Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

by Sarah Polley

If this were a memoir or an autobiography, it would be woefully incomplete. I am both far luckier than these essays would imply if they were read as a map of my life, and I have experienced more trauma than I have given chapters to.

As the essays began to shape themselves into a book, I realized that the connective tissue between them was a dialogue that was occurring between two very different time frames in my life. The past was affecting how I moved through the world, while present life was affecting how the past moved through me.

When I first met concussion specialist Dr. Michael Collins, after three and a half years of suffering from post-concussive syndrome, he said, “If you remember only one thing from this meeting, remember this: run towards the danger.” In order for my brain to recover from a traumatic injury, I had to retrain it to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered my symptoms. This was a paradigm shift for me—to greet and welcome the things I had previously avoided.

So much of coming to terms with hard things from the past seems to be about believing our own accounts, having our memories confirmed by those who were there and honoured by those who weren’t. Why is it so hard for us to believe our own stories or begin to process them without corroborating witnesses appearing from the shadows of the past, or without people stepping forward with open arms when echoes of those stories present themselves again in the present?