This spring I was asked to contribute an essay about coming to peaceful terms with one’s body to Healthy Life magazine. I wrote about years of dieting, overtraining, and injury, and my eventual path to the Health At Every Size movement, and to Nia dancing (the article is available at http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/My-Word-1321123.php).
As Frank Smith suggests in “Myths of Writing,” my writing was neither sedentary, nor solitary, nor silent. I pre-wrote while dancing and walking, working out difficult passages in my head. I talked through my ideas with my mom on the phone, and as @writingteacher “talked” it over with my tweeps. I revised with my writing group via Facebook over wine and truffled goat cheese. In an effort to model the writing process and because I appreciate their solid feedback, I posted the essay on the website of my sophomore English class for feedback and support from my students. And I emailed drafts back and forth with my editor before a final draft arrived in the mail—my first paid writing gig complete.
To my surprise, though, the piece continued to be part of an ongoing conversation. I was contacted on Twitter by the most prominent voice of the Health at Every Size movement, Linda Bacon, who re-tweeted my writing and invited me to join a forum for further discussion. The article was picked up for a newsletter for a national organization that fights discrimination based on weight. Marilyn Wann, an activist for body diversity, author of the book Fat!So?, and a valued role model of mine, friended me on Facebook and asked if I would be interested a) being her friend and b) contributing to her blog. (Yes and Yes!) Technology, which I think is sometimes perceived as an “add-on” to the writing process, took my writing and thinking in unexpected ways and to my surprise, it felt so organic.
I was still sorting through this experience four weeks ago when the same message was brought home again. I was invited to begin reading a friend’s CancerCare blog. Diagnosed with a virulent form of breast cancer in November, the day she was sworn in to be a lawyer, Teri blogged about her battle to a wide and diverse audience of friends and family. Every few days, she documented her roller coaster ride with cancer with stunning grace, good humor, and acceptance, even as the realities that she and her new groom—and those who love her—were facing became grim. In return, the comments brimmed with encouragement, love, and gratitude for letting us feel connected to her. Her husband took the reins the last week, when she could no longer post, and updated us about her final days whispering and giggling with her sisters, and final minutes holding her beloved’s hand as a thunderstorm passed and she left this world.
With no prompting, her Facebook page exploded with an outpouring of love for her and support for her husband. The sense of normalcy it gave people to write Teri one last message was clear; we felt we were still talking to her and sending our love, in the guise of a wall post, a photo, one of her favorite songs, or a painting inspired by her. For a little more than a day, people from all over the country told her how much we would miss her, thanked her for her enduring generosity, expressed gratitude for how she had touched our lives, promised to remember her. And a day or so later when the page was taken down, putting her name in the search engine elicited only a tiny rotating squiggle, and the word “searching”. I suspect that those close to her will always be looking for her out of the corner of their eye, so it seemed if heartbreaking, also somehow appropriate.
Technology is commonly disparaged for driving people apart and putting teens at risk of everything from poor social skills to attention deficits to abduction. But my recent writing experiences have demonstrated to me that there is real power for writers in the sense of intimacy it can create genuine connection it facilitates.
Alicia Wein
