I sometimes think about writing a memoir. It’d be themed around my journey to peace after growing up under a parent who didn’t have what he needed to take care of himself or his children. That’d be one angle, anyway. Maybe it would start like this:
I was 47 hours into a 48-hour meditation retreat when I remembered just how much screaming was in my upbringing. We were always shouting at each other. A nasty volume is still rattling around inside me.
I hadn’t totally buried this fact. Not exactly. More like, you’re in a room and you don’t notice the roar of the AC until it suddenly cuts off. The silence underlines the noise.
Or perhaps this explains it: you strap a heavy bag to your back and start walking, and sooner or later, all that weight you’re lugging around isn’t extra. It’s just part of how things are.
This wasn’t what I was expecting. The theme of the weekend was The Five Remembrances, which are teachings on death and illness and loss, not the trauma of our youth. But in that final hour, when participants were invited to speak for the first time in two days, there was a woman who brought up her father’s out-of-control drinking and how it affected her childhood.
Dad never really touched alcohol. He couldn’t, given his conditions. A couple sips and he’d be sick for half a week. That’s just details, though. In her words about what it was like to be her, I heard what it was like to be me.
All of a sudden, I was touching what I knew so deeply: venom.
In my mind’s eye, I saw a big black snake that lived underneath a dilapidated old house, hateful and angry and coiled up and just waiting to strike. I could tell it had been there a very long time, long enough to know me and my dad and his parents and their grandparents. Soon enough, I would understand that it has been living inside of us for more lifetimes than I can wrap my thinking mind around.
Something else was clear, too: the snake didn’t want to be there any more than I wanted it there. Like the rest of us, it was hurting. That’s why it was going around biting everyone.
I didn’t want to kill it. I just wanted to open whatever door was needed to let it crawl out and slither away.
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What’s above may end up being page 1. These are some other posts I’ve written that could turn out to be page 10, or page 65, or page 150:
I’ve got a new writing group starting up next week. Tuesday nights, 7-9 EST. Here’s the sign-up link:
Here’s what a few attendees have said about their experiences:
"This was a transformative experience for me. It gave me a chance to process a lot of change in my life." - Dan
"I'd been wanting to write for awhile, but never had the time and inspiration to do it. This class made it low-pressure and non-intimidating." - Karen
"I don't know of any other space like this in the world right now. It is helping me grow in ways I'm only just starting to see." - Nicole
Be well,
Jonathan
Seeing the snake
Please write your book, Jonathan. It would bless so many.
Do you feel like you've opened the door? Is it open all the way? Does it change day by day?