Reconciliation - at least in fiction

Author:

Dorothy Colleen

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Autobiographical

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I just finished writing a story in which a slightly fictionalized version of me goes back to her hometown to re-connect with the people she left behind, and to lay ghosts to rest.

In the process, as I wrote a scene where she reconciled with her step-father, I felt a weight lift from me, as if I had managed to do the same in real life.

Maybe it was just fiction, but somehow, it felt like I actually accomplished something.

Make of that what you will.

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The burdensome weight of fear.

And the buoying effect of forgiveness.

You may not have consciously realized it yet, but at a subconscious level you were still harboring ill feelings for your step father. No matter how rotten a man he may have been, those feelings were causing your spirit to be weighed down.

Also, in the same way, by writing out a reconciliation and forgiveness of a man very like to the same as in your own past - you were able to forgive him and move on.

The lifting of that particular burden is always amazing.

Personally, I choose to try never to allow myself to become burdened with it in the first place. I know that can be a tall order for someone with your background... sorry :(

Abigail Drew.

It makes sense

I had a friend - he's dead now, but when he was alive he was writing all the time, mostly poetry, and he was very good.

But he went through a divorce, his second, and it hurt him badly.

For years the suffering that came from it was always coming up in his letters, in his poems, in conversation.

... until the day he collected the best of his "divorce poems" into a book.

After that, he rarely mentioned his divorce again, and if he did it was in a more matter-of-fact way.

I felt that he'd taken all that suffering, tied it up in a neat package, and tossed it over his shoulder.

Reconciliation, and Catharsis

I'm not surprised writing it affected you that way, Dorothy. It's the same principle behind therapists that have a patient write a letter to the person who wronged or hurt them. Not so much to send to that person (they may even be dead), as to get those feelings out...

Lisa