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Amra 's Armchair Anecdotes
Welcome to Amra’s Armchair Anecdotes! I’m Amra Pajalić—
writer, teacher, and storyteller. Pull up a chair, and let’s dive into
stories about writing, life, and lessons learned—sharing wisdom
from my armchair to yours.
Amra 's Armchair Anecdotes
From Wounds to Words: Transforming Trauma into Powerful Storytelling
Amra explores how our deepest wounds can be transformed through writing, sharing personal stories about growing up with a mother who had bipolar disorder and how that shaped her storytelling journey.
• Writing from trauma connects readers with universal experiences and emotions
• Memoir writing requires decisions about what to share and when you're ready to reveal personal stories
• Fiction provides "plausible deniability" while still allowing emotional truth to emerge
• Writing through trauma should ultimately help healing, not make things worse
• Take breaks, find trusted readers, and develop grounding rituals when writing difficult material
• Your personal story may connect with readers in unexpected and meaningful ways
Find episode handouts and how-to guides at amrahpayalich.com/podcast. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this episode - connect with me on social media and let me know how your writing journey is going.
Welcome to Amra's Armchair Anecdotes.
Speaker 1:I'm Amra Payalich, writer, teacher and storyteller. Pull up a chair and let's dive into stories about writing, life and lessons learned, sharing wisdom from my armchair to yours. You can find the episode show notes, your free episode handouts and my how-to guides at amrahpayalichcom slash podcast. And now it's time to dive in. Welcome to Amrah's Armchair Anecdotes. And today I'm talking about the power of writing through wounds and how trauma shapes stories shapes stories. So I think for me, everything that I write initially sort of started with a wound, with something that I wanted to process and I wanted to share. And through the sharing of my story, I'm sort of opening up a conversation with the reader who reads that, and I think that we read things that we need at the time and it helps us think about things. Whenever I'm going through a time in my life where I am reaching some sort of a transformation, some sort of an evolution, and I can feel a shift within myself, I find myself searching for things to read around that experience, and I think that's true for most people. We are searching for fiction or nonfiction or just writing in general that speaks to something that we are going through and that is going to help us in some way. And I've found that that is sort of my superpower, that I can write dark, that I can really explore that stuff and over the you know, three decades that I have been a writer and the two decades that I've dedicated myself to being a professional writer, I've sort of discovered that's a little bit of a superpower. It's a little bit of a superpower. A lot of people sort of struggle with trauma and you know, sometimes people you know don't know how to respond to it, and so books and writing give us that space, give us that opportunity to engage with things that we need and I find that, you know, it's a great tool for connection and connecting people. So it is hard writing from trauma. It is very hard, it can be transformative, it can be cathartic and healing, but it is still scrubbing work. So I'm going to share some tips about writing from wounds or from trauma and ways that it can help support you.
Speaker 1:So first I sort of need to define what I mean by wounds. So it's emotional experiences that linger with us the moments of hurt, vulnerability or upheaval. The moments of hurt, vulnerability or upheaval For me, my first wounds were having my mother, who was a bipolar sufferer and the experience of growing up with that and in that environment, and then also the complicated relationship with my mother, and that still very much influences my writing, just in different ways, because now some of those wounds have healed and so I'm writing from the other side, where I'm writing as a mother who has a secure attachment with her daughter, whereas for most of my life I was writing from the perspective of the daughter who is suffering this pain and this difficulty. So why should we write from wounds? So it's not just about dwelling in the pain, it's about understanding it. It's about writing that personal and finding the universal, because when we share it, you know readers see themselves in it and it gives them the opportunity to work through things. And sometimes we read things and even though we understand the trauma behind it, we understand the experience behind it. It's not until we go through it ourselves that we have that even deeper layer of meaning, that we have that even deeper layer of meaning.
Speaker 1:I remember reading the memoir Wild and it was about the experience of losing her mother when she was very young and there was this scene where when she gets her mother's ashes, she eats them, and I felt that scene so viscerally when I read it and then when I watched it. And then about five years ago I lost my own mother and when she passed I went back to her house in the morning and I went and lay in her bed and in her sheets and I breathed them in and I just was in that moment, you know, feeling those last moments with her, and that gave me that deeper understanding of that scene where, when you're experiencing that profound loss, there's something within you where you need to grab it, you need to connect with the person that you lost. And so that scene comes back to me every once in a while. And that moment of the day after my mother passed away, going into her house and lying in her bed and feeling that loss, it connects me with that writer even more. And so it's just fascinating how we make those connections, those visceral connections, with other trauma.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to talk about this from three perspectives writing wounds in memoir, then writing in fiction and then some tips and tricks for staying grounded. And I just wanted to flag that not many people can write from wounds. It can be uncomfortable for people to read, and those of us who can, who can be honest in that way and who can be vulnerable in that way. It is a superpower and it is something that you know we need to do and something that we need to bring to the table. You know we need to do and something that we need to bring to the table. So, memoir, um, it's really, you know, a genre of scars. It's about naming what hurt and how we survived.
Speaker 1:But you don't owe your trauma on the page. You decide how much you share and what you want to share and you decide how you want to, in a sense, conceptualize that. What is the story that you want to tell and where do you want to draw the line? So, when I was writing my memoir about growing up with a mother who had bipolar, I did want to show the trauma of having a parent who is mentally ill and who has lowered inhibitions, some of the hurtful moments that can happen and the things that they can say. But there were also some things that I did not share. But there were also some things that I did not share because I wanted to protect my mother, because I didn't want to show her as this horrible person, because, at the end of the day, she was battling a mental illness and she could not be held responsible fully for what she did. And so I wanted to tell this story and share what it was like for me, but also show it from her perspective and not be cruel, not be vicious in my approach. And so you need to make that decision for yourself in your memoir what it is that you are wanting to share and where you want to draw the line. And sometimes those stories you don't want to tell them at that time, but you can tell them later.
Speaker 1:And so I do feel like I have another memoir in me and I do think I have a memoir about the complex relationship mother-daughter relationship that I had and the way that mental illness shaped that with my mother. And I can tell that story more now for a few reasons One, I'm older, but two, and most importantly is she's no longer with me and so I can tell that story and not worry about hurting her. It's not a story I wanted to tell while she was with me. I wanted her to have that memoir as a celebration of her life and as a celebration of her triumph in, you know, prevailing and still living and pushing with this illness that was constantly holding her back and even though now, in one sense you know, telling that story, it might be seen as being hurtful to her and to her memory, but it's more about really acknowledging the complexity of that relationship and the different stages that you go through and basically how, when your parents you know, in my instance, when my mother had that illness, it meant that she was never truly available as a parent to me, where I was never the first port of call or the first person that she thought about.
Speaker 1:She was never able to put me first. And that's one of the things that I think is really important as a parent and to, you know, be a good parent. Anyone can give birth. Anyone can, you know, impregnate someone. But being a parent is about truly trying to be unselfish and to put your child's needs first. And my mother was never able to do that, and it's not because of the limitations of who she was, it was because of the illness, because of bipolar. She was always self-centered, always focused on herself, centered, always focused on herself. And I'm not saying that I don't do that. I'm, you know, I have a very rich, um, professional life and personal life, and that's not what parenting is. But when it comes to making decisions, when it comes to thinking about my life, my daughter is still the one that I put at the center of that, and so I do make decisions that are about her, and for me that's been a healing thing. But it is something that I do want to explore in another memoir, and so sometimes, when we write memoir, we might not be able to tell everything in the unvarnished way that we want to, but there's always the next memoir and the next story that we can tell. So when we are writing a memoir, some things that we need to think about is what was the emotional journey, what changed and what is the why about telling this story?
Speaker 1:So with me I had written my debut novel, which was me trying to sort of tell my personal story, but I could not actually write a memoir at that time in my life. I started writing that when I was 25 years old and it was eventually published when I was 32. So you know, obviously a very long lead time, but that was not a time in my life when I could do it. I started writing my memoir after I had my daughter and I felt like I sort of had PTSD because it was bringing back all these memories of my childhood and I was going through all these different emotions where I was like judging my mother and I was angry with her about certain things that happened. And then I got postnatal depression and I just reached the other side, where I realized how hard my mother did have it being, you know, 15 year old bride, being a 16 year old mother and becoming a mental patient within months of giving birth, and so it gave me a very different perspective and it gave me a very different writing of that memoir.
Speaker 1:I actually wrote it numerous times in a different stages of my life. I had a very different perspective on it, but it was very difficult to write. There were a lot of hard moments. There was therapy I did have to go into therapy, I did have to take breaks and, as I said earlier, I did need to think about what is the story I wanted to tell and how did I want to package that. And so there were some stories that I did soften or some stories that I told a different perspective, and perhaps when I write my next memoir, I might revisit those or I might not. You know, it depends on what I'm wanting to explore in that particular story, and so you know, that's the other thing that happens when you're writing about yourself.
Speaker 1:As you go through different experiences, as you age, as you evolve, your perspective evolves also in that way, which is quite amazing. And so I think that there is also something about going back and revisiting stories that we've told previously and telling them from that different perspective and, in a sense, sharing that evolution that we have and the way that we transform, because I think there is something quite beautiful about that, about having the opportunity to gain wisdom. My mother died when she was 66, which is very, very young, and you know she also. She was very wise in some ways, but she was also quite limited because of the mental illness and because of the electric shocks therapy that she was subjected to, and so there were certain things that she was never able to evolve in. So I very much treasure that and am very grateful for that and love that as a concept in terms of thinking about our lives and thinking about what we are writing about. So I think what I would say about writing a memoir is that you do need to have some perspective on it. It might help you to write it while you are in the midst of it, in terms of making notes or doing journal entries, I would encourage you to think about maybe not publishing those and not putting them out in a public forum, because when you are in those moments of deep vulnerability and deep pain, you know you're actually not fully there.
Speaker 1:I felt like after I lost my mother, I did actually lose my mind for a while. I was not cognitively functioning in a way that you know was normal. I remember going to a meeting with my PhD supervisors and having this conversation and it's kind of blank. I don't really have very clear memories, but I do remember that they looked at each other. There was this moment when they looked at each other and they said we think you need to take a break, we think we need a leave of absence. And while I don't have much clarity about that conversation, I do remember that I was just not able to think, I was not able to connect things. I don't think I could even remember the name of the book I was writing, and so those deep moments of trauma, they do make it difficult to think and sometimes you are kind of in an altered space. I know I certainly was. I had to take sleeping pills just to be able to function and just to be able to not go into basically a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 1:And so after my mother's passing and during that period, I was writing things in a diary and I do have notes. And there is a night that is a horrible night that I had with my mother during her breakdown and I do want to write about those things and it was good that I took those notes and that I've got that record. But to write it for publication, to actually share it at that time, no, no, that would not have been a good thing. And so I would encourage anyone who's going through those experiences take notes, journal, keep the memory, because, also, you will forget, because trauma does sort of. It depends on how your brain processes, but for me, I disassociate, I block, I just kind of go. Things go black. In moments of very heightened emotion, I leave, I'm not here, and so I think that you know having that, that jotting down, and that remembering, is good, but think about whether you want to um publish that and do that from the perspective of when you are, when you've processed it. So I think it's really important to not write when it's you know, know an active word, and also the way that you know is, if you are trying to write about it and it's actually making it worse, then that's something that you need to pause, because I really believe that writing should make it better.
Speaker 1:And I remember when I was writing my memoir and it was getting worse and I was going to a bad place, I had to stop. I went to counselling, I wrote other things, I took a break, I skipped some of those sections, I continued on and then, when I felt stronger and I had some clarity, I went back. So those are the things that we need to think about in terms of writing about wounds and how do we deal with it. So I'm going to move on to fiction now. And how do we do this in fiction? So we're channeling the wound, we're not recreating it. So sometimes maybe there's something that you do want to write about and it's safer to do it in fiction, it's safer to disguise it. So it gives us that distance and it still lets us bleed through with that emotional truth, but it keeps us safe, and so that's what I did with my debut novel.
Speaker 1:I could not write it as a memoir at that point. I could not share the story, a memoir at that point I could not share the story of what it was like truly to have a parent who, you know, was bipolar, and some of the things that I went through when I was a child, really traumatic things, and so I needed time and space. But having written that first book as fiction did sort of help me clarify, it did help me clean out certain memories, it did help me contextualize certain experiences and it did help me understand. And so then, when I was going back and writing it as a memoir, I was then able to use all of those lessons. So you know, see how it's working for you. So when you are writing fiction and you are wanting to explore your wounds, think about the emotion that you are exploring, what part of you is your character expressing and how can you write honestly, even if the details are invented. So you're bringing some of yourself into that story, but you're still keeping yourself safe.
Speaker 1:So with Sabir's Dilemma, which is the fiction version of my life, it was writing about being in both worlds and that was sort of the main story, even though it was about being parented by a mother from bipolar. I was sort of looking at being of a migrant background, being in Australia and the intersection between the two. So that's the angle that I sort of took with that. And then, you know, I look at my freelance writing and I have also written from wounds there, wounds that you know had healed, but things that I still felt that I needed to explore. So one of the articles that I wrote for the Age was about I had to marry into my faith but my daughter doesn't, and I was going through this experience of talking to young people my age. I live in the suburb of St Albans, it's where I grew up, it's where I teach and I teach young people who are, like myself, the children of migrants, and who are caught between those worlds of living up to the expectations of their parents and the culture, but also being in Australia and sort of having these opportunities.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that was coming up was this resistance to relationships that were across religious boundaries, ethnic boundaries, cross-cultural relationships, and so one of the things that I could speak to my students about was understanding that, thankfully, my love story and my relationship worked out well. I fell in love and married a man who was of Bosnian Muslim background, like me, and it wasn't an arranged marriage or anything like that. We did meet and we did fall in love, but there is an element of I knew what my family was like and I knew that at that time if I did have a cross-cultural relationship, I would not have a relationship with my family, and so they were that did influence my thinking and that it did influence, in a sense, what I looked for in a partner. Um, even though it was very subconscious and I was 19 when I met and married my, it all happened very quickly crazy love, but realizing that that experience still resonated with people and was something that people were going through.
Speaker 1:But then also from the perspective of a mother who I never put that pressure on my daughter and my husband does not put that pressure on my daughter, we have always had conversations about you may marry a girl, you may marry a boy, you may love someone who is, you know of our background, you may not. We have never put any of that onto her and that's one thing that I'm really happy about we've always been on the same page about and it's because growing up in that background and having that message and knowing that your parents love has limitations, that they will only love you as long as you meet their expectations, as long as you meet what they want from you. It is actually a little soul destroying. It does affect you, and it did affect me for a long time, because when you are loved with limitations and with boundaries, it does affect your self-worth and it takes a long time to process and deal with that and to think that you are worthy of more than those limitations and those constraints, and so that's something that I wanted my daughter to grow up with.
Speaker 1:I wanted her to grow up in an environment of unlimited love, of there is nothing that you can ever do or say and you will not be loved. I mean, obviously you know, um, I hope that she is law-abiding and moral and ethical, um, but in terms of you know, those sort of expectations about how you should behave or who you should be, that's not something I wanted to put on her, and so, know, writing this article gave me the opportunity to express that, and I remember the last line was something like not everyone, you know, those of us who grew up with this, we know what the price is, and when I was writing that article, I was writing it for these young people, these young students that I knew that I was talking to, that I could see that pain in their eyes and I wanted to acknowledge and validate them. And so in that way I was taking my trauma and my pain but I was wanting to connect it for other people and I was also sort of wanting to open up that dialogue, because some people who don't grow up in these backgrounds, who don't grow up and with these sort of family expectations, they don't understand it. They're like you can marry whoever you want. You are living in Australia, yes, you can. But will you have your family? Will you have that relationship, or will that cause a tear in the fabric of that relationship? Can you bear it? Can you go through that experience and live with that tear and with that loss and the destruction that that will bring to your spirit and to your heart? And so I also wanted to sort of flag that and flag that. Yes, that's wonderful if you come from that sort of a family background. It's wonderful for my daughter that she's got two parents who went through a lot of these things and who are making different decisions for her. But unfortunately there are a lot of people who are still in that position.
Speaker 1:So fiction can sort of give you that opportunity to share those stories and to write a narrative about what you want to talk about, but creating those archetypes and creating characters that give you plausible deniability. So when my aunt read Sabiha's Dilemma, she said, oh, the aunt is a little bit like me, but she's not. And the grandfather is a little bit like me, but he's not Like you. Know my grandfather, but he's not. And Sabiha's a little bit like you, but he's not like you know my grandfather, but he's not. And so behaves a little bit like you but she's not. And that's plausible deniability, where you are able to create the character where it's got some of the characteristics of what you want to explore. But you have given yourself enough plausible deniability. There's something else that you can do in terms of writing fiction. You can, you know, use the wounds and create relatable characters. So I think that when we are creating a character that has that deep emotional journey and that is in that state of transformation, it can really, really add depth. And so you're using their flaws, their pain and their journey.
Speaker 1:So the novel that I am going to be publishing soon, that is the first book in my series and that is my thesis book. Um, my protagonist is Seika. I created her wound as the guilt of surviving when so many others didn't. So Seika is in a war zone, and it's about her trying to retain her morality and her goodness when survival is all that matters and life is just about trying to survive. And then the continuation of that is the survivor journey and how you have that survivor's guilt and what do you do with it. And then eventually, as the series goes on, it's about her learning to use her wounds in terms of trying to find justice and finding meaning within that. And so it's been really interesting how this character has evolved as the series evolved, has evolved, and it's given me the opportunity to sort of explore different things. I mean, it's so weird because I'm the writer, so I've created this character and I've created this world, but then in another way, as you keep writing and developing a world, it sort of takes a life of its own and it feels like the character is talking to you and the character is leading you into this, and so even the way that I'm talking about it, I find it really interesting.
Speaker 1:And so, um, when you're thinking about writing fiction, uh, something that you can do is you can think of a moment in your life when you felt vulnerable or hurt and imagine a character with that same wound, and how would they react to the world. And so, um, seka, you know, while I have not been in a war zone and I have not survived, that, in one sense my childhood and the upheaval of my childhood does reflect a little bit of seka's reality, and so my trauma from that goes into her and then me, finding meaning within that trauma and finding a way of making that trauma. You know, when that trauma is actually influencing my life, it is becoming my drive. That's something that I have also used with Seika, so her trauma has become her drive and her purpose. And so I guess we're both joined by social justice, and that's something that Seika and I have in common. And so, in that way, while Seika is a different person to me and we have not had the same lives, and it's sort of the first time, in a sense, that I'm writing a book and a character that's completely outside of me if we don't count my romance novels, there's always a little bit of you in everything that you do. And so when you go back to the heart of it. You sort of see what is your dna, what's your, what's your blueprint in that. So this is the way that fiction can, you know, serve us. It can serve us in those two ways, which is it gives us plausible dinability where we can explore a story that might be too emotionally fraught for memoir, and we can also use what we are going through and what we are feeling in our experiences to create our characters and give them that big world and give them that big drive and characterization.
Speaker 1:So now I wanted to talk about tips and tricks for writing and some practical tools that you can use when you're writing really hard, emotional things. You know, write in sprints. I mean, this works for any type of writing. I find that you know you're struggling for time or you're just struggling for motivation. Writing sprints and going, okay, 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes it really kind of makes you get things down on the page. It pushes you past, uh, that voice in your head that might be stopping you, that might be wanting to edit, um, that might be, you know, being that that difficult voice that is, um, self-sabotaging a little bit. So doing sprints helps, but it also helps when you're writing really emotional things, where you just try to get the words out, you let your subconscious do the work and you see what is there, because then you can sort of get out some of those things, um, that don't have place in the book.
Speaker 1:So when I was writing my memoir and there were certain spots where I was writing about things that my mother did and my anger would start overwhelming me and I would start judging her very harshly and having this very negative narrative in my head towards her, I would do the venting, I would get it out on the page, I would swear I would get all that judgment out and then I would cull it and I would write it to try and let the reader judge the action, not insert my narrative, but give the action and let the reader understand it, rather than having my narration and having my anger there, um. So I find that that helps have some sort of a grounding ritual. So you know, for some people that might be lighting a candle, playing music, um, going for a walk. For me it's become my garden, doing my gardening, planting, watering, being in the space, looking at my plants and then also going for walks in the park and really just sort of breathing in and looking at trees and looking at greenery, I find that I can just feel my body relaxing. I can feel it, the tense, tense just leaving me, and also I find that those moments of just letting your body rest and your brain rest, you reset and things start sort of clarifying and you start getting that, that moments of clarity and going okay, I know what I need to do. I know what the problem is there.
Speaker 1:If you're writing scenes or sections where it's just too hard, the emotions are getting the better of you, you're really struggling use place see placeholders, um insert here and just do a quick overview and move on. Come back to it at a time when you feel stronger, when you can actually do that writing, when you can take that leap, when you have had a conversation with someone who has helped you clarify the emotion, or you've had a timeout and had your brain have that opportunity to clarify that emotion and then you can go back to it. Another thing is you can keep a journal beside your manuscript and you can let yourself vent separately. So, depending on how you work, this could be, you know, be where you are handwriting a journal. I used to do that for many years. I actually still have them. I've got a box of all these journals that I wrote over the years. I now find myself doing digital journals and it's more about notes and things that I might come back to, and so that's changed also.
Speaker 1:So just find what works for you. There's no right or wrong, it's whatever the. What works for you. There's no right or wrong, it's whatever the process is for you. Find a trusted reader or a therapist, especially if you're writing memoir. As I said, I did have to go to therapy to sort of take a time out and deal with some things. I also have friends who have been with me for decades, who know everything about me and can really be those trusted voices that I can speak to, that I can vent, that I can get those things out. And the other thing that I would say is that you really need to be careful who you get to read your work, especially at this early stage, or who is the person that you talk about, because there are some people who actually can't deal with trauma and might struggle and might negatively react and make you feel bad about it.
Speaker 1:So over the years when I've done memoir writing workshops, I have had women come up to me and talk to me about what they're working on, and there were quite a few women who were working on talking about sexual abuse that they had experienced as children or somewhere later, later in life, and the difficulty in writing about but also being in writing groups and sharing some of that writing and having really negative experiences to that, and so sometimes some people can't deal with what you're writing with. So it's really important that you find the right people. I actually remember one of the workshops. I had a conversation with one woman and I had a conversation with another woman and I realized that they were having the same sort of experiences, and so I brought them together and I introduced them to each other, um, and I said to them the two of you have a lot to talk about, and so I'm hoping that they were actually able to find a connection and continue that conversation with each other and maybe develop a critique partnership.
Speaker 1:So when you are looking at someone reading your work, that's important. Think about the big picture. So while every story is personal, there is a universal message. So when I was working on this, uh, fiction novel that is my war book, it was very hard to write at certain points in terms of reading the research, reading about the genocide, reading about the atrocities that were committed in the war, the hardships that people went through, and I did have to take breaks also with that. But then I also had to sort of step away and I had to think about what is it that I'm trying to say? What is the story that I'm trying to tell? Why do I have to go back and do it and then also think about what is it that I could say that was unique about this story? And so one of the things that I realized that I had to bring was this understanding of what it was like in communism, in communist Yugoslavia, and the way that the division in society occurred between the urban and the rural communities, so between the people who lived in the city and the people who lived in the village.
Speaker 1:My mother's side of the family, um, grew up, you know, I grew up, um, in a village. I lived for four years in what was yugoslavia with my grandparents on a farm. We did, did everything. We had chickens, we had cows that we milked, we had a garden that we harvested, we had wheat that we used to reap and, you know, get hay from, and just the whole lot. And I didn't really know about these differences because I was a child, but it was only when I was an adult and I married my husband and I was talking to him and I realized he'd had a very different upbringing and a different experience, because he grew up in a city, so he grew up in Sarajevo, and his experience in communist Yugoslavia was very different.
Speaker 1:And so when I was doing this research for my thesis and for this novel, that was something that I came across that had an impact in terms of how the war was experienced in the town of Srebrenica by the residents, and so that's something that I wanted to share in my fiction and also something that influenced my thesis. And so while I felt, you know, I was doing this really important story about writing about a genocide that occurred and about the danger of othering and the danger of discrimination, I was also sharing a story that not many people knew about and not many people understood, and so that was something that gave me that space and that opportunity to, you know, come back to it strong and refreshed and to keep going, despite how difficult it was at certain points. The other thing is, take a time out and write something else. So you know, as I said, with my memoir I took a time out. I wrote romance novels. Um, while working on this novel and this thesis, I took a time out. I wrote many freelance articles. That sort of gave me the opportunity to write about something else, to experience something else, um, to still be writing and moving forward but, um, to have a break from the hard stuff so that I could then come back refreshed and so always sort of think about is there other things that you can take a break from? And, you know, still flex your writing muscles, but give yourself some space for healing and to refresh yourself. So, when talking about writing for healing and connection, you know, writing wounds. It's not just cathartic for you as a writer, it's healing for the reader.
Speaker 1:I've received some amazing messages over the years from people who have read my memoir and who have seen themselves somehow in my memoir. The two most amazing messages were one was from a man who was from a Muslim Bangladeshi background and he read my memoir and he related to my father who committed domestic violence against my mother, and he said how he came to Australia with the views that he brought from his culture, which was that you were able to beat your wife and your children and that he ended up in the court system and that he then had to learn to adapt to the norms and the culture of Australia. And I just thought it was so brave and beautiful that he actually wrote me that message and that he was able to see that. But it also showed me how sometimes you think you're writing one story, here you're, and you are the story that you're telling, but other people might see themselves in other ways, and that the people connections might make um could be amazing. You don't know what they are, and so those connections are what matters. Um.
Speaker 1:And the second one was a man also, and I was also surprised about these male readers, because I thought I was writing a book for women and I was writing just about women's experiences. So that's the interesting thing too, in terms of, you know, reading crosses all lines, gender lines, all the lines that we could introduce. And he was relating to my stepfather, because he had struggled with the line between being a parent and being a friend, and to do one you had to lose the other, and so that was something else that he saw himself in with my stepfather in terms of my stepfather was very connected to the experience of children and he was just a great companion and we could relate to him on that level. But then, you know, if he tried to to parent us, we could not see him in that way because we had this relationship with him that was more along the friendship lines, because he was just such a fun person. He in a sense, did not have much of a childhood and so he just loved spending time with children, um, and it was so beautiful to watch him. I'm so glad that my daughter had that experience when she was small, that she got to be with him, um, and see a little bit of that side of him. So, um, you know when, when we're writing these words and we're sharing these stories, we are also making these connections that we don't know we might make. So take heart from that.
Speaker 1:So, finishing up, thank you for joining me today's episode. I hope, um, that it inspires you to embrace your wounds, to find ways of using them in your craft, to have a deeper appreciation for the courage that it takes to put our hearts on the page. And, you know, I would love to hear from you in terms of comments on the episode or connect with me via social media. If you're curious about my writing, head over to my website, join my newsletter and until next time, please keep writing, keep healing and remember every story starts with a word, thank you. Thank you for tuning into Amra's Armchair Anecdotes. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow for more insights, stories and inspiration from my armchair to yours. Remember every story begins with a single word.