Why I Write: To Disrupt, To Heal, To Be Free

A reflection on writing as protest, healing, and liberation.

Most, if not all, of my writing is for social change. I write because I have a need to speak truth to power. I have been silenced for most of my life without realizing it and writing has always been a way for me to speak into the silences that have been imposed on me. When I think about writing I think of it as an act of liberation, an act of voicing what has remained unspoken, an act of empowering myself and others, an act of pushing against the status quo, an act of choosing what is right over what is preferred or convenient. My writing comes from a need to be seen, heard, and understood in a world that wants to tell me what my story is and what my story should be. My writing comes from a need to enact much needed change in a culture that has operated for too long on systems of power that privilege some but not all. My writing comes from a need to expose the truth of my own lived experience as a way of connecting with others and shifting paradigms that no longer make sense, if they ever did. My writing comes from a need to find and be myself. I write to find authenticity.

When I think about writing I remember the first time my words were my own. I was afraid of putting them on paper. I was afraid that someone would find them and read them and violate my private exploration of myself. I was afraid that my words would betray me and that what I had to say was somehow wrong or worthless. I was afraid that the feelings that lived inside me, once committed to paper, meant there was something wrong with me. So I kept those words hidden for a long time. I only showed them to one trusted friend and at the time I was unaware of the truth hidden in each of the poems my teenage self scrawled in that journal. I was unaware that years later I would return to those words and find the truth of my trauma spelled out in images, moods, and sounds. I was unaware that I had, in fact, been writing my future all of those years ago. 

When I say I was writing my future I mean that the poems I had committed to those pages as a means of unburdening my soul and trying to make sense of the overwhelming feelings that made me feel like I was drowning all of the time were actually a roadmap. The poems became a way for me to see that the pain I was in came from a specific source, a source that had been unacknowledged and unrecognized. So when I began work on my dissertation project, and now award-winning solo show Un-M-Othered: A Story of Adoption and Patriarchy, I knew that those poems would guide me. Those poems told me everything I needed to know about my grief and my pain; and those poems showed me that writing is a powerful tool for creating change - internally and externally. 

Many of us have experienced some form of trauma and often we are unaware of the way that trauma impacts our daily lives because we live in a world that wants us to shut down and become numb to the truth of what our bodies can tell us. Shannon Sullivan, in her book The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression, quotes epidemiologist Nancy Krieger who says, “Bodies tell stories that people cannot or will not tell, either because they are unable, forbidden, or choose not to tell” (1). Because trauma is an embodied, physiological response it is important to listen to our bodies and the stories that live there so that we gain an understanding of the way that silence and oppression work to stifle our humanity, impact the fullness of our being, and our health and wellness. We need to pay attention to the bodies of others as well. Rebecca Solnit echoes Krieger’s idea by writing, “When the mouth may not speak, the body sometimes reveals silent testimony” (39). Sometimes the silent testimony is a bruise or a broken bone, sometimes it’s a headache that always comes after an emotionally charged discussion with a loved one. In my case it’s the latter (among other patterns and responses) and I only realized this pattern after living with it for many years and just thinking it was random. The way our bodies hold onto and release trauma is not random. Our vagus nerve is amazing and complex and runs throughout our bodies and controls the nervous system and how it reacts. For me, as an adopted person my nervous system has been on high alert since my first mother surrendered me. I never knew her outside of her womb but I knew her from the inside and when she was gone there was no safety for me to hold onto. One of the ways I began to understand my trauma, as I’ve said, is through poetry. 

My body is a war zone

trauma lives in every cell

I am unaware

wrapped in a fog

I won’t see or feel or heal for many years

monachopsis (the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place) is mine

shrouding me like a blanket, a fog of its own kind

I am bound by my body, my brain on high alert

the pain would be excruciating if I could feel it

it’s misplaced

I become misaligned, misled

screaming in silence because I can’t find the words

I can’t find myself

This poem tells the story of what my body knows to be true. I have felt like a prisoner in my own skin, always out of place and never quite comfortable. I learned to become numb to avoid actually feeling what I needed to feel in order to begin to process and heal from it. In writing about my embodied trauma I have been able to understand the physiological expressions of my psychic pain, my unresolved trauma, my unacknowledged grief. Each poem I write is a way for me to organize the internal chaos I have always felt and create a new narrative for myself. One that I get to write instead of the one that society has written for me.

Adoption in our culture is built on narratives that cast adoptive parents as heroic, erase first mothers and first families, and render both babies and their (first) mothers as objects rather than subjects. This same objectification is true for women in patriarchal culture. Our stories are created for us more often than they are created by us and this needs to change. So this is why I write. I write to shift culture, to create new stories, to re-narrativize a world that has tried to silence me for too long. I write so that my words become heard and counted. I write for so many who remain voiceless. I write because I cannot do otherwise. There is too much at stake.

#WhyIWrite #NationalDayOnWriting #TraumaInformedWriting #NarrativeHealing #PoetryAsProtest #MigratingTowardWholeness #AdopteeVoices #ArtsBasedHealing #WritingToHeal #StoryAsMedicine #DrLizDeBetta