"How Do I Write About Being Hurt By Loved Ones?"

Students ask me about this all the time.

Writing and publishing are two entirely different enterprises. I want to remind you that you have incredible freedom in writing. The page is your galaxy entirely, and yours alone. With that in mind, I’d encourage you to embrace that freedom and do literally whatever you want with and within that galaxy of yours. THEN, next week or next month or next year, etc etc etc, you can think what you want to do with that material. Is this a piece I’d like to submit for workshop? Is this something I’d like to publish one day? Do I want to use this part but not that part? Did I write this just so I could see my thoughts and memories on the page? So forth and so on. But whatever you decide to do in the future, the galaxy is yours now. 

Of course, I don’t know the specifics of your situation, but I will say, trauma has a surprisingly long afterlife. And one of its many reincarnations is thwarted permission. The systems in which we live – our societies, our communities, our families – have various direct and indirect ways of instilling the idea that we somehow need to protect the very people who hurt us.

Everything that has happened to you is yours; just as everything you’ve done is yours.