*Excerpts in italics are from my essay Surrogate Daughter, first published in Full Grown People.
“I’m the bad one,” my godfather used to make me say, a tiny toddler terrorist. Tuna fish salad smashed into my hair as I toppled a tower of his illicit books, a baby Godzilla wreaking havoc.
That phrase lived in my psyche a long time, though the story is funny. I’m the bad one. Little ole me. It evokes something dark and coiled, full of shame—adults casting off their responsibility into me.
Children give love the way the sun gives light—without reserve, daily, radiant. Unless it’s beaten or broken or shamed out of them.
It would take me decades to unravel those words as his confession, not my truth.
My godfather has taken up too much territory in my creative writing as it is, but in doing so, over and over again, I found a voice that seemed to have been waiting within me to speak.
Children give love like the sun gives light. Adults transmute light into pain.
Trauma and shame are some of the most difficult things to discuss, to speak aloud, but in finding the words to write about it, we can find our voices. Not only to free something trapped, but to lay claim to semantic territory, to re-pattern, apply a new narrative to that which has hurt or humiliated us.
Perhaps I loved my godfather because I had known him all my life, the mythical man who could quell my bellowing baby howls with opera played full bore... But I never trusted him.
Truth tellers are not always well received, as society loves to remind us. But shame only thrives when secrets are kept.
Mendacious Synecdoche, he had once called me. Liar, stupid girl. Don’t humor yourself. And to the faraway daughter: Drunken c*nt.
Not all secrets bear trauma. Some are joyous little things we clutch to only us for safekeeping, holding newness alight. Some secrets are a form of precious communication—we hold this together, a unity of knowing.
When the wannabe orphan and the faraway daughter, both grown women, spoke to each other at last, voices slinking across state lines, there wasn’t any hate, only understanding.
In secrets, voice comes alive—be they kept close or expressed aloud.
*
This pastiche of a post emerged as I sit thinking, day after day, of the men who have gotten away with harms across the centuries, and those who have enabled them. Whose names are redacted in the Epstein Files. Who founded this country upon equality while enslaving people. I sit thinking about the bravery of women and girls, of boys and gender-fluid folks who have and continue to be harmed but speak their truths in hopes of achieving justice. May all their secrets be received.
Writing Prompt:
Your character or narrator is telling a secret to a pet, thinking no one human can hear. Only to discover, too late, that their truth has been overheard. Write the telling of the secret in safety and the response to the aftermath.
February and March Opportunities to Practice and Play With Voice With Me!
TOMORROW: February 12, 4:30 to 7:30 pm. Revising for Voice, Master Class at the San Francisco Writers Conference (You do not have to attend the conference to take the workshop).
Agents and publishers often describe an element missing from manuscripts: strong voice. That signature of style, syntax, and character personality are essential to a publishable--and memorable--manuscript. In this workshop we’ll revise some of the key elements of voice, such as specificity, syntax, character personality, musicality and more, benefiting from other students’ participation. We’ll walk through these key elements in waves, allowing you to tease apart voice and tone at the character and sentence level. Come prepared to write and revise on the spot with some fun exercises.
(To register, scroll down the page to my class, click “Read more” and “Book event.”)
Weds: February 18: Sound of Story–Finding, Crafting and Playing with Voice. The Book Society, Berkeley. 6 to 8 pm.
Books At The Source Writing Summit. Saturday, March 14. Sebastopol Center for the Arts. 282 S. High Street, Sebastopol, CA.
Fueling Your Passion: Inspiration and Persistence in Creative Expression and Career, 10am.
Elevating Your Writing to the Next Level. 11am PT.
Awakening Voice on the Page. 12 pm PT.
Jordan’s Books
Sunuvabeeyotch, may he roast. Powerful truths becoming more powerful every day. Sending my heart to yours, JP.
Your description of a child's innocent, radiating love moved me. May all adults have their hearts softened so that they never hurt another child in this way.