On this last day of the year I am sitting at my desk trying to think of the right words to honour someone special. A person I loved. An entire life.
This week I have been reading a story about a man who took a woman’s life. How words were part of the tapestry of his world, of who he was and who he wanted to be. How what we say or write, and how it is perceived, can determine how we are treated. This book has made me think about the power of words, and the value of time spent with them.
Recently I have stopped reading words in the newspaper because I am losing faith in their ability to save lives. I have scrolled less because everything I read in my echo chamber makes me wonder why words are not enough to stop the slaughter. Why words that have been crafted with care and given deep thought are ignored by those who most need to hear them. Why the words of millions cannot stop the very worst actions of humans.
How can words hold the potential to be powerful but be so easily ignored?
I have thought a lot about words since becoming a carer to two of my daughters. There are times when these daughters do not have words. This morning, for example, when we went for a run under the final sun of the year, one of my daughters stopped in the street of our little town and seemed agitated. When I asked her what was wrong, she could not speak, so I held her hand and whispered to her about the little grey cat waiting at our house. She absorbed this thought and we walked quietly home, past the tiny garden with a huge bush that is always filled with sparrows, and I wondered why my daughter’s words had taken flight.
Sometimes, during one of the many, many appointments we attend, the psychologist/education welfare officer/occupational therapist/EHCP officer/speech and language therapist/GP uses thousands of words. They sit in a chair with an important expression on their face as words tumble into the room. And none of them are useful. Often they are worse than useful because they cause damage. The words spilling from their mouths are ignorant, invalidating and confusing and my daughter and I wish we had never heard them.
Other times, I prepare very carefully the words I want to say to the psychologist/education welfare officer/occupational therapist/EHCP officer/speech & language therapist/GP. I talk through my thoughts with friends or family, and they agree that my words are well-considered and important. Yet when I say these carefully-prepared words to the psychologist/education welfare officer/occupational therapist/EHCP officer/speech & language therapist/GP it is as if I am speaking in an entirely different language. It is almost as if they have deliberately chosen to misconstrue my words. In my experience, this lack of hearing has a power all of its own. It has the ability to make me feel utterly perplexed, let down and undermined. In truth, the not-hearing and the twisting of my words by unkind or unhelpful people has led me to use the written word to try to make sense of it all. The result of a frequently gaslit existence.
The not-hearing can be more powerful than the words not heard.
Over the last week or so, I have rejected the concept of new year’s resolutions as too harsh. I have worried about the pace of this life I live being too fast, because I feel like I am spinning and it has been good to sit inside my thoughts for a while. I have questioned the worth of the work that I do in the hour or two I grasp at each day. I have glanced back at the years behind me, when the written word played a much smaller role in my life, and wondered whether this world I am building for myself is a mirage, whether I am qualified to share my words at all.
But unlike my daughter, I have always found it easy to talk, easy to emote, easy to use words as a way to connect with others and make sense of this world. Some might say too easy, and see life writing as indulgent or too exposing. But I argue that this is a form of silencing, and I am told too often to diminish myself, make myself go away, so I keep talking. I keep writing.
"A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth…In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons." ~ Isabel Allende
In a house where words frequently cannot be found, and caught up inside systems that poke fingers in their own ears, I look at the books in my bedroom, including one that I wrote myself, and I feel sure that writing holds the answer. Although words can be used in ways that cause terrible harm, ultimately I am optimistic about where they can lead us.
How often have you read an article that made you stop and look up and recall a piece of yourself you had forgotten? When did you last ‘like’ a post that could have been written just for you? Do you do what I do and sit reading in bed when the moon is hanging above your rooftop and wonder how another human could have articulated so beautifully exactly how you feel? Words. And emotions. Emotions wrapped up as words.
My often-silent daughter sometimes writes down her words when they will not sit neatly on her tongue. She types into my phone, or carefully records the thoughts she wishes to share with me in an exercise book I bought her, especially for that purpose. The book has a cover with a tiger on it, and the tiger is made from a velvety fabric that I am stroking now. My daughter likes to stroke it too.
In many ways you might say this little girl is unlucky. She has been failed by so many people who should have helped her; she is unable to learn at school yet the local authority refuses to fund her education; she has spent the last two years trying to fathom why people find it so hard to understand her needs. In these ways she is unlucky. But if you could see her bedroom at the top of the house, the one with coloured snowflakes stuck to the window and a distant view of the sea, the window she stands at each night so that she can spot constellations and notice the phase of the moon. If you could see the books she has lined up on shelves and along a mattress against the wall, stories she disappears into again and again. If you could see the words she writes into her tiger book, or taps into my phone. If you could watch her dancing on the sand and know that the toss of her hair and the flick of her heel is the way she communicates when she is inhabiting her own wildness. If you could see all of this, you would say she is lucky. She has plenty of words, but you might need to work harder to hear them.
‘But little by little,/as you left their voices behind/ the stars began to burn/through the sheets of clouds,/and there was a new voice/which you slowly/recognised as your own’ ~ Mary Oliver
For now, I return to the screen on my desk and look for a way to make my words shine a light on my grandmother’s life. And I hope for a year where words can matter. Also a year where words that sound a little different, or look like something else entirely, will be heard.
Thank you for writing this ❤️
The world, including this Substack world is SO much richer for reading your words. Your posts are achingly beautiful and I’m very grateful you chose to write during the snatched hours. You are a-maz-ing and are one of the very few writers I’ll stop what I’m doing to read your latest post. So grateful, thank you 🙏