Writing as recovery
Less rock bottom, more diving into the wreck
My kids are now officially off school until August, which means my house is switching to summer hours, which means… chaos. Actually, it’s been fine so far. We are very fortunate to have a public school with free June childcare. We will be balancing that with some city camps and the public pool. But my apologies, anyway, that this craft essay for Writing Group subscribers is a little late (usually I try to send these out earlier in the month). I, too, am trying to switch to slower summer hours.
A quick reminder, on that note, that Writing Group closes up in July. I’ll be working on my next book, but at the end of this month, we’ll crowdsource a writing prompt archive for everyone in the Writing Group to take with them into summer. The essay below is for Writing Group subscribers, so make the switch to a founding subscription if you’d like to read the full essay, along with the syllabus and writing prompt below the paywall.
I’ll also create some space next week for all paid subscribers to share what they will be up to in July!
Last weekend I taught a seminar on Writing Recovery. It was a lovely session with writers interpreting that term— recovery— in many different ways. Some were recovering from grief or loss; others from addiction or parenting burnout or divorce or trauma. In recent years, I’ve come to view nearly everyone I meet as recovering from something, and not only because the world is a constant blow, but because so many of the people I meet and know— many of which, yes, are writers, so there’s some self-selection happening—have struggles they are trying to move beyond. It’s human to recover, and when people don’t take that work seriously, that’s how cycles of pain and violence continue.
When I first got sober, however, I didn’t love the term recovery, because it felt like it implied a proximity to violence that wasn’t mine. My journey toward recovery didn’t follow the traditional narrative arc. Instead, it was this: