Surviving A Difficult Childhood

Writing and meditation as healing tools

“Why do you write about such dark subjects?” people ask.

Paradoxically, it is to be able to embrace the light.

My latest novel, Suburban Souls, is about a husband and wife, both Jewish immigrants traumatized by their childhoods in Nazi Germany who face the turbulence of a sterile marriage.  Hannah, their 13-year-old daughter feels as if her parents are warring inside of her. In desperation, she considers suicide, but finds help among the beauty and tranquility of a supportive Buddhist commune.
    
D.H. Laing, the noted British psychologist, has written that what can drive people into craziness is failing to acknowledge their perceptions. When you see the sky is blue, but everyone around you says,” oh no, it’s red... no blue there.”  Then you start to question the validity of your own perceptions.  To some degree, this is what was happening in Hannah’s family.

Like Hannah, I experienced a difficult adolescence in which the truth was often veiled. I began writing in a journal when I was a teenager in order to validate what I truly saw, felt, heard, and perceived in order to confirm the truth of my experiences. In doing so, I was able to clarify to some extent the dark knot of energy inside me. In writing freely about things that I could not openly express, in seeking words to convey that energy, I gained a measure of clarity and relief.
I wanted to write poems and stories, but, but my mind still raced so frantically fast that what came out were stark images. I could not slow down enough to expand on the images, so vivid and so compelling.

It was through meditation that I gained the power to expand on those flashing images and flesh them out into full-bodied creations.

There are many forms of meditation, but the technique I used was simple, based loosely on Zen Buddhist practice.  I sit quietly in a comfortable position—whether cross-legged or on a chair (I’ve never been able to do a full lotus) - and I become aware of my breathing. I don’t attempt to control it. I just notice it. Thoughts arise. I don’t attempt to push them back or to cling to them. “not too loose and not too tight.”  Of course, I don’t ever succeed totally...and it doesn’t matter. The point is that I am taking the time to look at thoughts, emotions, sensations—and simply be with them, neither to suppress, nor to deliberately cling.

I have used this technique in post meditation, or rather in another kind of meditation, to focus on what I’m writing.  To relax, to fully, generously give myself time and space to complete a picture of what it is that I’m trying to convey. After a period of meditation, my mind would slow down enough to focus on description, sequence, character. I wrote from a calm, deeper place from which inspiration could more easily flow.
    
I was able to write stories, poems, articles that burned inside me.

I began writing stories about people who had been close to me, especially my mother for whom I felt both love and enormous anger. My novel, Dying Unfinished, was written in two voices—my mother’s and my own. As I wrote imaginatively through her voice, I gained empathy and understanding.

Writing and meditation have been invaluable in my journey of healing and of spiritual growth.  But everyone has their own way of getting to a deep, calm place from which inspiration can more easily flow. It may be through music, sculpting, or welding, or construction work, knitting, crocheting, or taking a long walk! Please take my story as a telling of a way that has helped me. And honor whatever your path may be.