Writing with the Women

Bonnie - Age Three

I've recently finished teaching another memoir writing course at the Puyallup Senior Activity Center. I've been teaching there for the past two years. It's eight weeks, two hours each Friday and this is how it's been advertised:

Learn and experience the benefits of writing about your life. This 8-week course will get you started and keep you going. In this fun, friendly, interactive workshop where you can share your stories, you'll have a reference book to aid you and plenty of encouragement.

This brief description doesn't begin to explain what can transpire in this course, nor does it describe my gratitude for participants' open and honest sharing of personal histories. The following piece written by one of the participants comes closer than I ever could to telling what memoir writing with others can do. (This class happened to be all women).

WRITING WITH THE WOMEN
By Jacquie Martens

To meet new people and develop my writing skills, I decided to take a writing class at the local Senior Center.  The only one available was a class on how to write your memoirs which didn’t really interest me but started much earlier than any other.

The first class we all introduced ourselves and the teacher went over what the class involved.  We purchased the book she would use to teach us.  So far, so good.  Then we went over what was going to be needed for the second class….a notebook divided into different areas so we could organize our thoughts and writings as we worked our way through our past.  Made good sense.  Then came the news our writings would be like offerings and our innermost thoughts and feelings would be exposed to one another for review and critique.  Busted!    It felt like showing up at my first Karaoke experience with a sore throat.

There were only a few of us and our first assignment was to “free write” a timed piece to be read and commented on by the class.  After explaining the concept of free writing, we were set loose with our project.  As we went around the table reading our work, I felt a couple of the students were very uncomfortable with the process.  One because he couldn’t hear and the other didn’t seem to want to share what she’d written. 

By the fourth class, we had dwindled to three…myself and two other ladies who were taking the class for the second time…they had enjoyed the first so much they didn’t want to stop.  The classes were following the book written by a local author and the lessons required we search our memories.  The assignments were short essays written to reveal our best recollections of time past.  Stories began to come easier as we developed trust in our classmates and we were more comfortable as we exposed them to the critique process…

The woman beside me has an important story to tell.  To her, this isn’t just a class…it’s cobblestones in a road that’s taking her through the memories of a war torn continent…beginning in her early years with family as the clock ticked--marking the passage of time not just in years, but months, days and sometimes minutes.  Her stories come alive when she reads.  The language is English, but spoken with a heavy European accent which only adds to the telling.  The chosen words bespeak an intelligence and grasp of the importance in sharing.  Her life, touched by so much drama, can only be described as remarkable.  We encourage her to keep writing and are mesmerized by her memories

The woman across from me tells of a simpler, kinder life, one of family, love and understanding in a marriage that’s spanned 50 years….to the same man.  Her words suggest a spiritual formation providing guidelines to be followed, making a better neighbor in a better community with a stable future.  The story of her marriage, leaving her parents and familiar surroundings and their first home in a different state took you there as she experienced the feelings of beginning a new life

They’re an inspiration to me, and as I listen to these two ladies in class, I’m able to put us all in perspective.  Each life, no matter the beginnings, the middles or futures, has meaning.  We each are important in this world and we each have a story to tell.  Listening to them and being able to search my own memories makes it easier to face my life with courage. As my path unwinds and I search my soul, I’m understanding some of us write for release, some to tell the family, some to tell the world and, in my case, the lady in the mirror as I discover who I really am.