Confessional writing: The plain and simple awkwardness of digging deep

What’s your book about? What are you working on? What do you write about? What do you do? For a split second, when someone asked me these questions recently, I found myself stumbling, my chin retreating back into my neck like a turtle recoiling from the discomfort of proximal interest and attention, as the words stammered out, as I confessed, with a hint of shame and a smidge of doubt – “personal essays and memoir.”

Part of me recoiled at my own recalcitrance. I’d just finished reading yet another book that affirmed my purpose, that galvanised my resolve, that reflected back at me my intention and my determination for why this matters.

And yet still, I stumbled. Alas, the perennial existential struggle of gathering the trust and confidence in one’s purpose.

“Everything always starts with the personal…The microhistories and small details of our lives hold the keys to our redemption.” Tricia Hersey, Founder of the Nap Ministry, Rest is Resistance

This sentence and sentiment from Tricia Hersey neatly sums up what I’m writing about, what I do, why I do it for myself and with others, and what has always guided my sense of purpose and direction.

Of course, Hersey is talking about a different and more noble pursuit, that of providing refuge and solace to folks whose legacies and personal histories are of exhaustion via the beating hands and clocks of capitalistic and colonial oppression (the latter spawned the monster of the former, in case you wonder). Her call is to find ways, means and communities that nurture rest as a means to thrive and surviving.

Reclaiming, rewriting our personal narratives, telling the fuller story of histories only partially documented, if at all, is part of that process, by way of remembering the innate goodness, worth, validity and enoughness of who we are.