The Long Winter | Pt I: The Truth
I wrote this entire essay, then I wrote it again. I re-wrote it once more after that and this is what you see here. Each time I was inching my way closer and closer to the truth of how I feel, and what I want to say.
The truth is, I’ve spent the entirety of this year writing. For months straight, I have been digging into the depths of my past — my story as I’ve experienced it.
Reclaiming it in this way has been the single most profound creative act of my life, and my mother’s death was the catalyst. The last three months have been arduous, sometimes shocking, deeply tender work, but it has also been radically healing.
Writing my way through grief I believe, in many ways has saved me from the depths of it. It’s been an experience that feels like water - rushing out and through me and onto the page (laptop screen). And it started when three nights after she died, I could think of nothing else my heart wanted do, but finally build a home for my words. And just like that, I did it. Completed in one night.
In the immediate wake of her death, I was sharing the story with a dear friend I’ve had since first grade. She’s been there through the messiest parts of my life and has stayed by my side anyways. As I shared some of the details, she said, “Wow. I know it’s a cliche, but Liz - you really just can’t make this up.”
And in that instant - like a penny drop from the sky - I knew I must write my story. I didn’t understand or really care why. I just knew it was something that had to be done once and for all, if only for myself.
Given the devastation of my mother’s death and what has unfolded after, I was aware of the intensity of the season I was entering. With guidance from some wise women in my life, I was encouraged towards the notion of scaffolding. That if I was going to go into the depths of my past, unearthing truths and memories of my story, I needn’t go it alone. And so, I timidly reached out to some writing colleagues of mine, asking for a place to start.
I built in a structure for my writing, and employed Story Guides, who I meet with regularly to help draw the story out. They listen for what resonates, where the truth lies and have me dig further there. We have been together in writing this, from January to Spring.
And, the experience has been divine. Transformative. The greatest gift I have ever given myself - the gift of time and space to gain clarity of mind. The gentlest approach to grief I can imagine — a season of flowing it all out, alchemizing, and ultimately, as I have done all my life, finding some way to turn it into art. This is what gives my aching heart great peace - to turn the tragedies of life stories into something beautiful. This is what I am on earth to do.
The end goal is not important now, but the work is underway. There is a book being formed. It is a great act of love and I can feel my mother here. I spent my life trying to burrow myself into the home of her, but she didn’t feel at home within herself, so I could never really find her.
But somehow, through this experience of writing - I’m finding my way to her now.
This has been my journey through The Long Winter, - what began as an intuitive hunch, and led me to this moment, right here.
At last I’m finding home, it’s been here all along, buried deep — in me.