The memoirist Mary Karr says that if you cannot sit down right now and write about the worst thing that ever happened to you, you cannot write a memoir. This is true. Even if you don’t have an extreme trauma event to revisit, memoirs are notorious for being tough on the heart. The past is both the place of memory and the place of lies. Mary Karr and many others report finding that the stories they had been telling themselves all along were false. Psychologist, Jordan Peterson often tells people that when we read history, we are supposed to read ourselves into the villains of history. It is honest that way. When you discover you are the villain in your family's life story, it's magnitudes heavier than playing make-believe in Peterson's manner. Frederich Nietzche rightly advised that if “you stare into the abyss long enough, it stares back at you.” For this reason, there is no small amount of people who have needed medical stabilization due to a so-called psyche break while writing a book. I know two such authors personally. It happens. So, for the sake of both safety and quality here are three tips to prevent such things from happening.
Stay in the Word of God
The Psalms are a summation of every space the Christian heart will ever inhabit. For millennia, religious Christians have made a practice of reading the Psalms daily. They inherited this practice from the Ancient Jews. The Word of God is so many things, but the Psalms, especially, have a stabilizing effect on the human heart. Consider Psalm 42:
Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God.
My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life; when can I enter and see the face of God?
My tears have become my bread, by night, by day, as I hear it said all day long: “Where is your God?”
These things will I remember as I pour out my soul: how I would lead the rejoicing crowd into the house of God, amid cries of gladness and thanksgiving, the throng wild with joy.
Why are you cast down, my soul, why groan within me? Hope in God; I will praise him still, my savior and my God.
My soul is cast down within me as I think of you, from the country of Jordan and Mount Hermon, from the Hill of Mizar.
Deep is calling on deep, in the roar of waters; your torrents and all your waves swept over me.
By day the Lord will send loving kindness; by night I will sing to him, praise the God of my life.
I will say to God, my rock: "Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning oppressed by the foe?”
With cries that pierce me to the heart, my enemies revile me, saying to me all day long: "Where is your God?”
Why are you cast down, my soul, why groan within me? Hope in God; I will praise him still, my savior and my God.
We have all been in that place of desolation. The Word of God captures it. Perfect resonation. Scripter is for us. It reveals us to ourselves. Everyone gets to live through Psalm 42. Stay in The Word.
Keep it on ice
There is an interesting YouTuber named Jordan Ferrone with a curiously simple concept. Living in frosty Winnipeg, he decided to record daily ice baths in often subzero temperatures. The goal for him was to help with his mental health. On day seven hundred-something, Jordan sits in his glorious frozen horse trough narrating into the camera, “…consistency is the bridge between where you are and where you want to be.”
There is more than one takeaway from Jordan’s daily ice plunge. For starters, such a discipline is not without its positive spiritual effects. To voluntarily do something difficult with perfect constancy strengthens the will. Prayer is difficult. Discipline in prayer is vital and admittedly difficult. Whether Jordan feels like it or not, he gets in that ice bath each day. Consistency will “bridge the gap” between the memoirist and God. The illuminated writer, the writer who is not topsy-turvy, will have a consistent prayer life. Period.
Another takeaway from Jordan is to honor our creaturely needs. The very nature of the memoirist is to inhabit the immaterial soul for a time and report back. The immaterial soul. That is: the intellect, memory, and will. However, human beings are a composite of soul and body. And in the present, the body impetrates effects on the soul. If the brain is not cared for, which is part of the body, then cognitive and emotional life will suffer. Ice baths are a radical form of self-care, but the positive effects on the nervous system are undeniable. We don’t need ice baths to become good writers, but we need to care for ourselves. This brings me to my last tip.
Keep it on Ice
Whiskey baby! I love my whiskey on ice. The things of Creation are good. Let me take that back. Before the world became an insane asylum, wise people used to say that all the things in Creation are good, it's all about how we use them. Most people have a go-to substance to lean on when things get heavy. This is normal and good. Things are there for a reason! St. Thomas Aquinas once quipped that the cure for depression is a glass of wine and a warm bath. We forget to be gentle with ourselves sometimes. We can also be too gentle with ourselves. After your glass of wine and hot bath at the end of the day, or whatever you fancy, this is the one last must-do for the memoirist: examine your conscience. Not your life, that’s the memoir. Just your conscience for that one day. A daily examination of conscience prevents us from tilting too far south.
Comments