My best writing doesn’t tend to happen when I obsess over it, plan it, map it out and try to articulate it perfect-ly on the first try. My best stories occur when I open my
hands and heart and simply let the words come.
It was about 2pm when I got the call you never want to get.
My husband and I had been fighting that day—all day—the kind of fight you reserve for special occasions in a marriage. You know, Christmas Eve, just before you leave for church. The first day of a brand new job. A time in life when both of you are severely sleep deprived. Or, you know, any random day during your first year of marriage. We were acting like children, but we didn’t care.
We had yelled, slammed things, broke at least one of the things we slammed, and then I dropped him off at work without a word.
I was livid. I wasn’t thinking straight, and I was looking for-ward to having some time without him at the house.
That’s when the phone rang.
The first missed call was from my sister, who I didn’t much feel like talking to at the moment. This was weird because I always
feel like talking to my sister. She is one of my closet friends. But somehow (without thinking through it very much) I knew that if I answered the phone, she would hear in my voice something was wrong and make me talk about it. She would probably also figure out this wasn’t all my husband’s fault, as I so desperately needed to believe in that moment, so I ignored the call.
The next missed call was from my mom. At the time, my thought was, “geesh, did he call my family and tell them what hap-pened? Did he post something on Facebook? Is there some kind of familial intuition I didn’t know about?” I ignored that call, too. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to stew.
It wasn’t until about thirty seconds after the missed calls reg-istered on my iPhone that I considered how strange it was that two family members would be calling me in the middle of the day on a Monday afternoon. It was 2:00 my time (EST) and just around 11am for them. Shouldn’t they both be at work?
My mom is a teacher and, for the most part, impossible to get ahold of during a work day unless there is an emergency. She works in an elementary school and since, of course, there is a strict no-cell-phone policy for the kids, the adults tend to keep their phones put away as well. Not to mention, when you’re in charge of the well-being of a classroom full of tiny people, the last thing you need is an extra distraction.
My sister’s work isn’t so strict about cell phones but she has a work ethic unparalleled to just about anyone I know, so more of-ten than not, she keeps calling and texting under wraps during the work day. If I wanted to get ahold of her, I would have to call her work phone.
And yet, here they were. Two missed calls on my cell phone.
To add to the confusion, there had just been a major transition in my life. Two months prior I had gotten married to my
now-hus-band and we had moved, together, from my home in Portland, Or-egon (where all of my family lived) to our new home in West Palm Beach, Florida. As transitions tend to go, this one had been a little bit rocky. I had gone from being an organic-eating, dressed-down, Birkenstock-wearing, granola-ish Oregonian to a part of the coun-try where boob jobs, high heels, luxury vehicles and string bikinis were the thing. I had gone from being single to married. I was try-ing to be fully invested in my “new” life without completely aban-doning my old one.
It was a ton of pressure, and no matter what I did, I felt like a total failure. Things felt out-of-sync. I knew they would be back in sync soon (right?) but what if something happened before then?
I suddenly felt very afraid of everything and my life felt out-of-this-world fragile.
A few weeks earlier, as I was driving to dinner with my hus-band, I told him, “If something happened right now—if one my parents got sick or had a heart attack or died... I would never for-give myself.”
Now, here I was, staring at these two missed calls on my cell phone.
I called my mom back first. She didn’t answer. I called my sis-ter back second. By now my heart was racing—almost like it could anticipate what was about to happen. I heard my sister’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Don’t freak out,” she said. “But dad’s in the hospital.”
After that, I only heard about ever fifth word “... heart attack...
doctor... come soon...”
That was when the wailing started.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever cried like this—or if you’ve ever seen anyone cry like this—but it reminds me of the last scene from Baz Lurman’s Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet (Claire Danes) wakes
up and discovers what Romeo has done. When she discovers the mistake he’s made and the impact it now has on her, she let’s out a sob that could wake a grown man from a drunken slumber. It’s from her gut. It’s loud. The camera pans out to show the entire tomb (which, in this movie is covered with lit candles) and her sob echoes throughout—so you can hear it a dozen times over.
That sob, in my opinion, is one of the most gut-wrenching sounds in the entire world.
That’s how I sobbed that day. I grabbed my purse, left my house without shoes, went back to get shoes because I remembered, strangely, that in Oregon, you can be arrested for driving with no shoes... or was it get a ticket? I couldn’t remember, but I went back to get my shoes and drove straight to where my husband was work-ing. I finished the conversation with my sister—which was barely a conversation because we were both crying so loudly—and then called my husband.
“My... my dad... heart... attack... doctor... died three times...”
My attempts at explaining what had happened and what I was doing were interrupted several times with, “wait, what happened?
Who?” and, “Babe, you have to calm down. I can’t understand you.”
Eventually I made it to his office and he met me outside. I col-lapsed into his arms.
All the things I had been angry about earlier that day, all the things that had made me think I never wanted to see him or talk to him again, all the things I had been trying to fix and control be-cause they made me absolutely crazy... none of that was important any more. In fact, it was hardly relevant. I couldn’t even remember why I had been so mad.
All my illusions of control had been exposed. I didn’t control anything. I didn’t control my husband. I couldn’t control him...
why should I try? I didn’t control my own emotions—at least not
nearly as well as I thought I did. I couldn’t control life and death.
I wanted to get on a plane. I wanted to drive to the airport right that minute and get on a freaking plane (yes, a freaking plane, which is different than just a normal plane—I had to explain this to my husband as well) and fly to Portland. Maybe if I could just be there, it would help. Maybe it would mean I could hold the family together. Maybe it would mean I could hold myself together. May-be it would mean I wouldn’t lose my dad.
But even as I went over the options in my mind, it occurred to me that even if I got on a plane right now, my dad could be gone before I got there. There was really nothing I could do. This was out of my hands.
There’s nothing fun about realizing or admitting that life is out of our hands, but one of beautiful things about letting things get out of control, or just admitting we were never in our control in the first place, is we see ourselves for who we really are—just a small part, a supporting role really, in a much larger story. We are not the center of the Universe. The world does not revolve around us. We don’t have control.
All we can do is what I’ve spent the past five chapters describ-ing. We can show up. We can listen. We can wrestle. We can be a mix of good and bad. And we can let go and allow the story to un-fold as it will.
What does this have to do with writing? Everything. In the moment I was urged to let go of control, something really pro-found happened. I let my guard down. I was truly myself. The sob-bing, the calling my husband even though I was angry—that was me, unpolished and unprotected. Even forgetting my shoes seems significant, a powerful image of how the simplest social “rules” are forgotten when the chaos gets to be too much. Suddenly, without warning, we become the raw, vulnerable, real versions of ourselves.
We may not have felt permission to be this way—or to show ourselves this way—before, but we feel permission now. We feel permission to let ourselves be truly seen, by ourselves and by someone else.
That’s exactly what happened to me that day, the day I real-ized I didn’t have control. All the things I had been angry about before faded into the distance. I couldn’t even remember what any of them they were. All the posturing and protecting I was doing, all the defenses I had thrown up to distance myself, all the anger... all of that was gone.
All I had now was me, no shoes and sobbing.
When we can let go of control, or when life forces us to real-ize how little control we actually have, we tend to see ourselves for who we really are. And if you ask me, this is when the good writing comes. Good writing comes when we’re willing to let go of who we think we are, who we wish we were, the way we hoped things would be and talk about they way they really are.
Good writing happens when we’re willing to let go of control.
This is not just messy. It’s terrifying. Sometimes it happens to us, like in this circumstance, with my dad, and other times we choose it for ourselves in a sort of rare moment of clarity. But no matter how the chaos comes, letting go is about living fully present in spite of everything, listening, wrestling, and allowing things to be messy in the most unsettling way.
This is the only way I’ve ever been able to write a story, or live a story, that matters beyond itself. This is the only way I’ve ever been able to uncover my voice.
As it turns out, my dad survived. It was a miracle, really. And eventually, I made it to Oregon to see him again. But every time I think about the day we almost lost him I am reminded how one day I will lose him. I don’t have control. And maybe that’s okay.
Because the girl I discovered the day I almost lost my dad is the girl I want to be—the one who is willing to let go of control of her tiny, unimpressive and self-centered little life, to sacrifice her careful-ly planned out words, to show up, to listen and to just be herself—
mess and all.
Be Willing To Get Messy
When I want to pretend like I have control over my life, I clean my house.
We live in a modest two-bedroom loft in Nashville and we host people all the time. We love having overnight guests and adore hosting dinner parties and often have people over for late-night game late-nights or movie viewings. We make popcorn. We drink wine and lemonade and beer. And all of that makes a mess.
It makes a mess of dishes and schedules and routines and furni-ture. It disturbs the quiet of the house and leaves footprints on the carpet and a pile of shoes by the door.
I wish it were different, and when I want to pretend like it is different, like no matter what happens I have my crap all together, I clean. I put the shoes back exactly where they belong. I line them up all perfectly and separate them by color. I vacuum. I run the vacuum back and forth in a perfect patterns so it leaves lines in the carpet. Then I try to avoid walking on the carpet so they pattern can stay as long as possible.
I shot a short video course for writers in our little loft apart-ment; and I made our apartment look perfect for the cameras. I cleaned. I arranged all the trinkets on the coffee table. I bought fresh flowers. I wiped all the fingerprints off the refrigerator and cabinets with Windex. I hid the little scrub brush in the kitchen underneath the sink.
Behind the camera, what you would have seen was a total disaster—empty donut boxes, old Chipotle containers, camera equipment, sweatshirts, various loose papers, all the bags and purses of everyone involved in the production. But in the camera frame what you saw made you think my house looks perfect.
Here’s what I’ve learned about making anything look perfect:
if it looks perfect, it isn’t real. As long as I try to control my life and
“clean it up” and make it perfectly presentable, I won’t be free to actually live inside of it. I’ll have to stay off the carpet and and nev-er open the fridge and nevnev-er put on my shoes to leave the house.
As long as I try to control my writing and “clean it up” I won’t be free to speak from my heart, to speak my truth.
I don’t want to control my life or my writing. I want to live it.
I want to write it.
But learning to quit controlling your life or your writing doesn’t just happen overnight. There have to be catalysts for this kind of change—moments where you almost lose someone you love, or a split second when you forget what is “smart” and do what your heart tells you to do or nights when you choose to go to bed with the dishes undone and the shoes in a heap and confront the anxiety that comes.
You don’t just wake up one day and decide to stop trying to keep things under your control. You have to notice you’re doing it, admit your fear, and let go again and again and again.
When it comes to writing, the answer is no different.
Recently I submitted a piece to an editor friend of mine and asked him if he could help me make it better. Something about it wasn’t working, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. He agreed, and after he read it, he said, “you’re being too careful. It’s so clean.” When I heard the words, all I could think about was the row of shoes lined up by my door, the pattern in my carpet. A clean
home is not necessarily a home full of life. Clean writing is not necessarily good writing.
Our writing is stunted by our need to control. When we try to keep our writing clean, to keep everything grammatically correct and to write in perfect sentences and to never have a run-on, our voices will get stuck inside of us. I’m not saying every sentence has to be imperfect, or that you publish something really messy, but I am saying we will miss the best writer inside of us if we never let the mess come.
Something To Try: Get Out Of Your Head
One of the things I think we need to do as writers is learn to get out of our heads and into our bodies. Our heads will try to con-trol things. They’ll take the information available and try to turn it into something coherent and believable. Our heads are always trying to sort, organize and make sense out of things. Our bodies don’t do that. Our bodies don’t try to tell us what should be. They just tell us what is. They tell us the truth.
I’ve been reading a book lately by Miriam Greenspan called Healing Through the Dark Emotions and this book is quickly be-coming one of my favorites of all time. Greenspan explains how so many of us resist what we consider “dark” emotions, like fear, grief and despair because we don’t like the way they make us feel and we’re afraid of where they might take us. But we can’t avoid the impact of these emotions. Even if we choose not to think about them, our bodies will feel the weight of them. We don’t experience the dark emotions cognitively as much as we do physically.
As an added bonus, Greenspan explains that emotions such as grief, fear and despair don’t have to be as “dark” as we assume them to be. They can actually offer us a great deal of wisdom if
we’re willing to listen carefully to what they’re telling us—if we’re willing to let our bodies speak for themselves.
One of the exercises she gives toward the end of her book has been tremendously helpful in teaching me to let go of the control that comes with rationalizing my writing, searching my brain for “smart-sounding” words and trying to organize and perfect during the brainstorming stage. As long as I’m in my brain, I can’t stop doing this. This is the the purpose of my brain. It is it’s job. But this assignment by Greenspan teaches us to leave our brains and listen to our bodies, who won’t rationalize and organize nearly as much as they will just speak the truth.
Take a minute and just sit quietly wherever you’re sitting—in a chair, on a couch, laying in bed, at a desk. For a minute, just try to clear your mind. Then, after a minute, simply notice your body.
What sensations do you have? Is there a pain in your right wrist?
Do you have a constant throb in your knee? Is your back sore? Do you have a headache? How do your legs or arms feel touching the fabric? Where is there pressure from gravity? Are your shudders tense? Don’t try to analyze or rationalize. Just notice. Don’t judge.
Do you have a constant throb in your knee? Is your back sore? Do you have a headache? How do your legs or arms feel touching the fabric? Where is there pressure from gravity? Are your shudders tense? Don’t try to analyze or rationalize. Just notice. Don’t judge.