The Healing Power of Memoir by Dorit Sasson
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Dorit Sasson/@Voice to Story
“Healing takes courage, and we all have courage even if we have to dig a little to find it.” ~Tori Amos
Photo Credit: Google Free Images
Please join me in welcoming memoir writer, blogger and radio talk host Dorit Sasson in this guest post on how writing her upcoming memoir, Accidental Soldier: What My Service in the Israeli Defense My Service Taught Me About Faith, Courage and Love, helped her to heal. I have had the privilege of being a beta reader for Dorit’s compelling story and appreciate her sharing how the process of writing her memoir helped her to heal. Her memoir will be published in 2016 through She Writes Press. Not only is her memoir a testament to her inner healing journey, it is also a fascinating glimpse into the heart of Dorit’s beloved homeland, Israel–its country and its people.
The healing power of memoir is a highly valued and popular topic among memoir writers. I feel honored that Dorit interviewed me about it on her Giving Voice to Your Story blog.
Welcome, Dorit!
Author, Dorit Sasson
The Healing Power of Memoir
The Story-Behind-The-Story…
Over twenty four years ago, at age nineteen, I’d pulled out smelly tomatoes at a sandy settlement in the middle of the Arava Desert along with a Spaniard who also came to Israel as a volunteer with the Israel Defense Forces. Having built some confidence after basic training where I learned to fire a gun, I was now convinced I was “qualified” to write a memoir about my experiences. That day I wrote in my journal, “I intend to write about my experiences one day.”
But beyond the lumpy tomatoes and dust, I was learning to culturally adjust to a foreign mentality and I was still under a “test” to survive. Deep inside, I was struggling to express what my insides couldn’t yet put into words – the feelings of being an outsider trying to figure out if it was worth building roots in this strange and foreign country.
Fast forward to April 2013. I was no longer living in Israel, My mother had just passed away. I was armed with just the memories of our embroiled relationship and why I had to leave New York City in the first place to serve as a volunteer with the IDF and what brought me to Pittsburgh after living in Israel for nearly twenty years. I started the process of downloading the memories. My soul was craving to give voice to a story. But something held me back.
I was looking to perfect the story. I was afraid of healing.
But after my mother’s death, I decided to pick up my memoir again. And I felt naked. And vulnerable.
Writing about deeply personal experiences often feels like you’re wading through memories like a ship lost at sea. It can be scary to write (and share) your writing with others let alone write. Holding back from writing your memoir is easy. But there comes a point when the memories start nudging you. That’s their way of getting you to pay attention. By taking the time to download the memories, you begin to initiate a journey towards healing. You give them a chance to speak. You’re acknowledging them. This is not an easy thing to do in our fast paced digital world. But on the other hand, healing from a painful experience requires the gift of time.
My Healing Story…
A British immigrant named Darren served in the same unit as I did. He thought all Americans were stupid and he wanted to throw me out of the unit. He misjudged and mistreated me. He antagonized me. The word “bully” never came up when I tried to confront him. Yet I allowed him to control me. I tried to brush him off. I thought he would go away. But as I wrote, he continued to haunt me in my memories. I knew I had to listen. I felt my own voice healing and wanting love and recognition as a victim. In the process, I reconnected with that nineteen year old American soldier serving in the Israel Defense Forces trying to find her voice. That’s the beauty of healing: as you write, you reconnect with other memories which can have a profound effect on the healing process.
You Must Write, Write and Write to Get to the Gem…
Downloading memories doesn’t always have to always lead to a story line. For six months, I kept downloading a scene from my army service. The words “bully” and “victim” didn’t have any context yet. As I wrote, it was clear that those words now had their own story. I opened myself up to the story, allowing it to be what it needed to be, and soon I found myself crying for that vulnerable and yet, terribly misunderstood young woman. I wanted to reach out and hug her. Yet, I was crying happy tears of joy. I had dug deeper into the healing process.
To get to the crux of the message or the theme of a memory, you have to allow yourself to write. There are no shortcuts. At first, it was painful to write about Darren, but the more I did it, the more comfortable I felt doing it. Writing also helped liberate any stigma or attachment to the memory of being bullied.
Healing Creates Distance…
When I started writing my memoir, Accidental Soldier: What My Service in the Israel Defense Forces Taught Me about Faith, Courage and Love, I had to learn to create distance between myself as the writer and myself as the character. This process released some of the fear and anxiety I had about sharing an unsettling experience and coming out with a bully story that would potentially ruin my good girl image. After all, I had seen myself a victim. As seen in the small excerpt below, in the telling of the story, I hadn’t yet come into direct contact with Darren’s abusive behavior. I’m only setting the stage to describe Darren’s basic characteristics, but I needed to download a number of scenes in order to express the relationship I had with this person. And that requires a desire to go there.
From Chapter 10:
My intuition is spot on: Darren sees himself as the Alpha Male and doesn’t think that girls should be in a garin at all. Later he will flat out confess that he has no tolerance for girls in the garin because we aren’t cut out for serving in the Israel Defense Forces
Techniques for Creating Distance…
There’s no right or wrong it may be even easier to start by expressing the basic information you know about a person. You don’t need to be vulnerable and release your deepest darkest secret all at once.
With the clients I work with and the students I teach, I’ve found that structure contains a “healing vehicle.” At all stages of the writing, you initiate your healing. For example, a timeline can be a great opportunity to differentiate between “dark” and “happier” turning points of your life. As you download scenes, you’ll invariably come into painful points of the memory. Knowing how to manipulate the language of scenes helps infuse dialogue, setting and character description that will impact future events.
Other genres of writing don’t offer healing as a direct benefit. Memoir writing offers a beautiful gift of healing and change. This amazing process starts the minute you start downloading the memories until the final finished form. You’ve managed to learn and grow from your experience and to write about that ONE story that made a difference.
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Thank you Dorit for sharing your healing journey with us. I appreciate the specific examples you gave about your story. You have shared many valuable tips about the experience of approaching vulnerable areas and finding a pathway to healing. There’s no doubt that the only way to the other side of painful memories is through them and that’s a process that takes time and patience as well as courage. Thank you for sharing your experience so openly.
Also I know you are preparing a Pubslush Crowdfunding Campaign for your memoir so stay tuned everyone for the details on how you can support Dorit’s memoir.
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Author’s Bio:
Dorit Sasson, an award winning speaker and author as well as the creator of Giving Voice to Your Story radio show and website, is available for consulting, speaking and writing projects. She posts regular updates to her memoir fan pageAccidental Soldier: What My Service in the Israel Defense Forces Taught Me about Faith, Courage and Love
She is a coauthor of the book Pebbles in the Pond: Transforming the World One Person at a Time featuring bestsellers such as Sonia Choquette and Robert Allen. She leads workshops and presentations also online on the power of personal story telling and is the creator of Giving Voice to the Voiceless – visit her at www.GivingVoicetoVoicelessBook.com
Author Contact Information:
Website: Giving Voice to Your Story
Blog Talk Radio: Creating Calm Network
Twitter @VoicetoStory
Facebook: Silence Book Series
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Book Blurb for the Memoir, Accidental Soldier: What My Service in the Israel Defense Forces Taught Me about Faith, Courage and Love.
Emotionally disconnected from her exceptionally talented mother who played alongside such greats as Leonard Bernstein, Dorit Sasson leaves her hometown of Greenwich Village, New York City to volunteer for the Israeli Defense Forces as a new immigrant. Thinking she’ll have it easy because she already knows Hebrew, has an Israeli father and spent a previous summer on a kibbutz, Dorit encounters unforeseen obstacles that force her to constantly step out of her comfort zone in order to acculturate to this foreign militaristic world. In this coming of age memoir of self-empowerment, you’ll journey alongside with Dorit who transforms her quiet nature and steps into her powerful assertive voice she didn’t even know existed. She discovers the real motivations for leaving her mother which lead her on a path to greater self-forgiveness and self-awareness.
Advanced Praise for Accidental Soldier
“Your story in and out of itself is so powerful, Dorit.”
-Brooke Warner, Warner Coaching, founder of SheWritesPress.com
“In a rare show of honesty, Dorit Sasson creatively shares her journey of living in a wartorn country and leaving her family and friends of many years to restart her life in a safer haven. Through her voice, the culture shock of trying to find one’s home is vividly felt – one is drawn into the experience and comes out on the other side, changed.”
-Bonnie Young
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How about you? Have you ever started writing a memoir or personal writing? (a journal counts, too!) What were your experiences?
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~
Next Week:
Monday, 6/8/15: “Redefining Success in Memoir Marketing”
Reminder: My Goodreads Giveaway for Ever Faithful to His Lead runs until June 11. Ten paperback copies will be given away. You can enter the drawing on the right sidebar.
