Injured Beavers See Each Other For The First Time and Fall Instantly In Love

From the Archive: On the problem of writing through grief and complex heartbreak + how to write without writing + to hell with imposter syndrome

Me with Z at our cabin last fall, when all was falling, falling, falling

There is a line in my book, The Part That Burns, where the narrator, a younger version of me, says to the man she is falling in love with: “When you see me, I exist. When you see all of me, all of me exists.”

Writing in the Dark is like that—a place where we are allowed to see one another in our full humanity. Our recent Thread on what makes you you, was inspired by Audre Lorde’s quote:

I learned that if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.

That Thread became on one hand, a defiantly joyful example of allowing ourselves to reveal what Ada Limon calls “the mess of us, the hurt, the empty” in her gorgeous poem “Instructions on Not Giving Up.”

It also became a testament to the fact that we can be the mess of us while laughing, drinking Earl Grey, swimming wildly, parallel parking like badasses, feeling the hearts of animals, and being as BIG as we want to be while knowing that “more than enough” can be just perfect.

In this spirit, I want to share with you the news that

Billie Oh

has been updated by the county on Z’s adoption—a date will be set for June.

A date will be set for June.

If you are new here, as many of you are this week, Billie is my youngest adult child, and Z is their foster son, who came to our family two years ago. It’s been a tumultuous and unpredictable rollercoaster since the first day, which I’ve sometimes touched on, including last fall, when Z’s foster care situation was in a very uncertain and heart-aching place.

Now, his adoption is in scheduling.

We are overjoyed while also recognizing that, as the novelist and activist Rene Denfeld so beautifully put it in her interview a couple of weeks ago, adoption from foster care is the most wonderful thing that should never happen. Our family also recognizes that adoption, though beautiful, is neither simple nor “just one thing.” There will always be great loss and heartache, even in this complex joy.

And, so, I hope this piece that I wrote quickly at the height of last fall’s uncertainty—when I was too deep in the abyss to work on my book—might ring true for anyone who has ever struggled with their own creative practice.

Love,
Jeannine

How to Write Through The Hurt

1. Carefully cut the burs from your fluffy little dog’s face and legs. Tell her it’s okay, it’s okay, as you hold her and scissor out these painful prickly bits from her most beautiful gossamer fur. When her little face looks lopsided afterward, tell her she is so so beautiful and let her kiss your mouth.

2. Now you kiss your grown daughter on the top of her head. Smell her hair, the shampoo mixed with woodsmoke from the fire you had last night by the lake. Remember her from long ago, as a baby, and even before that, before she was your daughter, how precious she already was.

3. Send flowers to your friend whose husband who is celebrating clean scans one year after a terrifying surgery and treatment protocol. Cry when you hit send on that order.

4. Listen with your whole self as your son tells you about the most important things happening in his life right now, like falling in love. Believe him when he tells you what it all means to him.

5. My god, do you see that little tree? The white oak on the hillside? Do you notice how the leaves literally redden and smolder between morning and afternoon? How the setting sun makes it look like a blaze?

6. Make homemade non-churn ice cream for your foster grandson. Let him help you whip the cream, let him help you swirl in the caramel. Let him lick the beaters, the spoon, the spatula. Laugh and laugh as he repeatedly exclaims, “I like it!” When the ice cream is ready, let him have all the sweetness he wants.

7. Remember that Hayden Carruth poem, “Testament,” about—among other things—dying, where he says, “Now I am almost entirely love.”

8. If you want to write about that beaver swimming back and forth in front of the dock, go ahead. I mean, it’s not a bear, or even a moose. I really don’t know what you’re going to say about a beaver. What do beavers even do? Chomp wood. Build lodges. Swim. Slap their tails. Okay, whatever. Write about the beaver.

9. The truth is, you are thinking about your novel all the time. Just this afternoon when you walked into that coffeeshop on campus, you relived the scene where your protagonist is required to meet the school’s lawyer in a coffeeshop. Remember how you wrote it so the place was packed with red hat customers, some kind of tour thing, no open tables? How the teacher and the lawyer were forced to sit side by side on the sagging plaid couch tucked under the macrame plant hanger, the lawyer’s knees jutting uncomfortably upward? It’s a pretty great scene.

10. You know what? Beavers are a lot more complicated than you said. Look at all those trees in the forest behind the cabin, the ones they’ve chewed down but couldn’t drag to their lodge. Beavers have limitations! Disappointments! Because why? Because they have hopes and dreams. Beavers fall in love, for fuck’s sake. True headline: “Injured Beavers See Each Other For First Time And Fall Instantly In Love.”

11. I don’t know what else to say to you. Just feel it all, feel every last damn thing. You’ll write when you write. You’ve always written. You can’t help but write. You’re almost entirely love now. You see that oak. You see that beaver. You see it all, tucked under the macrame plant hanger. Just take a breath and write it down.

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The Feeling of What Happens: A Live Workshop On Zoom

On June 27, I’m teaching my first live workshop (on Zoom) since last fall—”The Feeling of What Happens,” on advanced techniques for writing that evokes emotion—that makes readers feel something. All levels, all genres, a true intensive. Hard work, good fun. You will make new work—and come away with real tools for future work.

Registration opens today, Friday May 17 at 9:30 AM. Full description and registration info is in the link. This is also a perfect chance to see if you like studying with me live and synchronous … because the live, synchronous version of WITD is finally be returning this September, in six-session segments.

Below are a few links to recent posts that I originally shared during the lead up to our embodied writing intensive—but they definitely overlap with writing for emotion. After all, we feel emotions in our bodies.

1. Howling Under A Smooth Surface

2. “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final ... Nearby is the country they call life.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke

3. I Was A Child in A Child’s Body

4. Some Might Have Called the Roses Garish

5. This is My Body, Filling My Body

6. Sleeping Birds Are Vulnerable

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If you or someone you know is walking the long path back to yourself after a painful childhood, then my memoir, The Part That Burns, might help light your way.