I was reading Natalie Goldberg this morning. She urges memoir writers to start with the scary stuff, the dark places, the hidden knowledge, the secrets. She might as well be saying write down your shame.
I think of myself as an open book. I often share intimate details with those closest to me and sometimes with people in line at the grocery store. I sometimes referred to myself as an emotional voyeur. And yet Natalie's prompt this morning got me thinking...
It is challenging for me to talk or write about my own sexuality. I can talk about sex in a clinical, detached sort of way. In fact, I was once a sexuality educator for a teen pregnancy prevention project. But when I try to write about a sexual experience of my own or even my own thoughts and feelings about sex, I experience a rush of shameful emotions.
Natalie says we have to write about the stuff we should not write about, otherwise, we will always be writing around our secrets. I wonder how much energy I expend avoiding thoughts and feelings about my own sexuality.
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