One of the hardest things I’m doing right now is writing a memoir. Every time I sit down at my laptop and begin recalling a memory or a hardship to write about I freeze. It’s like all of a sudden I can’t figure out how to put words together and when I do, a knot will well up in my throat and my face scrunches up trying to keep the trauma at bay.

Trauma creates closed mouths. When someone experiences something that has harmed them emotionally, physically, or spiritually it causes them to shut down. The throat chakra blocks up. Maya Angelou is an example of this. At seven years old, she told her family about the man who had raped her, and when she found out that he had been killed she stopped talking for five years. “I thought my voice had killed him, that was my seven-year-old logic. So I stopped talking… My voice could kill, so I stopped.”

I’ve told many of these stories before but it’s easy to speak them. They come out without making eye contact, covered by a grin as if everything is okay. I spill the details as easily as one tells a joke and they evaporate into the wind. Gone from memory just as they were before the story began.

Now as I write them, I can’t bear to see the words.

I can’t look them in the eye.

Because I know if I write them down they will be there when the story ends.

I’m not writing them in disappearing ink.

The words will still be there.

Cemented in time for all to see,

To reflect me back to me

And that is what’s so damn terrifying.

The memory will no longer be mine.

It will be interpreted and ripped apart, molded, and questioned by other minds. It will be theirs now too.

The hardest thing I’m doing right now is accepting what comes.

When the shame arises, let it come.

When pain wants to say hello, say hi back.

I remember that I am safe here. That I have surpassed these moments and grown from them.

This has led me to the question, “If I cry from a memory or feel upset at a story, does that mean I haven’t healed?”

I don’t really have an answer to that, but I’d like to think the answer is no.

I have the capacity to go back and reminisce on how I felt during those moments which allows the present me to better understand the past me.

Even though these emotions are hard to face it’s important for my continuing growth to challenge them head-on and use them in my writing.

I encourage you to not run from the discomfort. Allow the emotions to overwhelm you.

You’ll find they haven’t come to hurt you, only to urge you to grow.

As Maya Angelou has said,  “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

With all the Love I AM

Tori F. Baby

#livehappii