This time it was a mother caring for her neighbors, bearing witness to the atrocities being committed by the increasingly lawless Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
As I watched the aftermath unfold, the administration told us not to believe what we saw with our own eyes.
And I saw my brave, beloved cities—Minneapolis and St. Paul—once again reeling. This is the place where I lived after college, the place where I met my beloved husband, the place where I started my corporate career.
This is where both of my girls live now.
I watched people rise up in resistance, and double down on love. I watched others embrace derision, believing somehow Renee Good got what she deserved. I saw online some who agree with the shooter himself, that she was just an effing b&^%h.
And I saw (yet again) there are still far too many people who aren’t paying attention. As someone said to me here on Friday, seemingly perplexed at my concern for family and friends in the Twin Cities, “Well, if they mind their own business, they’ll be fine, right?”
What to do, what to do
Like many of you, I’m trying to figure out what to do in these increasingly dangerous and difficult times. I keep asking myself the question: where do I put my energy and actions today to make the most difference?
Last week, the grief, rage, and powerlessness felt overwhelming.
I didn't know what to write about last week, so I didn't. Instead, I stumbled around, unable to focus, wondering—like so many others must have wondered throughout history—what will become of us?
Then Saturday morning at 8 o'clock, I showed up for an online peer meeting of facilitators trained in the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) method.
In our time together, we wrote. We listened deeply. We reflected. And we wrote some more.
One of the participants, a friend of the AWA method’s founder, told us that she believed that writing is a way to get a handle on something, to begin to grasp what is.
I knew right then that she was right.
Without writing, it's very difficult to sort through our thoughts and emotions, to see them clearly. It’s difficult to keep our steadiness in our own inner knowing, especially in the face of complexity and heartbreak. Without writing it’s far too easy to get swept away, and then even harder to find and grip onto the next right action and take it.
Writing helps us take hold of the impossible. To begin to grapple with the unfathomable.
And sure enough, that’s what happened. By the end of the meeting, I had written. Not directly about what is going on in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but I had written. I began to get a handle on myself.
And then the next day, on Sunday, I was able to write again. And again, on Monday. And now here I am yet again, today. I’ve found myself able to write to you.
I can't tell you exactly how you or I or we will make it better in this moment, because I'm not sure. But I can tell you that writing will help you get a handle on whatever you find yourself confronting.
Writing will help you understand the thing that needs to be understood, whatever it is, the moment you put pen to paper.