Re-Write Your Script
Photography: Jillian Clark
Location: THE STORE
Words by:
Charman Driver
On May 17, 2013, I was empowered by this quote:
“Once you realize that your life is an unfolding story and that you are a storyteller, you are transformed from a victim of circumstances into a creator of your life. Your natural powers of intuition and resilience are ignited. Things you never thought possible begin to happen. You gain the clarity, confidence, and power to create a better future for yourself, your loved ones and the world.” — Juliet Bruce (@thestoryzone)
Six years ago, I took a continuing education workshop at Duke Integrative Medicine called ‘Leading Others in Writing for Health’ based on James Pennebaker’s 30 years of research in writing to heal. I undertook the class to learn to coach my clients on writing for better physical, mental, and spiritual health. What I came away with was emotional healing of my own that I didn’t realize I needed.
During the workshop, we learned about the many styles of writing for health. One type is called Transactional Writing and its purpose is “to take care of the business of life, new or unfinished”. It’s defining characteristic is to communicate a message by a letter of compassion, empathy, or gratitude.
The handbook for this course, by John Evans and Karen Jooste , says for the Empathetic Letter you “symbolically take your leave of the past and move forward by composing a letter to yourself or someone else involved in the distressing event. Try to understand why this person did what they did. You aren’t saying what they did is right, but are instead trying to understand and empathize.”
My healing started with an Empathetic Letter to my father.
Dad was a dreadful man: a drunk, physically and mentally abusive to my mother, and financially unstable. We spent much of my early childhood in a nightmarish situation and trying to get away from him (which we finally did by the time I was five). I grew up hating him—or at least, the idea of him—and hiding from our family’s painful past.
On this day, I wrote him a letter starting from the assumption that he isn’t a bad person, but just did something bad that hurt his family. In my letter, I asked him what he was thinking? What happened to him in the past to make him do what he did? What did he feel as he was doing what he did? How did he feel afterward? What could we have done to support him?
I never got the answers to the questions because my father had died from a heart attack four years prior.
Here’s what I can ascertain through my adult lens: Here was a black man who returned home from a war (Vietnam) to a place (Nashville) where he was disrespected in innumerable and unimaginable ways. Moreover, he likely suffered from PTSD and depression. He was a broken man.
I burned the letter, with the intention of it being the perfect sacrifice for moving ahead symbolically. On that fateful day, I grabbed the reigns of my life, seized control, and rewrote my script.
I learned so much that day: How to forgive—myself and others. That no matter who my parents are, where I grew up, or what happened to me in the past; it’s all a part of my story—and it is a treasured one that I can share.
Are you ready to re-write your own script?