Overwhelmed
There is that question: “How do you eat an elephant?”
And the answer: “One bite at a time.”
It was the same thing writer Anne Lamott was getting at in her book on writing, Bird by Bird. She tells the story of her brother, who had waited to write his school paper on birds until the night before it was due. Frantic, he asked his father how he would ever get it all done? And the answer was, just write it bird by bird.
In this last section of my memoir, The Undiscovered Country, I am trying to draw to a close the many threads of the previous section, The Old Country. This is the climax, the finale, the meaning, growth, and wisdom part.
While I was writing the deeply painful posts about the abuses in my life, I said to my husband one morning that the writing was “so very hard…it just hurt so much.”
His response, while it sounds harsh, was actually an affirmation of just how well I was doing this work. His comment was delivered with great kindness and encouragement. “I think that is a good thing that it hurts. Not that I wish that for you. But it means you are really hitting the heart of those memories. You’re not just speaking from your brain, but from all those harmed places inside.”
His comment actually gave me relief and the energy to go on.
Buried in binders
When I got through all of those entries, I felt a sense of great…achievement…relief…gratitude. I thought to myself, Well, I’ve made it through the worst of it. Now I just have to draw the threads together and finish. So that should be easier.
Yet, every time I looked at all the folders spread out on that bed, each carrying nuggets of insights on different topics I’d introduced before, I grew more and more tense.
Even worse, there were the ten or twelve large binders – my journals – that I needed to go through and tag entries that would really demonstrate those points I needed to share. It felt like someone was stacking all of those folders and binders on my back, crushing it under all the pressure. It hit a peak this past weekend.
I had taken a break to give myself a proper celebration for the Mother’s Day weekend. A visit with a friend for coffee. A delicious dinner out with my husband. And a lovely phone call with my son. It was glorious. But then I sat down with the first binder, and the second, and the third….and I started to panic, flooded with the immense weight of it all.
If I thought I was speaking metaphorically about my writing journey descending into the Nigredo, Dark-Night-of-the-Soul place, this was the moment reality came crashing in full force.
It wasn’t that I would lack for material. It’s because I’d kept such good journal notes that I didn’t even know where to start. Flipping through the binder pages, tagged with topics, so many important points jumped out at me. I had never realized how many issues I confronted, how often some of them came up over and over. How things see-sawed, fell off the radar, then surfaced again.
I had forgotten so much of what I’d written and observed and learned in these last few years. I’d forgotten how many different tools and approaches we used. I’d forgotten that for the EMDR work alone, over eight years, there had been twenty-five rounds of it. Twenty-five rounds of heavy dives into so many issues. Because I had so many issues to confront. And because I had to break them up a little at a time. I couldn’t take on everything all at once. No one can. That work had to be done bit by bit so as not to sink me.
How was I ever going to decide what to use, and then distill it all into a meaningful story for both my readers and myself? I felt like I couldn’t even get up out of the chair. For the first time in this, I wanted to quit. Yet…I knew I couldn’t.
My husband noticed my mood and asked what was up.
In despair, I said, “You know, I thought I was on the home stretch – finally at the easiest part of this process. But ….this is the hardest part of all!”
Before I even finished saying the words, he started to laugh. And frankly, in hearing my words, so did I. He wasn’t being mean. It was more like “Oh, honey, I hear you!” We both knew this was the part of the work where you really have to dig deep to hang on.
I couldn’t quit…and I won’t. I just needed to speak my despair out loud. And once I said the words, I also heard how ridiculous they sounded.
I mean, what did I expect? The most IMPORTANT part of the book – the insights and healing wisdoms — and I thought those would be the EASIEST part?
Then he looked at me with total love and confidence, and said, “You know you’ve got this. You just do. You’ve had it all along.”
And, in that moment, I knew it, too.
The “swamp” of the long-distance run
Yes, at times it feels impossible. It’s that “long-distance-run” place where you can’t see anything anymore, not the beginning of the race nor the end. All you can see is what is right in front of you — that endless middle slog. And at this moment, I was in the swamp, up to my hips in mud. And no matter where I looked, there were just endless miles of ooze.
Thus, my only choice besides quitting was to keep sloshing through. Because even swamps don’t go on forever. Sooner or later, the ground rises….and I knew that so would I.
I just had to figure out how to take a huge pile of notes and distill them down to their essence to craft a story worth reading. For the cooks out there, it’s like the difference between starting with a panful of Balsamic vinegar, then cooking it slowly, stirring and stirring, until it concentrates into that wonderfully sweet glaze – that Balsamic reduction.
And of course it is possible. I mean, I’d already lived these things. I knew they would get better.
If there’s a yellow pad…there can be a plan…
I also came across an article — one of those Facebook stories where you wonder if it is true or not. But for this one, it didn’t matter. It was a story about a nurse who worked with care all her life for her patients, refusing to quit. And she, too, struggled to keep going on the difficult days. But there was a paragraph at the end that said it all:
“We cannot save everyone, but we can save someone. And that someone is worth everything…ordinary people doing their jobs with extraordinary compassion can change the course of a life…one act of courage, one moment of refusing to stay silent, can echo through generations.”
So, after my moments of hopelessness, I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do next — I pulled out a yellow legal pad of paper and my favorite gel pen — thank God for yellow note pads. As long as there are yellow note pads on this earth, I think I will always find my way out of the mud.
Now, back to the story….
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and return home for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
Soul Mosaic 
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