The Courage to Write

Last October I blogged about a memoir-writing course for which I had registered online and how I was hoping it would help me complete writing my own story. I had already begun it for my grandchildren. It was my COVID project and was quite labor-intensive, as I was printing it by hand and drawing some pictures as well. But I kept at it, encouraged by the course and by 13-year-old Lena Kate, who called me on a regular basis to ask when the next chapter would be ready! (She and her younger brother Daniel are both story writers.)
I took a picture of each chapter after writing it and emailed it to Lena Kate and to our other seven grandchildren. When she received the latest chapter, Lena Kate printed it and put it in a ring binder. 

I was almost finished writing at the end of July (I had decided I would end my story at the time I began high school) and took everything along to a cottage we had rented together with our two Manitoba daughters and their families.
One evening I invited everyone to a reading of the first few chapters. I was sorry that Lena Kate and Daniel weren't there. (Our second daughter Anita and her family live in Ontario and unfortunately couldn't join us at the cottage because of COVID restrictions.) Each person received an invitation at supper designed by daughter Heidi. It was a fun evening!

         

When we returned from the cottage, I wrote the last two chapters and sent them off to Lena Kate to add to her ring binder. 

Somehow, I couldn't let go of my project. I decided to type and edit the handwritten pages on the computer and have spent the entire month of August doing that. I also took the risk of 'putting it out there' by sending typed copies of the chapters to my siblings. They encouraged me to keep at it!

While in the process of writing, I was quite astonished at what had all transpired during the first 12 years of my life! At that age, I was already a world traveller, having lived in Russia, Poland, Germany, Paraguay, and Canada! I think what amazed me most was the resilience and the courage of my parents. How did they keep their sanity and their faith in God through all these difficult times of upheaval? How did they manage to feed and clothe eight children, to keep us happy, and to raise us to be well-functioning adults with our own families and careers? It is an astounding labour of love!

An example of a memoir writer who encouraged me to continue was my Dad's cousin's wife, Marianne Pauls; "Tante Marianne" passed away recently at the age of 95.
Three years ago, when she was already in her early nineties, she wrote her life story for her family. She was reluctant to take on such a big project, but her children cheered her on, and once she began writing she never looked back. She wrote in German, her mother tongue, but I believe the book was also translated into English.
Quite by accident, a young Catholic girl in Czechoslovakia meets a Mennonite soldier/interpreter one evening at a movie theatre. They fall in love, war and upheaval separate them, but they find each other again and live a life that is not ordinary by any means. Reading her life story is like reading a novel!

I am looking forward to reading Miriam Toews' latest novel, Fight Night. In an interview with CBC's Shelagh Rogers, Toews tells her listeners that the novel is about her mother and the dynamics between her and her teenage grandchild.
Toews' mother has dealt with the darker side of life involving mental illness and suicide of beloved family members, but throughout it all she kept her sense of humor and fought to push death away.

Henry Nouwen writes in one of his devotionals:

Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us ... . It opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves, "I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write."