The Woman Who Was Loyal To Her Suffering

The Woman Who Was Loyal To Her Suffering

I’m about to co-teach a writing workshop with Memoir As Medicine author Nancy Slonim Aronie. It’s called ENOUGH ALREADY, and it’s inspired by Nancy’s cousin Zelda. 

Learn more about ENOUGH ALREADY here.

Zelda told Nancy that when she was a kid, she remembers hiding and listening behind the kitchen door to her mother and her aunt. Her aunt did all of the talking, complaining about her arthritis, her husband Irving, her varicose veins, her cough that came out of nowhere, her best friend Bessie’s heart murmur, her best friend Esther’s dumkuph of a husband, the high price of ground beef- and then she’d cycle back to her aches and pains. She could tell you when it was going to rain precisely 37 hours before the first thunderclap sounded.

Here’s the story, as Nancy tells it:

My mother, Zelda continued, finally exasperated, having gotten not one word in edgewise for the entire afternoon, would yell, “ENOUGH ALREADY!” It would stop Sadie in her tracks, and she’d leave in a huff shortly after. And then her mother would say the same thing every single time.

“That woman, I swear, is loyal to her suffering.”

The huff didn’t last long, and there would be a repeat of the little theater piece in a matinee the very next day.

Zelda would eavesdrop, and Sadie would complain, and Zelda’s mother would say, “Enough already,” and when Zelda’s mother’s sister would leave in a huff, Zelda’s mother would say, “I swear that woman is loyal to her suffering.” Rinse and repeat.

For the last forty years, Nancy has facilitated writing workshops where she has been called “the midwife for words that want to get out.” She jokingly calls herself “Ex-lax for stuck stories.” One student described her writing workshops as “Isn’t it that writing thing up in Martha’s Vineyard where, after women take it, they leave their husbands?”

Nancy remembers laughing, then wincing. Or was it wincing then laughing?

But her work for all these years has been to encourage people to take the chance of writing the tough stuff that happened to them, their traumas, their “tiny murders,” their deep sorrow- to get those stories out of their bodies and onto the page.

But whether you’ve written your story or not, some stories have staying power. We just can’t seem to put them in the past and move on beyond them.  Our hope is that this workshop will serve as a guide to help you, the writer, the complainer, the victim, the wounded, the hurt one, the empaths, the one who was called Sarah Bernhardt, the one who felt all the emotions for the whole family, who got sick because of what wasn’t said in the home, who carried the family shame or the town’s scarlet letter or the weight of the world on your shoulders- to finally once and for all turn the page on your old story and create a new narrative that suits The New Year, New You.

So Nancy and I are teaching a weekend Zoom writing workshop called ENOUGH ALREADY. This workshop is for those who will declare, “I’m done. This is the last time I will write this and the last time it will have a hold on me.”

You can honor your history and have compassion for your “parts” without being loyal to your suffering, as if it’s an albatross you’ve adopted as your best friend. We’ll help you ritualize the writing and honoring of your story, and then, tearfully if need be, the letting go…

Learn more about ENOUGH ALREADY here.