A few years ago, I had a miscarriage. It happened early on, so early that, had we not been trying, I might not even have known we were expecting. Physically, the loss was uncomplicated.
There was barely any pain, no need for drugs or intervention. I had a healthy two-year-old. In the grand scheme of things, I was lucky.
Countless women go through far worse every single day. But to me, the grand scheme of things meant nothing. I was devastated.
In the weeks that followed, the need to pour out my thoughts onto paper was almost compulsive. The last time I could remember that sort of a yearning was over a decade before, in the aftermath of a close friend’s death. It was only then that I started to recognize what was happening; the consistent pattern of behavior that has been a part of who I am since I was a child.
In times of grief or pain or confusion, I write. It’s what I do to make sense of things. As Joan Didion once said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.
” And I’m not the only one. I’ve worked with countless men, women, and young people within the prison system who find a sense of cohesion through writing. Some are perpetrators of pain.
Most have suffered unimaginable trauma themselves. Almost all of them use the creative writing workshops I lead as an opportunity to revisit their own traumatic experiences. Often by the end of these sessions, the room feels different; the pain now existing (at least temporarily) on the page rather than in their .
