Oh, please, not literally. Also very few theorists of the mind consider Freudianism a valid theory.
In fact, it is almost sure that the only patient to whom Freudianism applied was Freud himself.
But I was hanging out in a group of writers and found that at least some of us refuse to see mental health professionals — reasons obvious — but work through things we don’t understand or traumas in our stories.
Oh, not consciously, mind you. Absolutely not consciously. Just a part of the weird alchemy that works in our brains and spits out stories.
When I found out my grandmother had died I was at the keyboard half an hour later writing a short story. Because I could not cry, or at least not yet. But I could write a story. And though she wasn’t in the story, I see things I remember from her in the story.
Sometimes I’m not even aware that I was working through some emotion too big to process in writing until years later. And it’s a piece here and a piece there.
I worry that that people will think that Orphans of the Stars is my processing my mother’s death. In fact the mother (and father. Well, sire) plot was sketched before mom died unexpectedly. Will some of the grief and shock and whatever the heck this is fall into it? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s unavoidable. But if it does, it won’t be obvious. Perhaps not even to me till years later.
At the same time, sometimes emotions and problems are too big to process and they shut the writing down.
There is nothing wrong physically, nothing wrong with my circumstances, but you just can’t write, because you’re working through some trauma that hasn’t been digested by your subconscious.
And so things abide until your brain unseizes and you can write it out, in bits and pieces and sometimes so disguised even you don’t see it. But you feel better, and perhaps more stable afterwards.
I mean, the only reason I wrote at all after 9/11 is that I had a book overdue, and I wrote it … sitting in front of the TV, listening to the news, afraid I’d miss something that happened. Something important.
And yet, you won’t see it if you read Any Man So Daring. You might, however see some trauma in it, maybe. I don’t myself, but it’s possible.
The next book I wrote was Draw One In The Dark and I’m not sure you see any of the trauma there. But then again, I’m not sure I’m yet done processing that particular trauma, much less the other traumas that fell in through the time.
And as I’m writing this I suddenly realize why I went into such a hard silence in 2020, and why it was so hard to break out of it.
But at the time, even I wasn’t aware of the shock and anger stopping my writing.
So what can I tell you that’s useful? If your grief sends you to the keyboard, write. And if it makes no sense and has nothing to do with what happened, don’t worry about it. the subconscious knows what it needs.
And if you find yourself hard stopped on all writing and there’s nothing physically wrong? Look at anything big that might have happened to stop your subconscious from doing its thing. And then give yourself some grace. soon you’ll be ready. And if you process shock, anger or grief through your pen, no one need know.
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “Write Me About your Mother”
Writing was my escape, this past summer. It let me have time away from all the things going on, duties to be done, taking on alone what had been shared duties so that another family member could focus on the Big Thing. I’m sure things have leaked into the stories, but I don’t see them yet.
Like TXRed, I write to escape. My interests and values, such as they are, end up in my work without really trying. Occasionally, stuff that aggravates me get put into my work in an unfavorable light. My…issues? They are pretty small beer compared to some things. I assume they bleed into my writing somehow, but I don’t recall intentionally putting them there.
“Also very few theorists of the mind consider Freudianism a valid theory.”
It’s a steam engine. For realz, the guy came up with a theory of the mind that’s a steam engine. When I studied Freud I asked the prof “why are we talking about this idiot? He’s not even wrong!” The prof had some babble, but the real reason was “because syllabus says so, I don’t make the rules.”
I have the same reaction to people claiming the human mind is a digital computer. No, it is obviously not.
My relative who had medical training says that the profs taught Freud as a pioneer in coming up with theories, and as an example of how a therapist’s social and cultural environment can influence his ideas about the mind. If you read the stories of the … ahem, stuff … that went on in his social and religious circle, daaaaang you can see where some of his ideas came from. Those people needed to get out and touch grass, trees, rocks, and the rest of reality outside the Ringstraße in Vienna.
Didn’t Siggy come up with his ideas about human psychology after treating a total of six extremely mentally ill people, all of whom got worse? I hope that’s not how all doctors prove a theory.
A little of that, but look at the artistic and musical and literary circle in Vienna, some of whom Freud knew or socialized with. Egon Schiele and his mistress (who may also have been Klimt’s mistress), the Mahler couple (and all of Alma’s lovers), et al. Talk about dysfunction. Those are Freud’s contemporaries, and were known to him at the time. There’s a lot of suspicion that observing their (mis)behaviors influenced some of his theories. Not proof as of last I looked, but suspicion.
I lost my mom in 2022. I was her primary caregiver. I watched her die. It was horrifying and traumatic for the both of us. In a family that rarely had cancer, a simple cancer of the colon metasticized and spread to her liver and lungs in months, especially when she decided she could no longer take the harsh treatments. I wish to God I had known about ivermectin/fenbendazole at the time. As it was we were still flexing in the COVID psyop and my mom, the RN, was utterly convinced the medical field was true and good and honest.
Anyway, I feel you on what you write here about shutting down when your soul needed the creative release of writing the very most. I found myself saying goodbye not only to my mom, but a lot of things attached to her. I was forced to say goodbye to the first half of my life. Mortality challenged my existence in ways I was not prepared to deal with.
You are so correct: give yourself some grace when it comes to expressing your grief. It was cathartic for me to write letters to my parents who are both gone. But it took me a while to get to the point where I could stand the idea of putting pen to paper. And Im one of those people who did search out a therapist if for no other reason than to hear that I am not alone. And she always says to me : you are feeling what is right for you at the right time in the right place. Your soul knows what it needs and when it needs it and how. If youre still shut down, youre right where you need to be for the time being.
Sorry, had to do that one.
Lost Mom in 2023. She was…a presence. A good one.
Redhead, natural. Had to become the eldest sibling when her older brother and sister got in trouble and was sent to a prison farm (Oregon in the ’50s). More or less raised her youngest sister.
Was the family archivist, genealogist, and collector of stories. To the point where we still have four or five containers of scrap books and information nobody else in the family wants.
Always there to help, always the first to reach out and ask and make the world a better place.
Her health had been fragile for years (I didn’t know how fragile, which leads into…)
Tried to help me to find what my dreams were, even if she never quite understood them. Helped me to finish my last semester of college before ChatGPT started to wreck any non-technical degree program.
Stood as translator between Dad and I, because I think I’m speaking English yet he never quite understands.
Yet…she was like me in that we didn’t share a lot.
I never knew she was married before Dad until she passed. Why she got married so quickly and divorced even quicker (fell into lust, learned that her spouse was a spendthrift living on parent’s money after they married).
How bad her health actually was. I knew she had lung issues, being about five, six years old when Mom got the flu, stayed sick, and had to go to the hospital to reinflate her lung will do that to you. I knew that she had breathing issues-when I came to the house when they moved, I slept in the spare bedroom with a BIG portable oxygen tank she refilled her carry-along tank with.
I didn’t know she had been steadily losing function since I was young and one lung was so scarred they could only do a single lung transplant until the transplant happened (I thought she was getting a pair of new lungs).
Or that she was diabetic in the last few years of her life (starting during COVID). And one time before she died, she fell into a deep diabetic coma and Dad was scared that this time we were going to lose her.
And I can’t say that I was entirely ignorant of it-I was paying attention.
She just hid it extremely well.
Just like I hide too much of my own issues.
I think I write more than one female character who is “Mom, but more” at times. God knows I got my love of redheads from somewhere…