Identities - a Preface

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently. than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is. absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting.  - Michel Foucault

Send me out into another life

lord because this one is growing faint

I do not think it goes all the way - W. S. Merwin

I change identities the way other people change clothes.

No, more than that; my identities each come with a set of clothes, a habit if you will.  If the clothes make the man, I’ve found that the clothes can also make the nun, the lesbian, the professor, the priest.  Of course it’s not that simple: sometimes the identity makes the clothes, prescribes presentation.  It’s not always the same causal pathway, and it’s not a perfect correspondence: there’s more than one way to wear each identity or each set of clothes.

Still, you get my point.

I have anguished over this lability in my identity.  After I left the convent, I was especially tortured.  I had made my life vows only three years before I left.  I still felt called to religious life, but not in the community in which I made my vows.  I confessed my sense of instability and fickleness to my spiritual director.

“You’re like water.  If you dam it up and let it sit for too long, it starts to stink.”

Then I started leading recovery retreats.  Each time I told my story, people responded not with concern but with admiration.  That’s where I first heard I should write a memoir.  It seemed that there was something else going on besides simple chameleon behavior.

Now I see, the problem is not shifting identities.  If there is a problem, the problem is with identity itself.  Each of the changes in my life has been a drive to reclaim something denied or excluded: anger, autonomy, sexuality, spirituality, love.  Each began as a project - not a class assignment, but a creation and exploration.  Each began as an adventure of some sort, a growth of a new aspect of myself.  And, too often, over time each became hardened into an identity.  I became “the rebel,” “the alcoholic,” “the  . . . “  And the identity-ness of each of these trapped me, and I began to stink.

So now, I claim my life as bigger than any one identity.  They’re all true, they’re all alive in me: the good girl, the juvenile delinquent, the nun, the clown.  And, these days, I think I have a context in which to live that keeps from hardening into an identity.  The name I use now is vague and capacious, shared by others who live very different lives from mine.  I pull out other names as needed.  I sometimes let others hang names on me that don’t really fit, out of charity really.  No need to argue.  But just because you call me that doesn’t mean I have to answer.

So this isn’t really a story about shifting identities or clothes, though I’m sure I’m going to write sometimes as though they are.  This story, the way I tell it now, is about a journey to wholeness, integration, and joy.

So there.

Practice

I have been writing, off and on, during these last months.  There have been interruptions - coronavirus, the death of a sister's mother, Holy Week and Easter - little things like that.  But I haven't been sharing what I'm writing, because I have the feeling I'm practicing, learning about writing as much as I'm writing.  I'm reading Mary Karr and Natalie Goldberg on the art of memoir, and doing exercises, writing sections small enough to share with my new writers' group.  And I'm wandering down pathways I had almost forgotten, memories of childhood that may never show up in a book.  I could think of them as diversion, but I know they aren't.  They are helping me sort out what I'm trying to do, and what I am to learn from this.

I'm learning that memoir is first and foremost for me.  I have a story I want to tell, and others say they want to hear, but if all I do is tell the story they've already come to expect, the story I tell when I speak, it will just be an exercise.  Sort of interesting, maybe, to people who can relate.  But I know this is an opportunity to find the story, or the parts of stories, that I don't already know so well or have rehearsed.  It's a chance for me to grow, as I share with you.

So I'm practicing.  I'm practicing description, which is not my strong point.  Looking at something, describing it, lingering with it enough to convey it to you - no.  Ideas, yes.  Thoughts, even feelings, yes.  But sensing combined with language is a new challenge for me.  I consider skipping over it, and claiming the essay form; but a good essay also needs to convey.  So I dive in.

I'm practicing dialogue.  Again, not strong for me.  I didn't have many conversations with people for much of my life, unless they were about political theory or current events or complaining about what other people were doing or not doing.  I'm so up in my head that details like actual words shared mostly remain only as wounds.  But as I continue to practice, more will come to me.  I hope.

In fact, I have some big chunks of actual "memoir" in my computer now.  Why haven't I put them here?  I think partly shyness, and partly no one read my last post, so why bother?  So we will see.  If you want to read on, let me know.  Otherwise this can just be my typed journal, my companion to the other.

If you do read this, thank you!  This journey is for me, but it's also for you, in case there's something in my story that will help you see God's crazy love for you.  So God be with you, until I post again.

Para-memoir?

During silent meals (usually breakfast in the Companionary, but other times when I'm alone), I think. Lately I'm thinking about writing - not about what I'm working on (well, sometimes that), but about the process itself, and the feelings I have, and all the cautions I want to offer to you who might read it.  I'm beginning to think I could write a whole volume of precautions, prefaces, introductions, explanations!  I could fill the pages telling you how I feel about writing, about what I don't know about writing, what I'm learning about writing.  I could describe and explain why I'm not writing about something, or why I am.

Is this some new genre?  Or is it in fact a well-trodden path that I'm ignorant of?  I can't imagine it's well-trodden, for the simple reason that it would become hopelessly boring to all but a few.  Rather than inviting you into my story, I could put myself between it and you, endlessly, by telling you how I feel about writing this, what I think about it, what I plan to do with it.  I'd have to be a very good writer to hold your interest through a whole book of that - or even a longish article.

That's the beauty of blogging.  I can put that stuff here, and you can ignore it.  You can click on the posts that seem to be actual memoir.  Perhaps I'll put a "p-m" next to these other, excruciatingly self-referential posts.  But know this: it matters to me that you might read those pages too.  I'm writing now because I want to share it with you.  I have a journal for talking to myself.  This is different, in ways I don't know yet.  Somewhere between journal and memoir.  This is a space for blah blah blah that you might in fact identify with after all.  I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has these fears and dreams.  Maybe I'll encourage you to forge ahead in your own way.  Maybe not.

I wrote for an hour today.  Not this, but actually memoir.  Mary Karr advises us to start with the hardest memories.  I'm not starting quite there, but I am remembering a pretty bleak time, close to the worst.  And I'm finding the gift of remembering.  People I had forgotten, or given a glancing thought to, show up on center stage for a moment.  What the hell I thought I was doing shows up.  Who I was, begins to get clearer.  I know there's a lot of tedium to come, revisions and revisions, but right now I'm hurtling down lanes I had left behind.  I hope you'll come with me.

Terror

So, I've announced that I'm going to write a memoir.  People have said for years that I should, my brother and sister agree (little do they know!), and I became convinced this was a good idea.  I took a memoir writing retreat and got excited, and a little confident.  Now I'm reading about writing, and I'm terrified.  The last thing I had in mind was a project that would consume years before coming to fruition.  What did I imagine?  A nice little stroll down memory lane?  Well, with some of my memories it wouldn't be nice or a stroll - or a lane.  More like stumbling toward the House on Haunted Hill.  But still, there's a story to be told.  Lots of stories.  And maybe some truth.

I know the power of telling my story.  I lead recovery retreats, and each time I tell some version of a very long story.  I see what it does to others, and I feel the gratitude rise up in me.  I know my life is a miracle.  I want to share that miracle with others - with you.

But still.  What do I know about this kind of writing?

Then again, what did I know about writing academic papers, dissertations, books?  But there I was prepared for things to take a long time, and writing was a primary occupation.  Now I have a life that is much bigger than writing, and I'm hoping to make space for an hour a day - eventually.  Right now I'm at 15-30 minutes.

I guess I'm glad I announced this on Facebook and our community newsletter.  Otherwise I could back out.  I know I could back out anyway, but I don't want to.  I want to go forward.

I don't know what I'll be putting on this blog,  I just know I need a place to write about this process while it's going on.  Occasionally I want to share short sections from the memoir - probably before they're ready!  I've never been good at delayed gratification.  So this could be the site for big mistakes.  So what's new?  As you'll see, much of my life has been about running full-tilt toward things without a clue what I'm getting into.  Sometimes it's a disaster, but other times it's a blessing beyond anything I could plan.  So here I go.  Pray for me, please.