Soul Mosaic

The status of my “lab report”

At the beginning of this memoir, I wrote about the nature of my “journey” and the tools I would need. That first part – The Old Country, the story of my life experiences – was one of exploration…going back. Observing. I needed things from that past, as well as my paintings and journals. I described the process as a lab experiment, which included gathering the supplies, then running the experiment. That part was my revisiting the past to see what was there.

The Undiscovered Country is that part of the experimental process that generates the final lab report and gets at “What did I learn” and possibly, “What have I missed?” It involves assessing, analyzing, and questioning. It often requires some extra research to help with drawing my conclusions.

So, the bed full of folders, books, paintings, journals, and research, and the binders holding the entries for the story of my life, is my overwhelming pile of experimental data. Now, somehow, I have to bring order to it, make sense of it all, and see what it tells me.

I think of this part of the Undiscovered Country as a journey through the Underworld. I have to go where I have not yet been and be willing to stay in the discomfort of not knowing what I will find.

The autopsy

In a way, it is an autopsy. All of the data are the “body to be examined.”

To do an autopsy, first you need a logical, ordered, step-by-step procedure. Here, my procedure is mapped on a chart – my mind map. It lists all those topics laid out on the bed that I need to address, the order in which I will tackle each, and extra notes and reminders for the important points along the way.

Another requirement is autopsy tools. My “scalpels and probes” will include:

• Questions
• Action Verbs
• Extra Research materials: Paintings, journals, books, movies, songs, quotes, whatever it takes to expand on each topic

And the last step requires time: To reflect, to decide, and to write up the results.

The things I write will be that “midrash” – the parts missing from the story itself that add clarity and reveal things not seen before.

So, next up…WHY do it this way?

Tags: book review, books, fiction, memoir, writing

This entry was posted on April 7, 2026 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Memoir - sexual abuse trauma recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.