On Finding My Voice

Yesterday, I finished the third draft of my memoir, Prosthesis. I’m beyond excited (motivated, gratified) about this project, but if I’m honest, it has wrung. me. out. Every chapter requires an expedition back in time to moments I’ve worked hard to get over and forget. What’s different about the exercise, or more aptly put, exorcism, of writing a book about those years is that I am not returning to wallow. I’m returning to make sense of, to put new eyes on, to recover from, and I mean really recover.

Those who know my family know that my dad lost his leg when he was 24-years-old, the result of an injury that wouldn’t heal, sustained in a motorcycle accident. I titled the book Prosthesis at the outset because I liked the metaphor of my relationship with an emotionally-absent father through the image of a missing limb. In time, however, I also came to realize that others had propped me up as a substitute for their own missing “limbs” (a controlling mother, an abusive spouse). And that wasn’t all. I compensated for trauma, fear, inadequacy, smallness, and shame with silence. Feeling threatened? Fall silent. Need to keep the peace? Get quiet. Handler disapproval? Go underground.

Suffice it to say that the “prosthetic” theme took off and in the process I got schooled in the countless, myriad ways I’ve allowed my voice, my desires, my thoughts, my being, to live in abject silence branded upon me by the destructive belief that I had nothing to say and no way to say it anyhow.

My entire short story collection, Ten Tongues, is about characters struggling to find their voices. It makes perfect sense that my memoir circle back to the same idea, only this time I’m having to admit that it is my voice I’ve been talking about all along.

Shout-out to Shari Caudron for her coaching expertise and insights that helped me figure this out. I might still be writing in circles without her help.

Tomorrow begins Draft #4. I don’t know how many more it will take to finish the book, but the good news is that I’m deep enough into the process that there’s no turning back now. If life has taught me anything about being a prosthesis, or dealing with one, it’s that time heals. I mean, I already know this, but I’m saying it again, that the thing we often grouse about and feel imprisoned by or bullied by can become a conduit of transformation. If you want it, that is. It hurts to hurt and it hurts to heal. Ultimately, we have to choose which one we want more.