Emerging from the cornfield
Yesterday’s post compared this part of the work to performing an autopsy and writing the final report. But while it “can work,” it didn’t feel quite right. While it is a logical metaphor given my science background, it is too “left-brained, cerebral. What is really needed is a much more emotional and soulful one.
Instead, I keep coming back to this part of the book being the Midrash. The “extra part” that adds the soulful pieces that the story couldn’t tell.
It’s funny, but as I was sensing these things, my husband came to me and questioned the autopsy metaphor, too. He correctly pointed out that I am not dead, not by a long shot, nor is my story done. “You are a survivor,” he said, like a person who was in a symbolic “plane crash.” “And out of the rubble, smoke, debris, and bodies, somehow you walked out of that carnage toward the helpers and are still embracing life.”
He talked about that devastating 1989 plane crash in a cornfield in Iowa. The plane had lost all hydraulic control, and it took every last ounce of skill for the pilot to bring it down at all. After the crash, there were actual survivors. Ed related their descriptions — dazed and stumbling out of the green cornfield, picking their way through smoke, and over broken pieces of plane and people to go to the emergency responders. Those people were dressed in bright vests, which the survivors just focused on, like bright beacons of help.
In the same vein, he spoke of me as having experienced an emotional disaster, a survivor who experienced a similar chaos, and struggled her way to the helpers along the way who saved me. And now, through my writing, it was like I was putting on one of those brightly-colored emergency vests and signaling to any others out there, “Come this way. I am a helper.”
His words silenced me but immediately resonated. I have often thought of my life in terms of “I am still here…I’m not dead yet. In fact, I THRIVE.” Despite everything that happened, as many times as I was shoved down, I got back up. Often messy. Sometimes poorly. But I got up and am still here.
THAT is the message I want to give a reader — the hope that each could say, “Despite it all…I’m still here, and I THRIVE in my own way.” And thriving can be a very quiet life. But the important thing is that it still IS life. A life of one’s choosing. That is what I wish for all.
Grounded, through the helpers
My therapist noted to me yesterday that throughout all the difficult writing, I stayed “grounded.” She had spoken of the author, Pat Conroy, who required being hospitalized every time he completed a book dealing with his family traumas. And her concern all along was that I do this slowly and carefully, so as not to come apart.
In reflecting on her comments, the following thoughts came to me…from somewhere beyond me:
“Through all the writing, I think I felt driven…by something, a force beyond me. The writing was not just a need for me, but there was something else saying, “Do it.” So I didn’t question it.
It was like that voice decades ago when I was struggling to get out of that house, and one day it literally spoke in my head and said, “You have to get out now. If you don’t get out now, you’ll never get out.” I heard the directive. I knew it was from beyond me. I accepted it and never questioned it. And though I was ill-prepared, hell, totally unprepared, I believed it, trusted it, and never looked back. I jumped, believing I would be led.
It’s been the same with this writing. I have felt driven to show up and do the work, partly for me, but partly because I was the tool for someone else. A pipe for water to flow through, from some distant reservoir, to another. I just felt it was always about something bigger than just me.
So I didn’t question it. I just heard it. Accepted it. And moved, one step at a time. I trusted that I would be led. And helped. And…protected. I could have cracked, mentally. This has not been a work to trifle with alone. I could do it because others were looking out for me and watching my back. Ed. My therapist. Friends. God. I was given helpers for this work. Maybe I can, in turn, be a helper for another. I only know that I will trust it, and keep going.”
Thus, this section of the book will not be a retelling of the story or a left-brained experiment. It will be the passing on of intuitive things that come through my soul.
Tags: blog, life, love, mental-health, writing
Soul Mosaic 
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