The photos were alarming.
My mother, a librarian, had signed up for a deep tissue massage and ended up with two arms full of bruises. During the session, she’d voiced her discomfort. Was it supposed to be this painful? The masseuse told her that deep tissue massages are different than regular massages; they got down to the deeper knots and ironed them out.
And perhaps that’s true; I don’t know much about massage beyond the fact that I once dated a guy who was a masseuse (I was probably the most relaxed I’d ever been during the few months we dated).
My mother’s massage had gone wrong—one had only to look at her blue and purple arms to see that.
For the last several years I have been working on a memoir about the first summer I visited my father and new stepmother and half-siblings after my parents’ divorce. I have written and rewritten this story, over and over again, never completely satisfied and never, honestly, sure I want to go on. It is not an easy story. Those memories are not exactly comfortable to examine or even sit with for an extended period of time.
But writing is often like that deep tissue massage—the good kind. Of course we can go too far—press too deeply before we’re ready—but if we are careful, writing, whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, can be like a gentle yet deep massage. Writing helps me come to terms with my past and the way it has shaped my present (and sometimes this piece alone is undeniably enlightening), and clarifies, too, what I will carry into my future. It may seem trite to some, but writing is, for me, a prayer—a prayer for healing, a prayer for tikkun olam (repairing what has been broken), a prayer of hope and love for the ones who read my work.
Because of this, I don’t ever deny myself access to difficult memories. I write essays about what terrifies me, humiliates me, pains me. Sometimes I have to wait months or even years to set that story down on paper, and sometimes the words will go no farther than my current writing journal, but the act of writing alone—my prayer—is the deep tissue massage I need to come to terms with, accept, and even flourish in spite of whatever has happened.
It’s been proven, time and time again, that writing is a therapeutic process. It mends painful memories, reduces stress, even helps pull the struggling out of depression (science proves this, but I have seen circumstantial evidence of it in my own life). It rids the body of toxins—as long as you don’t press too hard or get stuck in the wrong places.
In my writing, my prayers, my deep tissue massage, I can rewrite my past into something hopeful; something that proves I was never a victim, I was always loved, held, and worthy; something that can tell my readers the same.
I don’t know what I’ll do with that memoir I’ve been writing and rewriting. It will likely end up as a fiction story, since I’m not entirely sure I want it out in the world as nonfiction. But regardless of what happens from here, the simple act of writing it has already done its deep work.
It has written over the painful past in giant permanent-marker letters: redeemed.
(Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash)
