Why I write

More on the power of words

Why am I writing these reflections on my life?*

Because I’m a scholar of language and literacy, and I believe in the power of words.

Because I’m a teacher who trusts that Life is the best school and the Greatest Teacher, and that it offers us all countless opportunities to learn.

Because I’m a little girl still trying to be heard.

Now, I would like to believe all of my reflections come from a noble place, an enlightened space, a transcendent higher self whose pure and perspicacious aim is to breathe wisdom, light and consciousness into the world. A wise, intentional, egoless teacherly voice of compassion and humility.

But really they come from a little girl who long ago was lost in the middle of eight, a child who learned take her place and wait her turn and be careful what she wished for lest she blow her precious wishes, and then she’d be sorry. I write for little Mahgie, who thought she took up too much space. I write for the seven-year-old who stenciled “Margie the Magnificent!” in bold capital letters on the half sheets of scrap paper that were rationed out at home, only to crumble under her grandmother’s stern glare. I un-write the lists she made at 12: “My Sins Against God and Man” and the one hundred things she thought were wrong with her, recorded in her “Fault Book.”

My words are a rant for and with my sister Ginny, who was put in the “Screaming Room” by herself, at age two, and for Nancy, the youngest in the family, whose face turned blue when she locked her own screams deep inside.

They are a dance for my mother, who, at three years old, spun around her kitchen gaily in a bright yellow dress only to receive that same shaming look from her mother just before her father had a stroke. I write for the girl in that yellow dress, and for the repressed and repressing, rationing and self-negating mother she grew up to be. “That’s good enough,” my mother would always say, “That’s all I need; I don’t want anything more.” (I shout: Want more, MORE, MORE! We probably won’t get what we want, but we get to have the WANTS!)

I write for those like me who hurt, or have been hurt, and who hope to heal, for those who dare to dream, and who aren’t afraid of dying daily - or who are afraid but dig in anyway. I write for my mother, my grandmother, my sisters, and our daughters, and all the “smart girls” who were shamed for thinking, taught to act pretty, not smart, or, like the Dixie Chicks, to “shut up and sing.” I write for all people who have been told suffer in silence, shut up and take it, not want anything, be seen but not heard, or not seen at all.

I write because I believe in the power of words to heal, to hold pain and release wisdom, to honor Life and its teachings (though I know words can also serve as weapons, to wound, and so great care should be taken when they are put out into the world). I write because words are my way into old wounds, prying through thick callouses of skin built up over the years. I write with words that become tattoos, stitching back the broken skin, loosely, lightly, gently, with golden thread, to form a scar that becomes my talisman, my declaration to the world: I have lived!

My words come roaring out from a very good little confessional Catholic schoolgirl-turned-professor who is throwing off her safe and stilted academic voice and saying: “Look at me! Hear me ROAR!

Writing doesn’t always start from a place of transcendence, but sometimes it can help get us there.

*I might also wonder why I feel some need to keep justifying why I write…I guess that’s little Mahgie, still trying to claim her right to be heard, before she shares the next chapter of her life. And also, perhaps some avoidance. Because the next piece I’m trying to work through is a particularly painful one: my experiences of girl bullying in middle school, and how they reverberated through my life. With some lessons for the world, of course! I keep trying to give closure to that narrative, but it’s taking some time. And while writing can be part of a healing process, it’s still a process. You can’t just jump to happy endings.