Why I write

Last weekend I participated in a day-long women's movement-and-writing retreat with yogi, writer, and teacher Anne Cushman. If you don't know Anne's work, I highly recommend it, especially her recent memoir, The Mama Sutra: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Path of Motherhood. The day (on-line, of course) was billed, "Write Your Way Home" and began with a period of movement practice, followed by a number of timed writings and sharing of our work in small groups. The very first writing prompt, "I write because....," unleashed a flood of emotion in me and the two other women who shared their work with me and witnessed mine. In this time of global dissolution, grief and fear, how poignant it is to free one's own voice; to share pain, hope, memory with other women, strangers who swiftly become comforters, confidantes, and mentors; to bless one another's words and tears.


I write because
 
I write because
tears are not enough.
I write because
I can’t stop writing,
because I can’t not write,
because a hand moving
across a page
or two hands fluttering
over a keyboard
are at least
some kind of movement,
some kind of
taking up space
in the world.
 
I write because sometimes
it’s easier than talking,
because, yes, sometimes
I just need to get it out
with no face before me,
no one responding,
sitting there and
thinking their own
thoughts and waiting
their turn to
interrupt my belly flow
with some completely
other scenario, ripping
or tipping me away
from that inner
underground river waiting,
waiting to burst forth
from my own cells.
 
I write because this life
is too big and too complicated
to just keep quiet about,
to hunker down in stillness
in fear-filled bunkers,
waiting for the next explosion,
the cannon mortars,
the assault, the falling bodies,
waiting for the next strike,
the one that will annihilate
this questing, longing
breathing being.
 
I write because of the long
and short of it, the
blessing and the curse,
the unavoidable choice,
the not-knowing and
the undoing.
 
I write because the truth is medicine
and I need healing now,
we all need so
much healing.
 
And I write because
the cause demands it.
Be-cause, be the cause,
the catalyst, the small flame
that lights the greater one,
the source of something
worthwhile, a drop in
the bucketful of many,
many drops, until
together we are a flood
of tears, of rain,
of fresh water, of plenty,
of delight, of love––
a flood of living, a bucketful
of compassion.
 
I write to leave a trace
of what this heart
once sought.
 
          
© Diane Elliot 2020