Once again. Still. We’re in “a time like this.”
A time when rage, grief, helplessness, and a need to do something all swirl about and cancel each other out. And then “the everything” leaves us feeling exhausted, confused, and caught between numbing out and being unable to look away.
On Friday, six unelected people in black robes decimated reproductive rights in the US and endangered the lives of women and pregnant people across fifteen states (for now).
I was on a call with colleagues when the news came through. We wept. We sat in silence. We tested out the words to articulate “we knew this was coming, but still…”
Later, I would speak with clients and hold space for the inevitable questions.
“What’s the point of writing this memoir or this novel when women don’t even have control of their own bodies?”
The Writers’ Dilemma That Never Goes Away
It’s not the question of having the time. It’s not the question of inspiration. It’s not even the question of whether the writing is any good.
The question that is most often asked and that I most often need to answer as a writing coach and writing community leader is what’s the point?
What is the point of writing the book, the article, the post when the hills are on fire, the elected officials have no shame or no clue, and the kids aren’t alright?
What is the point of working on the long term project or adding to the noise of today when everyone has put down their books to get lost on the social media feeds that are full of coat hangers, handmaids, and offers to welcome any woman who “needs to go camping” to stay in a “camping-friendly” state?
First, we must remember that it’s always “a time like this”
The last six years have just been the most obviously egregious example of this, but ever since someone concocted the phrase “if you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention” there has been something to be outraged about. And that’s just in the bumper sticker era. You can trace the outrageous frailties, failures, and cruelties of humanity back to Eden or to that Neanderthal who was murdered 430,000 years ago (depending on when you begin your understanding of human history).
So, once we can root ourselves into the truth that we are not living in truly exceptionally fucked up times (even if they do feel exceptionally fucked up), we can live the next question.
The initial reaction to the erosion of our fundamental human rights may be rage, despair, or a deep, pervading numbness. But then, we must ask “what happens next?”
What is Mine To Do?
During the summer of 2020 when the public attention was focused on George Floyd’s murder and Black Lives Matter was central to the conversation, one particular image (it’s so much more than a “meme”) caught my attention and has stuck with me.
Deepa Iyer, Building Movement Project. SM, © 2020 Deepa Iyer. All rights reserved. All prior licenses revoked.
Deepa Iyer created the Social Change Ecosystem Map in 2018 and revised it further in 2020. I’ve only just scratched the surface of her work, but let your eyes move around this web of possibilities.
Since you and I travel together, I have a sense that certain words will stand out for both of us. I can breathe into Storytellers. Healers. Weavers. I wonder what other roles resonate for you and feel like “Yes, I can do that. Yes, I do that.”
Since it isn’t possible to reshuffle the Supreme Court this afternoon or go back in time to when anti-choice advocates decided that they’d prevail by installing conservative judges at every level of the legal system, we have to look within and find our skills and our passion and ask how we can effect positive change in the ecosystem we inhabit right now. (Because the smallest parts do influence the whole, and what we imagine, say, and do does make a difference.)
Sometimes, Our Work Takes Place in a Fictional Tansy Field With a Couple of Druids
On Friday, when I was too soaked in feelings to come up with anything new or relevant to say, I realized I had already written exactly what needed to be said on Day Zero in the Post-Roe World.
I wrote about my abortion in The Sovereignty Knot, but I didn’t need to tell that story again.
Instead, I went to chapter one of my long-neglected novel-in-progress. In the KnotWork Storytelling Community Facebook, I shared a few rough paragraphs that were terribly relevant to the moment, even if they were set in an Irish meadow at midnight nearly 2,000 years ago.
An Excerpt from my Work In Progress, Above In the Bog
She was to remain nameless.
Móna and Síle had not spoken at all as they made their way under the dark summer moon to the fields where the homely yellow flowers grew. They did not allow her name to enter their minds. They knew better than even to conjure her face. That way, the babe in her belly would have nothing to cling to, no claim to stake. A woman without a name or face cannot be a true mother, and this was not a tribe that would force a mother in the world. Not if Móna had anything to say about it. And in this tribe, she would always have her say.
If they didn't have to unmake a mother, neither woman would have chosen to be out on such a night. Their own wombs were heavy with release and both could feel themselves being subtly unmade as their monthly blood seeped down their thighs. This would have been a night to prepare the tea, to sit in the darkness of the women's hut and let the old and new stories dissolve into the silence, but nothing was as it should have been that summer. The stores had been ravaged in the days leading to Bealtaine and all of Móna 's herbs had been swept away with the smashed crockery and the ruined thatch of the roundhouse roofs.
Móna sighed as she stood to straighten her back and hunched shoulders. She sighed at the stiffness of a spine that had seen nearly forty summers and she sighed because she knew she was telling herself an unnecessary sort of lie. They wouldn't have been able to sit quietly on this dark moon, even if the last cattle raid from the tribe across the valley hadn't gotten out of hand. Móna and Síle always told their bodies to hush and mind their duties to the other female bodies when the growing season demanded it. Each year, they need to collect the flowers, leaves, and stems of the wild tansy under the darkest sky of the season. Usually, it was easy to allow the women who would take this tea to remain nameless and faceless. Though the wise woman herbalist and her daughter surely knew the women who would come to them over the next year, they weren't yet pregnant with a child they couldn't or wouldn't bear. This time, however, they had to force their ears to unhear the young woman's cries and unsee her terrified face as they worked in the dark, using their tiny crescent moon blades to cut the tough stems. They were well skilled at seeing in the dark, after all.
In Times Like These, Do Not Put Down the Pen
I let my novel about “druids and drawing rooms” to languish when I started working on the podcast. It’s almost always easier to choose the project with the immediate gratification of weekly publishing than it is to craft a book that will take years and may never see the light of day.
But then… there are days when we need the ideas that can only emerge in fiction, that can only take shape after years of work, that can only have meaning for an audience because it was written without a reader in mind.
Next week, the Sovereign Writers’ Knot welcomes new members for the summer session. In this online creative community, you can work on your long term projects and wrestle with the emotions and events of the day.
We’ll gather five times to write and share in July and August. I would love to have you with us as we all continue to dance with “what’s the point of writing when…?” We’ll find it. Together.
