“Sometimes we become what we do. I became a writer by writing.”— From Celebrating a Decade of Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been drafting content and designing a PowerPoint presentation, a Community of Practice Webinar for Wisconsin Certified Peer Specialists (WICPS). I’m a WICPS in the work I do as an LGBTQ+ AODA Advocate for the OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center. The subject of my webinar, which I’ll present later this week is, Building Peer Trust by Sharing Lived Experience. The essence of the training is the importance of sharing lived experience through storytelling. In many cultures through history, storytelling was the foundation of sharing values and a family’s or community’s oral history. It’s also a tool to welcome and invite inclusion in an affinity group. In the recovery circles I work in, and in one-on-one advocate relationships, sharing our lived experience builds trust and helps create a sense of being peers, as defined, “one that is equal to another in status, achievement, or value a jury of one’s peers. equivalent. counterpart. fellow. colleague.”
The Backstory
I write because I’m compelled to as a storyteller like the generations that preceded me, my paternal great-grandmother, maternal grandmother, and finally my father, who each remembered almost every person they had ever met and relished in the telling and retelling of their stories, embellishing, adding, and subtracting details in the service of the tale or life lesson.
View from my desk in the writing alcove of my home.
I was a founding member of the OutReach LGBTQ+ Narratives Activist-Writers Group. I credit this group and the reminiscence writing courses I took with Sarah White, as rebooting and inspiring my storytelling and writing. A couple of months later, I created my blog, Mixed Metaphors, Oh My! I’ve journaled consistently since 2008, published poetry chapbooks, and continue to work on my memoir, Perfectly Flawed.
I submitted monologues to the Forward Theater Company, published articles in Our Lives Magazine, and joined another writing group, the Door County LGBTQ+ Writers Group, who meets virtually once a month. Growing up I wanted to be a journalist and a writer. I became a writer by writing. Below is an essay I wrote in response to a prompt in 2010 for the OutReach LGBTQ+ Narratives Writers Group.
I was the first editor of our high school newspaper, J. I. Case in Racine, WI. I named the paper too, “Just In Case.” Yes, I played with words back then as well. I also knew that summer of 1967, I would make Madison my chosen home. I moved here in 1974.
The theme for me personally for 2024 has been, Things Change. Little did I anticipate at the end of September when I drafted an essay of the same title, that this would be the outcome of the election, not only for President, but a likely majority, not only for the Senate, but the House as well.
This past year, I’ve said my final goodbye to my father, our childhood home, friends, and a cherished work colleague. I’m taking a look at my relationships, so that I can live more authentically, honestly, and transparent, setting boundaries, so I’m not as codependent or enmeshed in other people’s lives as I have been in the past.
The last goodbye
I’m back in therapy, confronting trauma from my childhood, and how it has affected my relationships and emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. I said goodbye to my childhood home, as I begin to dream about my future and how I want to live in a smaller footprint and with people I love.
As I live this final chapter of my life, I will do my best to speak my voice, live openly, ‘fight the good fight’, advocate for the vulnerable and marginalized, and work for change, as I have for most of my life. I will also practice self-care and gratitude and maintain hope in the face of adversity, and say the Serenity Prayer as needed. This is my prescription for mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
For those who know me personally and/or read my blog or social media posts, I’m open and share freely about my personal life, some say I overshare. I write about my lived experience, often the mundane moments of everyday life, and sometimes I wax philosophically or poetically about our shared universal human experience. In essence, I’m an open book, and you choose whether to pick it up and read, or not!
The original essay from 2010:
On Writing
The last few months I’ve made a commitment to write again, to journal, craft poems, and work on my chapbook, submit manuscripts, edit a poetry feature for Our Lives magazine and join a writers and personal narratives group. Yet I have not written everyday as we pledged. Or have I?
Every day I write whether it’s a reminder on a yellow Post-it note, an email to a friend, a Facebook update, draft a “to-do list” for a day, a week, or the rest of my life. I ink notes in greeting cards, keyboard memos to my staff, and scribble thoughts on pieces of paper and ATM receipts. I capture good ideas in a spiral notebook to revisit at a later date, write checks, and make budgets to pay my debts, and pencil entries in my datebook. I chalk affirmations and quotations on a blackboard in my kitchen. I etch regrets in my skin, reliving sense memories, scratching the surface of my pain.
I write in my imagination, words percolating and rearranging themselves in search of meaning or rhythm. I dream words and images, ciphers to decode and omens to dissect and understand. These are words that will appear on pages days or weeks from now as if sent by messengers or higher powers, the unconscious rising from the depths of darkness, my shadow and spirit speaking to my material self.
Words can hurt or help, be unspoken or misunderstood, screamed, or simply thought, sung, or whispered. Are words not real until written?
I dabble in writing. I’ve registered blog names, but not blogged. I read tweets, yet I don’t tweet, I struggle over the selection of my next cell phone, do I want a QWERTY keyboard, one with keys that depress? I Google just about everything; words are the gateway to knowledge and understanding. I consider dictionaries, thesaurus, and style guides my friends, and the library my church, as I worship words seeking sanctuary from my own ignorance.
Words are powerful and the act of writing is empowering. Some days I can only muster the mundane use of words, whether spoken, put to paper, or saved in an electronic document. And, then there are days of eloquence and insight, grace and discovery, words to be treasured and shared. Did I write every day? The answer that comes is another question. I did write, right?
11/5/2010
LLL
What’s Ahead
I’ve lived alone more than 16 years. Like my father before me, another auditory person and storyteller, I have the TV on almost all day, whether I’m watching it, or not. It’s another voice in the silence. In my car, SIRIUS radio or CDs. I’m old school. I don’t have a Spotify playlist. I’m not sure I’ll buy another car without a CD player. I vowed something similar years ago, when I said the same thing about cassette players. Yes, if you’re wondering I’m a person of a certain age.
Besides being a writer, I’m an oral historian and storyteller. As the eldest living member of my family, I’m the keeper of our family’s history. I write about the generations that preceded us and I’m most grateful that I recorded my parent’s story: how they met, married, raised their children, the jobs they worked to support their family, the hobbies and interests that gave them pleasure, and how they wanted to be remembered.
I’m grateful too for the past few years when I visited our father. I encouraged him to tell stories of his youth, his family, growing up, his work, friends, and dreams. I’m now the keeper of the stories and will pass them on to the next generation.
For my blog, I write reminiscences, share stories about my life, recovery, identity as a lesbian woman, and commentary on culture and politics. Recently, I’ve opened the last closet door, and revealed that I’m intersex, and shared the trauma of my childhood. I write about my experience, to purge myself of shame and stigma, and to live openly.
In my work, I’m an LGBTQ+ AODA & Harm Reduction Advocate. Post-election, for many of us who are members of marginalized communities, it feels like we’re entering a dark, dangerous, and repressive time. I will continue to find my voice, speak out, and share my truth (see link to Prayer for My Voice in the Related Reading section at the end of this essay). Lastly, my writing and storytelling are my legacy.
I embrace the words of Audre Lorde, “Your silence will not protect you.”
Read on. Write on. Speak out!
Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!
Procrastination Station: Dysfunction Junction
Tamara, thank you for your kind words. I needed to learn first, that I write for myself. However, I know I’m successful when I find an audience.
Love your writings, Linda. They remind me of listening to the Moth Radio Hour and the PBS Story Hour.