I entered the MFA Creative Non-Fiction program with one project, and then was shaken awake on the first day when they said:
“You are here for a reason. Don’t write the book you can write without us. Write the book you need our support for.”
This echoed in my mind during residency, pitching days, first semester assignments and as I wrote the first pages of my book.
It turns out that once I went deeper into the process of what I wanted to put on paper, I was looking at a memoir. At first, I thought it was a memoir through essays, and now, at about three-quarters of the way through the first draft process, I can see that it is in fragments.
What I am working on isn’t a chronological journey of my experiences and reflections, but a nuanced inspection of my evangelical-influenced upbringing in a Canadian east coast mega church, how that intermingles with inherited family trauma and the struggle to find an identity as a girl through to adulthood. On the outside, this all feels very whitewashed. Very WASPY at its core, and yet with each fragment, I start to understand more and more not just how quiet the damage is but how deep it has gone.
I am not the first who has put pen to paper to try to unravel how a religion was interwoven into every aspect of her upbringing and family, and I certainly won’t be the last. Still, hopefully, I will put words to something that on the outside is passed on with a shrug, but on the inside, for many of us, is the death of a thousand cuts.
So if you need me -
I’ll be on the floor, sorting the shards of glass that once caused incredible pain and finally making them into something worth reading, something worth understanding and something that will provide words for the desire to heal.
*…and if you know me and how I journey through life, there will be winks added - because even in the darkness, there is always just enough humour to flip to the next page.
Onwards,
