The Rewards and Repercussions of Writing About Trauma

  The dynamic between writing and trauma is complex. We could argue that writing about trauma is therapeutic for victims, but at the same time we could argue that writing can cause more harm than good. The act of reliving traumatic events all over again– as authors carefully craft stories about the darkest moments of their lives–can cause us to question the extent to which this act is “therapeutic.” 

Writing Therapy: How to Write and Journal Therapeutically

 

Safiya Sinclair–the author of a memoir titled How to Say Babylon, is tasked with retelling the most vulnerable, lowest moments of her childhood and early adulthood. Her experiences with loss, discrimination, and abuse affect her identity as both a writer and a Jamaican woman. After years of emotional and physical torment, much of her internal and external turmoil stemmed from her father’s brutal, authoritarian personality, intertwined with his religious/political beliefs as a Rastafarian. The first twenty-eight chapters of her memoir are haunted by his presence in her life. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62919742-how-to-say-babylon

Sinclair seems to feel an abrupt sense of relief and hope in the final chapter, which contrasts with the previous chapters filled with fear, frustration, and apprehension. She starts the chapter with a quote from her mother, which reinforces the idea that regardless of what has happened, there “‘was nothing broken a sea couldn’t fix’”(329). In the last few chapters, we see a light at the end of the tunnel for Sinclair–a beacon of hope for her broken relationship with her father, and a glimpse of her newfound identity. With that being said, how could we possibly forget the anguish she felt in the other twenty-eight chapters?

The use of writing as a tool for interpreting and understanding traumatic experiences is a subject that can be explored in the third edition of a book titled Reading Autobiography Now: An Updated Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. The authors, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, describe some of their inquiries about narratives dealing with trauma, interested in what function they serve, how beneficial they are, and how sharing these experiences can benefit both the reader and the author. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199586044-reading-autobiography-now?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=lsMZwI8t4s&rank=1

In Reading Autobiography Now, there is a brief paragraph called “Trauma and Scriptography” under section two of the book, “A Guide to Reading Life Narrative.” Here, Smith and Watson wonder what it means when traumatic memories “come to the fore fragmentarily, or repeatedly, throughout the narrative,” the kind of “resolution, or lack of resolution” achieved through the narrative, and lastly the the significance of “writing about personal traumatic experience as ‘scriptotherapy,’”and whether the therapeutic value of writing is present for the author or even the reader (191). We can explore each of these questions by analyzing how trauma is portrayed in Sinclair’s text. 

Smith and Watson want to know how the narrator “deals with the trauma.”(191) They want to know how authors bring the trauma to light, whether it’s by focusing on the exact details, or just working to uncover the “inaccessibility” of the traumatic memories. 

The trauma Sinclair has experienced is at the forefront of her novel. She makes it clear that, regardless of her father’s physical presence, his words and behaviors were entrenched in her mind, and her overall identity. There are moments when Sinclair explicitly tells the readers she is reliving her trauma, such as on page 309. Here, she describes having a dream where “each night he murders me, or tries to.” When she has these nightmares, she “startles awake in my Charlottesville apartment, forgetting where I am”(Sinclair 309). In Sinclair’s novel, we don’t have to search or analyze for the source of her trauma. Instead, she often directly tells us how her father’s aggression constantly looms over her. 

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With that being said, there are moments when the effects of her trauma aren’t as explicit. For instance, it may not be a coincidence that her demeanor and outlook on life when her father went to Japan seemed more positive. When she describes moments with just her mother and her siblings, coincidently while the father is away in Japan, she recalls these times as “the sweetest season in my life, wishing she “could live till the end of my days here” (Sinclair 94). Even though the worst of her father’s rage and brutality was yet to come, it is evident that her fear towards him, and her overall feelings towards the trauma, are brought to light in many different ways. 

Smith and Watson are also curious about what kind of resolution is achieved through the narrative, or the lack thereof. In Sinclair’s memoir, she expresses a multitude of feelings about the effects of trauma. She has a hard time accepting what has happened to her in some moments. For instance, when she walks through her father’s house for the first time without her mother there, she sees a picture of herself when she was eight-years old, winning an award in math. She refers to herself as “the smiling Rasta girl” who was so “unaware of what tempest had been brewing out there on her horizon”(Sinclair 321). She views the younger version of herself as a different person, as a little girl in ignorant bliss. Even by the last chapter, Sinclair still cannot shake some of the negative feelings and thoughts about her childhood, specifically how years were stripped away from her and how she was deprived of certain experiences. 

Although she cannot accept everything that happens to her and feels grief for her younger self, the last chapter shows that she is trying to appreciate this life she’s been given. On page 329, she “threw her throat to the sky and accepted at last what I had been given,” meaning that she is finally able to start accepting herself and her journey (Sinclair). Finding a  “resolution” for Sinclair in this case would be that she may have finally found a way to move forward–or a way to see and acknowledge her past in a different light. 

This last section of Reading Autobiography Now describes writing about trauma as a form of  Scriptotherapy. The practice of Scriptotherapy refers to the use of writing to process emotions and provide therapeutic relief. By putting complex thoughts and feelings on paper, authors could make sense of what’s happened to them. It could also serve as a way to reclaim their past–legitimizing a story as their own (Smith and Watson 129).  

An article about the use of Scriptotherapy with suggestions to increase its efficacy

Through her writing, Sinclair is not just revealing moments of her past to explain what’s happened to her, but she uses her writing of experiences to make sense of it herself. She is formulating her own story and finding her own voice, because for so long she’d been subjected to the rules and expectations of her father. In some ways this could be therapeutic, but it’s also easy to see how these sensitive subjects could be painful to recall. For example, when Sinclair mentions how her sister does not associate with her family anymore, this may have been hard to discuss, because she didn’t speak on it much. Although Sinclair may have found some solace in the process of writing, it could not have been an easy task. Based on Smith and Watson, who believe that writing about trauma could benefit both the writer and reader, Sinclair’s audience may have benefited more from her writing than she did. Her display of profound strength–and her ability to transform memories of trauma into a beautiful and cohesive memoir–is inspiring. 

So, although Sinclair leaves us with additional questions about her healing process, we’re still unsure of whether she found relief from this writing, I would argue that we are not supposed to forget the pure anguish and hurt in the first twenty-eight chapters. Instead, we can see how the effects of emotional and physical trauma in the memoir take precedence over other topics, such as the topic of forgiveness and acceptance in the last chapter. The difficult, daunting task of acknowledging and dealing with trauma is arguably what this story’s all about. 

 

Works Cited 

Sinclair, Safiya. How to Say Babylon: A Memoir. Thorndike Press Large Print Biography and 

Memoir, 2024. 

 Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography Now: An Updated Guide for
Interpreting Life Narratives. 3rd ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2024.

 

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