The Power and Promise of Personal Narrative: Writing Your Own Story

I don't imagine that many will understand the perhaps not so subtle nod to Karren J. Warren's article The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism (1990) in the title of this post, and that is certainly okay. With that said, if the term ecological feminism was enough to spark your interest, follow the link above and have yourself a read. While the following paragraphs have little to do with either ecology or feminism, they are both representative of a time in my life when I began drafting the first manuscript to my own personal narrative.

I was working my way through my MA—reading, writing, reading, re-writing (thank you, Élise)—and while I loved the work that I did, I felt myself growing more and more disconnected with it as I advanced. There was something inspiring about being surrounded by motivated individuals engaged in their own research and writing projects, it was familiar terrain for me after four years in my BA, but with time I realized that it wasn't quite the right biome that the budding writer in me needed to grow. I had been writing my whole life, so I was taken aback that a program where all I did was read and write wasn't resonating with me on a deeper level. In hindsight, I see that it was the people that kept me hanging around that department for as long as I did.

Je ne regrette rien. They are good people.

It took a bit of time, but once I had finished my studies, creative writing came back to me like an old friend. I realized that more than literary analysis and rigorous intellectual foreplay, I craved the freedom to twist reality, to subvert norms, to imagine impossible scenarios, and to tell stories.

"the Baucis to my Philemon."

Let Yourself Be Vulnerable

Coming to this realization after six years in academia was a little jarring on the system. I found myself reeling from the realization, as if questioning my entire identity. It sounds dramatic, but I couldn't stop thinking about why (or how) I had kept the impulse to write creatively at bay for so long. Who even was this guy?

Before I really knew what I was doing, I started writing and everything was pouring out in verse. I was travelling through pages—camping trips, cross-country road trips, and much to my surprise I was also heading inward—interrogating myself over this journey to rediscover my own passions and creative vices. Little did I know, this was the start of Leviathan and my Personal Mythologies series.

At the time, it felt like pulling on a loose thread in a knit sweater. Once I started I just couldn't stop. Next thing I knew, I was standing before a notebook feeling as exposed as if I had actually just unraveled my last article of clothing. For a moment I thought, well, I can't show this to anyone, but I decided to sit with it for a while. What if others could relate to this feeling of chasing after something for so long and travelling so far to try and find it, when all they needed was the realization that they had it all along? They had been carrying it all this time, and really they just needed to let it go.

"Leviathan is not a mythic sea creature,/and this is not a book about one."

No, I think I need to share this.

Write Your Story

I had heard it for years, "write what you know." Well, if that's where I would have started, I would have written some incoherent mashup of Maria Chapdelaine and La Peste: a cautionary tale about the epidemic of lonely women waiting around for men to die in the woods. On second thought...

What I ended up doing was exploring something new to write about. Myself. I even learned a few things along the way, and sharing those discoveries felt fulfilling, validating, and empowering. So, I would amend that adage to the following: write in order to know. There is very little living and learning without exploration. So, live a little, explore always, and in this process you may just discover the power and promise of personal narrative.