After Disclosure: When Writing Brings New Pain

In a previous video post, I acknowledged that not everything writers need to write about is rainbows and unicorns. Writing can be therapy in a real way, and it’s a path by which we can provide empathy and push toward change.

But last week, I read an article in BookForum by Moira Donegan entitled “Disposable Heroes.” In the piece, Donegan discusses One Way Back, the memoir of Christine Blasey Ford. In 2018, Ford made headlines for testifying to Congress with sexual assault allegations against soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Donegan unpacks Ford’s memoir in an attempt to show that disclosure about trauma can create its own agonizing ordeal. We paint those who recount their stories as heroes in the moment, but then, Donegan argues, we throw them away and are unwilling to acknowledge how disclosure upends their lives.

We rarely train for this

Getting through the potential fallout of storytelling is not, I assume, something most writers are trained for. We are trained to worry about transitions, word counts, and query formats. We learn to track submissions, engage with beta readers, and if we’re savvy, to approach writing as a true business. Perhaps the closest we get to self-care is communicating the difficulty of writing to other writers, from whom we seek tweets of consolation.

If we must write about the dark rooms we have been in, we go into the work focused on healing, hopeful that we might help someone else. We might cognitively understand that our message might not be for everyone, but we do not pick up our pens truly ready for the emotional onslaughts of insults, gaslighting, or outright threats. Even if we have disclosed in the past, a new disclosure can bring different cuts and hurt us in different ways.

If we can’t hedge and protect, we must learn how to withstand

It is almost impossible to understand what wounds a disclosure can bring and from whom. Subsequently, there’s no playbook for readying or hedging ourselves. What we can do, however, is understand what allows us to withstand emotional pain in the moment, because that’s all surviving any sort of trauma is — getting through one moment and then the next, over and over. We can decide ahead of time to what or to whom we will turn until the immediate feeling of hurt lessens. And we can pre-decide to hold to specific values that mean something to us, so that the hurt that swirls does not commandeer our actions and, as a consequence, lessen our positive influence.

What gets you through your pain might not be what gets someone else through. Your values might not be someone else’s values. But be deliberate in your second-by-second defense of the truth, because there is no truthful story that ever deserves to be silenced.