Memoir as Healing Agent
The only way through pain... is to absorb, probe, understand exactly what it is and what it means. To close the door on pain is to miss the chance for growth... Nothing that happens to us, even the most terrible shock, is unusable, and everything has somehow to be built into the fabric of the personality.— May Sarton, Recovering: A Journal 1978-79 (13)Writing testimony, to be sure, means that we tell our stories. But it also means that we no longer allow ourselves to be silenced or allow others to speak for our experience. Writing to heal, then, and making that writing public, as I see it, is the most important emotional, psychological, artistic, and political project of our time. — Louise De Salvo, Writing as a Way of Healing (216)
Viewing Mnemonsyne as an imaginal template for memoir, it is important to be reminded of her experience of trauma. Her story suggests an image of trauma which results from masculine physical assault and subsequent control of the feminine. Hesiod’s recitation of Mnemosyne’s birth describes her as one of the Titan children whom her father, Ouranos, would not allow to be born. Mnemosyne then arrives not only to witness her mother’s agony, but also to experience her own painful and claustrophobic beginnings. She becomes one of the Greeks’ mythological figures who relates trauma to creative expression. Because she has been both observer and recipient of trauma, she is driven to create myriad forms for expression of such stories as evidenced by her own birthing of the nine Muses. Such prolific creativity in the artist has been observed by psychologist Andrew Brink who attributes exceptional levels of productivity to some earlier damage/trauma/pain. He notes that negative experiences are often the impetus behind the drive toward righting [writing], what went wrong early on in the writer’s life. Mnemosyne is a figure who understands the trauma of feminine body experience, one who will not forget, and one who inspires many inflections of recollection.
Writing memoir becomes one means of coping with trauma. Describing the details of one person’s life, making a narrative which speaks out, bears witness and causes the reader to consider his/her own relationships and experiences in light of this particular telling. The memoirist who chooses to re-tell traumatic experiences activates a process of cultural change, beginning with herself. It simultaneously creates both intimacy and distance with the story which presents itself.
Scripto-Therapy/ Textual Healing: Healing the self
Mnemosyne’s intent via the memoirist’s work can be viewed as an act of healing wounds caused by trauma. One can imagine the trauma of Mnemosyne’s birth: both her feelings of anguish at her mother’s pain from forbidden labor contractions and her own experience of not being allowed to be born in a timely manner. Upon emerging from her mother’s body, she assumes her role as the figure who will not forget such horror, the figure for whom the body becomes a repository of lived experiences, particularly those which are traumatic. She is the figure who takes up broken pieces of experience and places them in narrative, poetry, dance, and song. Because she is a daughter of Gaia, she inherits the quality of generativity. She evokes life from terrible wounds, no matter how ragged the edges. Because of her impulse to draw pieces together, Mnemosyne can be imagined as one of the first healers in the genealogies of Greek mythology. Webster’s dictionary defines the verb “heal” as “to make sound or whole, as in a wound, to restore to health, to cause an undesirable condition to be overcome, to mend, to restore to original purity or integrity...to return to a sound state” (528). Etymologically “heal” is derived from the Old English haelan to make whole, sound, well (ca. 725 CE) (Barnhart 345). One can thus imagine Mnemosyne as the daughter of Gaia, intent on bringing together broken pieces, of restoring wholeness to a life through re-membering a trauma. Louise DeSalvo affirms the connection between writing and the move toward restoring a sense of wholeness about the events of one’s life. “Ultimately, then, writing about difficulties enables us to discover the wholeness of things, the connectedness of human experience. We understand that our greatest shocks do not separate us from human kind. Instead, through expressing ourselves, we establish our connection with others and with the world” (DeSalvo 43).
Mnemosyne’s story opens possibilities of three kinds of healing to the writer of memoir. First, the idea of writing memoir as imaginal healing, as the gift of her father Ouranos. Secondly, the relationship of physiological healing to the crafting of memoir, as an intent of her mother Gaia. Thirdly, the idea of women’s memoir as a cultural healing agent, one which is present with the contributions of her daughters, the Muses. If you would like to learn more about writing and healing, please feel free to contact me through the website for upcoming courses and workshops.
Helpful references :
DeSalvo, Louise. Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives.
Boston : Beacon Press, 1999
Henke, Suzette A. Shattered Subjects:Trauma and Testimony in Women’s Life Writing.
New York: St. Martin’s, 2000
Hillman, James. Healing Fiction.
Woodstock, Connecticut: Spring Publications, 1983.
Pennebaker, James W. Opening Up: The Healing Power of Confiding in Others.
New York: William Morrow, 1990.
—.Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from Trauma and Emotional Upheaval.
Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2004.
Sarton, May. Recovering: A Journal 1978-79.
New York: Norton, 1980.
