One day a friend on twitter
Sent me a message.
She said:
“I’m writing for a magazine
And exploring my next memoir.
Each article I publish
Is a chapter from this next book
Would you take a look
At what I’ve written
And tell me what you think?”
*
I was glad to help
And began reading
The woman’s story.
It was engaging, compelling
And very interesting.
Then one day,
I began to look
At the magazine.
It was called Life As A Human
Life As A Human
And was a very high quality publication.
I was very impressed.
I began to think about
Submitting some of my own writings,
I asked my friend about it,
And she said they were
A very solid outfit,
And that she thought
It would be well worth my time
To submit some work to them.
*
I contacted the editor,
Thinking this was like other sites
I had published in
Where they would let me republish
Posts I had written
For my blog.
I sent the editor a couple of samples.
She replied that they would be
Very interested in publishing my work
But that they preferred
Original content.
That stumped me for a while.
*
Then the dots connected
And I realized I had original content
That I wanted to explore.
I was writing my next book
A memoir about a healing journey
That I was taking
To overcome the abuse
"Mamaw" and young Danny
Laid on me by
My crazy Grandma.
She had told me
If I wanted to be
A famous writer when I grew up
They would call me crazy
And lock me up.
I had come to realize
That crazy was not too strong
A word to use
About this grandmother.
*
So I wrote my first chapter,
Polished and edited,
Cleaned it up,
And submitted it to the magazine.
They loved it!
The editor made a few changes
Mostly tightening here and there,
Then we published it.
Why Is This Fantastic News So Scary?
Got astonishing results
Lots of page views,
And plenty of comments.
I got some wonderful feedback
From the readers.
Doing it this way
Helped me stay focused
On the real essence
Of the story I was trying to tell.
Which was helpful
Because this was going to be
One of the most challenging books
I would ever write.
It was a complex topic,
Covering many years,
And I needed this unique method
To help me see
How to tell this story.
*
I made amazing progress,
I was writing my next book
A chapter at a time
And publishing each chapter
As I went.
I got editorial insight
Feedback from readers,
And doing it this way,
Kept me moving forward.
Later I would compile
All the chapters
And there would be
My book.
A friend reminded me
That this was a common method
In years gone by –
To publish chapters as articles
And later
Make it a book.
Sounded like a plan to me!
*
Then something unexpected happened.
It was only after
I had published 25 chapters
Just over half the book
With the wonderful guidance
Of the editor
And the astonishing feedback
From the readers
Which continued as they
Watched the story unfold.
I realized that writing
And publishing
Like I was doing
Was actually part of my healing.
*
Sometimes
I call myself
A very gifted
Slow learner.
I will realize a truth
And be astonished by it
Only to discover
That my friends had seen my truth
Long before I did
And no longer found it remarkable.
That’s how it was with
This experience.
How could I not
Have seen how healing
This process would be?
Well, I just didn’t.
But it happened that way!
*
Writing and publishing
My healing journey
Became part of
My healing journey
And propelled that healing forward
Like few other things I had tried.
Today, as I look back
At the first chapters,
It’s like I’m writing about
Another person,
Someone who had
A serious writer’s block,
And had walked away from
Publishing two books
Because of what
His crazy Grandma said and did
When he was
Eight years old.
*
I’m not that person any more.
I will publish this memoir
About my healing journey
In two thousand and twelve.
Healing The Writer - Chapters 1 thru 29, in reverse order
It will be called
Healing The Writer
And in a very real sense
That’s what the book did!
**********
Photo Credits:
“Mamaw” and young Danny, copyright Dan L. Hays
Life As A Human logo copyright Life As A Human magazine.
“In Written Memories” Mutasim Billah @flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
“Good Question” e-magic @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
Thoughts Along The Road to Healing 
Can’t wait to read your completed second memoir. Have loved watching you grow and heal as you write over the past year.
Thanks Patricia! Yes, it’s been a pretty amazing “unfolding” of my creativity! 🙂 This next memoir promises to be pretty astonishing!
Have loved watching you grow through your writing this past year.
I’m pretty excited about how things have healed through writing for me! I just wrote two more chapters at the end of my next memoir. The first, about reclaiming my poet. The second, about how I am now able to write as a freelance writer – on a deadline – and produce excellent writing whenever I need to! WOW! 🙂
Hi Dan,
I want you to know two things.
1) It has been a privilege for us to have your words grace our pages.
2) It is a special blessing that through all of this, I can now call you … friend.
You are a bright ray of sunshine in what has often been a difficult journey. I am so very grateful for you Dan L. Hays!
Your friend always,
Gil
Gil –
Thank you so much for your kind and powerful comments. It is nice to be honored as being such an important part of your journey. I feel privileged to be a writer for Life As A Human. I feel blessed as well to have you as a friend.
I’m touched to be called a “bright ray of sunshine.”
Thanks! 🙂
Dan
Dan, thank you so much for sending me the link to this. How exciting, that writing about your healing journey, has become part of your healing journey! I am on a similar path…. writing about healing, and healing as I’m writing.
Four days ago I published a post on my blog, entitled “What Caused My PTSD? My Trauma Story is Hard to Believe — But TRUE (Part 1).” Right after I posted that pivotal piece, I was amazed to discover that I can now brush my teeth without simultaneously reading a book! I haven’t been able to do that for YEARS, because if I didn’t constantly keep my mind occupied in some way, such as by reading, I was flooded with intrusive trauma memory thoughts. Do you know how awkward it is to brush your teeth and read at the same time? When I got my new power toothbrush, the first time I read and brushed at the same time, I fell into the bathtub. No lie!
I am so excited, because if I have had this much improvement in my PTSD symptoms after posting just the first part of my trauma story, I can’t wait to see what will happen after I post the rest of it. Having had two very mentally ill and abusive parents, AND alcoholic abusive grandparents, I have a lot of trauma to write about. I have written bits and pieces of my trauma story, here and there, over the past year or two, mostly as comments on OTHER people’s blogs, whose stories had primed my pump, so to speak. But this is the first time that I have written, on my own blog, my trauma story — and, instead of writing it in unconnected bits and pieces, I am beginning at the very beginning, and writing my story as it happened, in context. Doing it this way is much more healing, I’m finding, than writing it in disconnected pieces.
It is also much more healing, I believe, for me to do write my story on my own blog, rather than in a string of comments on other people’s blogs. This is MY story, after all. It’s time I OWNED it.
Wow. Nine months and 2 days ago, I was taken to the emergency room because a brand new trauama and tragic loss, had ripped the scabs off of my old traumas and losses…. and I was on the brink of suicide. The ONLY thing that stopped me from killing myself last June, was not wanting to hurt the ones I love, who love me, my husband and grown children and grandchildren foremost among them.
NOW, I am so very grateful that I did NOT kill myself nine months ago! Life is an exciting and worthwhile journey, despite traumas, tragedies, and nasty bossy know-it-all judgmental people — the likes of whom I no longer allow in my life, not in any way shape or form. (Speaking of sick family of origin folks, and their ilk. Just Say NO to Abusers!)
Dan, you are a great inspiration. I love your blog, your writings, and the Life As A Human site, which I didn’t know about until I “met” you on twitter.
Life is sometimes very hard, but life is always a great and wonderful gift. I’m glad to be here!
Elaina
Elaina –
Wonderful to hear your healing process, and how much writing and posting part of your trauma story has been part of it! Beginning at the beginning, yes, it is a powerful process. I worked years ago at an adolescent chemical dependency unit. When a teenager was first admitted, one of the obligatory aspects was to “write your story.” That was a powerful commentary to me about the healing power of grounding yourself in your story, and owning that part of yourself. It continues true today for me, and it’s outstanding to hear how that same process is working in your life!
What a wondrous journey we are embarked on, and how it has caused changes in our world – such as with friendships. I just wrote a poem about that called Evolutions, and I didn’t realize how powerfully friendships that waned because of my healing journey had affected me. I even wrote a poem To The Basement People about how I had to let go of people who would try to hold me back from healing. So I really get it what you’re experiencing now.
Great that we’ve connected, and I’m honored that you gather so much inspiration from my blog and writings! 🙂
Warmly,
Dan
Dan, I am particularly intrigued by what you said regarding the friendship/relationship changes that have happened as a result of your healing journey. You said: “I just wrote a poem about that called Evolutions, and I didn’t realize how powerfully friendships that waned because of my healing journey had affected me. I even wrote a poem To The Basement People about how I had to let go of people who would try to hold me back from healing.”
I would love to read those 2 poems. Are they published online?
A book I just started reading today, “The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused — and Start Standing Up for Yourself” by Beverly Engel, is really opening my eyes to the many ways I have let people walk all over me, for the greater part of 59 years! I have come a long way in learning to be true to myself, but I still have a long way yet to go. Engel’s book has a 23 question self-assessment quiz in the first chapter. Today, I answered 15 of those 23 questions the way a doormat “Nice Girl” would answer them! Beverly Engel states, in so many words, that if you answered just ten or more of her 23 questions in the affirmative, you have major problems in this area. But truly, until the year I turned 50, when my lifelong PTSD was finally properly diagnosed, I would have answered ALL 23 of those questions like the self-effacing doormat I had been trained by my abusive childhood to be. So yes, I have absolutely come a long way…. and I refuse to give up, I am not going to stop until I have gone ALL the way to becoming the Strong, Unique Woman I believe my God created me to be.
There are people, even in the online healing-from-abuse movement, who take intense and immediate offense if someone they are trying to “help” refuses to bow down to their all-knowing guru-ship (how do you like that word I just coined?). When I see any such person’s name or photo at the head of a post or comment, I skip over it entirely. THAT is something I would not have done, before I got some healing under my belt. I was so ultra “NICE,” always putting other people’s feelings ahead of my own, that I didn’t want to be rude by not reading something that someone who had been hurtful to me had written — EVEN THOUGH THAT PERSON HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING WHETHER I READ THEIR POST OR NOT! (Shaking My Head at Myself, now!)
This, however, is very important to me: When I make the hard decision to put someone out of my life, in order to protect myself from their judgments or bossiness or whatever, I do NOT do so with the attitude that they are ALL BAD, or irredeemable. I refuse to give up this aspect of my “niceness,” because this is genuine for me: I believe that no one is all bad, nor is any human being without value. Every person whom God has created is inherently valuable, regardless of how far they may have fallen. It is not my job to try to save them, or to stick around and take abuse from them. But neither is it my job to condemn them, either publically or privately.
I read somewhere that people who can only see in black and white, are lacking in gray matter. I like that.
If we are alive, we are all sitll learning and growing. No one I know of is all the way THERE yet, we all have some learning and growing yet to do. I believe we would do well to respect the inherent, magnificent value that is in every individual, even when they stumble, fall, and fail — which we all do — and even if we have to let them go because they are not good for us.
Elaina
Elaina –
Yes, those poems are both on this blog site. Here are links to Evolutions and To The Basement People. I bet you’ll relate! 🙂
I think it’s wonderful that you’re learning to stand up for yourself. That may be one of my biggest lessons, along with letting go of people who “support me” by trying to pull me down.
Dan
Oops, I just realized that my wordpress link doesn’t go to my http://www.ptsd-is-normal.com blog. I hope you don’t mind me adding that link, Dan? If you do, just delete this comment, no problems. I know there is a way to link my wordpress account to my blog, gotta go do that.
Elaina – Wonderful to have you add the link to your blog! I’m delighted to have that connection to my blog! 🙂
Hello Dan~
First I would like to click the “like” button for Gil’s comment above. I feel the same way about you.
I like this post, Dan. As usual, there is always some insight for me to glean and also many ways I relate. I also consider myself a “gifted slow learner.” 🙂
In reading your post and then Elaina’s comment I realized something. I recently owned my ptsd by posting about it on my own site and have now began to share that part of my journey. I did feel something about that post- fear initially, and then acceptance of myself on a newer level. Gosh, there’s always so much for me to accept about me! Anyhow- it seems that I’ve now taken a very big step toward helping myself heal that ptsd. Like I said in my post, I look ahead of me and see you. I’m happy to have you in my life.
Kim –
Big smile! 🙂 Thanks for your kind and powerful comments. Interesting that you too share the “slow learning” trait.
I have heard you owning the PTSD component of your journey, and sharing it on your site. Yes, acceptance “of myself on a newer level.” I didn’t choose to have PTSD, but it’s what it is, and acknowledging that part of my world has allowed me to own myself more fully as well. I do relate! Wow – I’m honored – “I look ahead of me and see you.” What a powerful statement. I’m letting it in! 🙂
I’m happy to have you in my life as well!
Warmly,
Dan
Where do I go to buy the book ? Healing The Writer. ?? I am 75 years old and still am all screwed up. Good thing the SOB is dead or today I would go take care of him and believe it or not I have more hate for the school guidance consoler than I do the SOB that hurt me. What a book I could write but no one would believe. any way I would like to get your book Thanks Jack
Hi Jack,
I completely understand! I have been in recovery meetings with a man who was 82, and had just discovered how much he’d gotten hurt. Good for you to be aware of it.
Here’s a link to where you can buy the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Writer-Dan-L-Hays/dp/1621377261/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1436448059&sr=8-2