Learning to Learn, Otherwise Called Unlearning
Practically twenty years ago, I took a course about Writing by Aboriginal Women at the University of Calgary. It’d been added to the curriculum because of student protest. They’d noticed the absence of these important voices and insisted they be added. Yeah for students! Seems they were really learning.
It’d been a long while since I’d completed my degree and I was pleased to see how academia had advanced. We placed our desks in a circle. There were no lectures, only discussions. We captured our thoughts in a journal, not essays. We were not expected to polish our sentences, only to deepen our thoughts. Best of all, we met actual authors and heard their words spoken out loud. It does not get better, that much I know.
To Be, or Not to Be, That Is the Question (thank you, Shakespeare)
Marilyn Dumont had recently published her poetry collection, A Really Good Brown Girl. Such powerful words, I was stilled in her presence, toppled by her courage. In keeping with the style of the course, after her reading Marilyn Dumont engaged us in discussion. She showed us her notebook and asked if any of us write.
At the time, I was intensely shy. For more about that, see my personal essay, “Amongst the Unseen and Unheard” in the Shy anthology edited by Rona Altrows and Naomi Lewis. These days I have become less shy, partly a gift of traumatic grief (our son took his own life) and partly a gift of aging. In the face of the ultimate deadline (aka my mortality), I understand that I must be real and awake and present for as many moments as possible. I no longer have time for hiding.
Risking It All
But in that moment when Marilyn Dumont asked her question, although I’d hardly spoken in class, I answered her. Without realizing what I was doing, I risked it all. Yep, not shy. Gosh, by golly, what a surprise. I admitted to the entire class that I write, which is interesting because I’d barely begun to explore writing fiction and had never shared any of my endless journaling with anyone. She asked me why and I answered just as quickly. I said that I write to know my voice and how to use it. Hmm.
Busting Loose and Living Free
Since then, I’ve published a whole book written only by me, in which I get full-on lippy and positively shocking on the bodily experiences of perimenopause. Ha, so there. As I was revising Your Body Was Made for This for publication, I deliberately fought self-censoring. I looked for anything I was avoiding and I dug in. And I am here to tell you that doing so brought me more fully alive. It made me brazen, an experience I highly recommend, especially for anyone over forty and even more for those of us over sixty. Bring it on.
But What Does It Mean?
Soon my first book will have been out for a year and I am pausing once again to ask that question. Why do I write? The answer I gave Marilyn Dumont holds true, but it has enlarged to encompass so much more. Yep, I still write to know my voice. Except I also write to know my mind and body. More importantly, I write to encounter the truth, which is that we all matter, even those of us who are struggling, even those of us who are unkind, even those of us who are hard to take. Imagining myself into lives that are not mine does all of that for me. Seeking what I avoid activates compassion. It opens my soul.
And that is why, regardless of whether a single word I write is ever again published, I will continue so long as I have breath and consciousness. I will write.
Debbie Bateman 