A Woman Who Was Honest In Her Suffering
I am about to co-teach a writing workshop with Memoir As Medicine author Nancy Slonim Aronie. It is called ENOUGH, and is inspired by Nancy’s cousin Zelda.
Read more about ENOUGH ALREADY here.
Zelda told Nancy that when she was young, she remembers hiding and listening behind the kitchen door to her mother and aunt. Her aunt did all this talking, complaining about her rheumatism, her husband Irving, her varicose veins, her sudden cough, her best friend Bessie’s heart murmur, her husband Esther’s big lung, the high amount of ground beef- and then she went back to her aches and pains. He could tell you when it rained 37 hours before the first thunder was heard.
Here is the story, as Nancy tells it:
Mother, Zelda continued, finally exasperated, not getting a single straight word all afternoon, she was yelling, “SOMETIMES!” It was going to stop Sadie in her tracks, and she was going to explode right after that. And her mother always said the same thing.
“That woman, I swear, is faithful in her suffering.”
The huff didn’t last long, and there was to be a repeat of the small theater piece at the matinee the next day.
Zelda would listen, Sadie would complain, and Zelda’s mother would say, “That’s enough,” and when Zelda’s mother’s sister would storm out, Zelda’s mother would say, “I swear a woman is faithful in her suffering. Clean and repeat.”
For the past forty years, Nancy has conducted workshops where she has been called “the babysitter of words that want to get out.” He jokingly calls himself “Ex-lax for stuck stories.” One student described her writing workshops as “Isn’t it like writing in Martha’s Vineyard where, after women have taken it, they leave their husbands?”
Nancy remembers laughing, then waving. Or was it waving and laughing?
But his work throughout the years has been to encourage people to take the opportunity to write about the difficult things that have happened to them, their traumas, their “little murders,” their deepest sorrows – to get those stories out of their bodies and onto the page.
But whether you’ve written your story or not, some stories have staying power. We can’t seem to put them in the past and move beyond them. We hope that this workshop will serve as a guide to help you, the writer, the plaintiff, the victim, the wounded, the injured, the wounded, the empath, the one who was called Sarah Bernhardt, the one who felt all the feelings of the whole family, who was sick because of what was not said at home, who carried the family shame or the red book of the city or your shoulder of the story and your old weight create a new story that suits the New Year, the New You.
So Nancy and I are teaching a weekend Zoom writing workshop called GOOD ENOUGH. This workshop is for those who will declare, “I’m done.
You can honor your history and have compassion for “parts” of you without being honest about your suffering, like an albatross you’ve taken as your best friend. We will help you create a culture of writing and honoring your story, and then, with tears if necessary, let go…
Read more about ENOUGH ALREADY here.
