Exercise #1 /creative writing workshop

If your grief would speak, what would it say?

Grief would say to me, “Châu, I know that for the last three days, you have been crying so much. Someone from the writing group mentioned a tsunami of emotion. In your case, you have a tsunami, tornado, volcano, and earthquake of emotions, sadness, disappointment, and anxiety that all happened at the same time. You did not prepare for it mentally and physically. You cried and you could not sleep.”

 “Châu, for the last 12 years of grieving your mother, you have been doing some good work to show the world that you are grieving. You cried, wrote, did art, meditated daily, analyzed dreams for healing, and so on. You believe that your wound is healing.  Today you realized that it is not healing but got infected.”

“Dreams do not help you to get healed. Dreams help you to get hints and clues that you have work to do. Dreams do not do grief work for you but show the way for you to go back to your grief house. You came back to the house every time in each dream, but you did not come in. You stood in front of the door, peeked inside the window and that was it. You are scared to knock on the door. You are scared to step inside. You are scared that you may step into the darkness and cannot find the way. You are scared to fall back into the deep hole.”

“Châu, after you set the intention on Monday for this workshop, you cried your eyes out and realized that this is the time you must knock on the door of grief and get in. You will emerge yourself into darkness. You will fall until you reach the bottom of the cave and be head-on to your infected wound.” Grief said,” I do not see any other way.”

“ You will have to talk to your 12-year-old inner child. That child was scared, anxious, and vulnerable. That child had head lice on her short and thick hair. She was too skinny with big eyes and a beautiful smile.  People rarely saw her cry or be sad. Like her mother, she loved to draw and read."

 She saw her parents divorced. She was at ease seeing her father leave the house. She thought, "Now my parents would not fight and yell at each other anymore."

Less than two years after being divorced, her mother was sick with leukemia and was hospitalized on and off for the next 3-4 years. She wished that her mother was alive and back home to her, her brother, and her sister. She wished her childhood could have been a little bit more normal like other children in the building. She wished she could walk to school without worrying about what food she might have to prepare for the family that day.

She wished she did not have to walk across the street every day waiting in line to buy food because her mother was too sick to do so.  She would constantly be worried about her mother's condition worsening and being in the hospital again.  She had nightmares that she, her brother, and her little sister would be sent to live with the uncle's family again.

That little girl has kept a shameful secret for such a long time as she got sexually molested by a 15-year-old boy who came to her apartment at night to care for her and her siblings when her mother was in the hospital. She was so scared.  She would not sleep well at night for years.  She was so scared wondering why she had so much madness inside.

That little girl forced herself to be the second mother of the two little siblings full-time. She was forced to be an adult when it was not physically impossible to do so.

She told herself day and night that she must stay silent, she would never tell her siblings or her mother that she got molested by the person who was supposed to look after her at night.  She knew that her mother would be in so much pain and sad if she told her. She shut herself down for a long time.” 

 

Châu, you have to face that 12-year-old inner child yourself. She has been waiting for 40 years in a dark and deep closet for you. Be gentle to her but get her out of that closet.