Mining Your Painful Experiences for Gold
Last week, I did something brave.
I shared something intimate, and put myself in an extremely vulnerable position. I had been holding the story in for so long, only letting it out in fits and spurts to the very few people I felt safe with.
I wrote one part of the story about a year ago. Months later, I read it aloud to my writing group. Then I wrote another part of the story, privately, sometime after that, and only spoke of it with a few people. Then another part after that, and again, read it aloud to my writing group. I wrote the final piece, and finished tying everything together, last week.
It’s the longest personal essay I’ve ever written. 3351 words. According to Medium, a 14 minute read. It was also one of the hardest essays I’ve ever written.
I had been keeping my story mostly private for four and a half years.
There were countless people I would think of, when I thought about sharing. I would worry about who would get angry or hurt by learning the truth. I would worry about my reputation. I would worry about how it would hurt any future prospects, knowing the story would be accessible to anyone online.
And guess what? The story was curated by Medium in two topics: Self and Women. GREAT. Now even more people might see it.
Yes, it is great.
I’m done worrying about how my writing will hurt me. For the last three years I have done this little dance of knowing writing is my main thing, but being scared of doing it because it feels like I need to forsake everything else if I’m going to write with honesty.
You know why I feel that way? Because I have faith in God. And because I have been associated with the church and a Christian university and faith-based organizations.
My faith connections are largely what kept me silent for so long. Wrapped tight in a bud of shame, I struggled to process and heal more quickly because I was scared of the repercussions.
She did what while she was living in South Sudan, working for that organization? GASP!
I surprised me, too, trust me. I thought I had it figured out when I moved to South Sudan. I had finally figured out what it meant for me to follow Jesus!
And then war happened.
And I was brought to my knees, but it felt like nobody was listening.
And maybe that’s the single greatest way I ever learned to be in solidarity with my Sudanese brothers and sisters — I learned what it’s like to keep going when everything around you is destruction, chaos, and darkness. I learned a little about survival. I learned to look for the light and find ways to cope. I remembered my frailty.
I was still just a human. I am still just a human.
A flawed human who will most definitely break again under the weight of loneliness and exhaustion and trauma. Now, at least, I know better than to ever put myself in a situation like that again.
And if I keep writing and processing, I will continue to learn more. There is so much of my experience that is still mysterious to me. Writing it out helps.
And guess what?
In the end, I rediscovered the heart of my faith. Grace abounds. I am loved.
I write about real life.
Sometimes my real-life writing takes on a fantastical element, too, and I’m not quite sure how to label it. I also dabble in poetry. Though I have no idea what the hell I’m doing — I do it anyway.
Poetry offers me something creative nonfiction cannot. I can’t quite articulate what that is yet. Isn’t that fitting?
But at my core as a writer, I operate best when I tell my own story and offer it to others. This could change, or maybe it won’t. I could end up writing a novel someday. Wouldn’t that be something?
For now, I will continue telling my story. I tell my story because I have to. There’s no other way to explain it. It makes me uncomfortable sometimes, but I do it anyway.
Storytelling is powerful.
As writers, we can heal the world by telling our own stories. We contribute to our personal healing journey by telling our own stories, too. But last week, I knew after I had released that one particular story, it couldn’t have happened any sooner.
I needed time and space, and to regain command of my writing voice to be able to tell it the way I did. And ten years from now, it’ll hopefully be different, better somehow, long as I’m living.
But I knew it was time.
“In this moment where so many people are talking about truth-telling and vulnerability and putting yourself out there, I think we’re getting it a little bit wrong about what that means as an art or a practice … Artists and writers and truth-tellers and poets are actually not gushing vulnerability in the moment. These are people who write from their scars, not their open wounds. These are people who find a way to experience life in the moment. They sit with it for while. They sit with the personal pain and they mine it for gold.” ~Glennon Doyle, from a podcast with Erica Williams Simon
When is the right time to share a personal story?
I don’t know the answer to that. If you are on a similar writing journey — if you know you are meant to tell your stories and offer them to others, you must be the one to decide when and how much and in what way to share.
But I love this idea of mining our pain for gold.
This is what I’ve discovered about the process so far, as I’ve done the hard work of mining my painful stories for gold, and writing them:
Be aware of a painful life event → know you need healing → sit down and write it → cry as you write → keep writing anyway → find safe people to share it with → read the story out loud to them → cry as you read it → keep reading anyway → let yourself heal → return to the awareness of the painful event which has now turned into a written story → edit → when you’re ready, share your story publicly → release → let yourself continue to heal → watch how the story transforms into something else entirely as it touches other humans → listen to how it healed others → hug yourself up real good knowing you did something brave even though you were scared → repeat.
I’m here to tell you, too: there was A LOT MORE to my healing than that, and I still have a long way to go. Please, if you are suffering, explore all of your options for healing — therapy, community, spirituality, nature, and so on and so forth.
But writing certainly helps. It has helped me immensely in processing my pain, and I’m grateful.
What about you? What are your thoughts on sharing painful, personal stories?
The brave thing I did:
Lindsay Linegar is a writer living in her home state, California. Her educational background is in International Development (MA), Psychology (BA), and she has significant experience working as a creativity coach. She currently finds herself thrilled to be a dog walker and yoga student as she works on her first book, based on her three-year adventure in South Sudan. She loves making meaningful connections with humans, wondering at nature, doodling, listening to good music, and more than anything, dancing. You can reach her through email at lindsaylinegar@gmail.com
