The Message, Meaning & Mission
Photo by Ellen Blum Barish
Seventh in my series on Ellen’s Eight Essential Elements
When I began writing my memoir, I was thinking it was a childhood trauma story.
Years later, stalled in the writing because so much of it had been retraumatizing, as I dug into my old journals and school papers, I discovered a pattern. Big life changing moments happened to me in spring; a season that set a number of life-changing events into motion.
Seeing this enabled me to return to the writing with new energy because it provided me with a theme. Spring was an anniversary for me. Seven of them in particular.
Several drafts later, a thoughtful writer friend suggested that a scene in which I stop for a moment of prayer would make an excellent prologue. Once I placed it there, the book had a different framing. The story was still about trauma and healing but the journey had a spiritual quality.
The book was transformed from a childhood trauma theme to a spiritual one. It broadened the scope. While it was still about brokenness and healing, it was also about doubt, faith and redemption.
Not only was this useful when I began to shop the book around to publishers who like to know what shelf the book will sit on, it helped me understand a motif in my life. Since girlhood, I had been a spiritual seeker whose journey was thrown off track by this trauma. Writing through it allowed me to return and continue the journey.
I urge writers to discern their theme or themes as early in the process as possible. It offers up their message, meaning and mission. A central idea. A recurring image. A story about love, loss, betrayal, forgiveness, freedom, entrapment, power of knowledge, dangers of unchecked ambition, importance of friendship, struggle between good and evil, beauty of nature, inherited family trauma, a spiritual quest, a search for pleasure or a medical journey.
Like life, stories often have more than one theme.
Which distinguish us from others.
And shows us what matters most.
Coming Up!
I’m teaching fewer workshops these days but I do have two single-session, online gatherings scheduled in the next few months. This one is set for November. Details available soon.
“Before I Go: Writing the Ethical Will” Ritualwell. Thursday, November 13 (online).