Screaming on Rollercoasters

Mood Tools Week 4: How Feeling Your Feelings Helps Your Writing

My kind mom died a year ago, yesterday.

I’m editing this post on the train home after spending the anniversary of mom’s death with my sister. We lit a candle. We ate ice cream. We laughed. We cried. And we went to Busch Gardens to recreate the magic of our childhood by riding rides that once felt like parties to our teen-aged selves but had a fifty-fifty shot of feeling like hangovers to our forty-something selves. In the interest of full disclosure, riding seven rollercoasters in a few hours—including this particular beast four times in a row—may have contributed to that hangover feeling. And while that video is an excellent record of what a ride on the Alpengeist looks like from the front row (like the teens we no longer are we we rode up front not once but twice), it pales as a record of how it actually felt to hurtle face first into a tornadic breeze so strong you end the ride with tears streaming down your face and your mouth dry from all the screaming.

So much screaming.

If you’re wondering what any of this has to do with writing, the answer is everything.

As writers we’re so focused on crafting rounded characters gamely braving life’s challenges—sometimes gracefully, sometimes brittlely—that we forget we’re also people gamely braving life—sometimes gracefully, sometimes brittlely, sometimes while screaming on rollercoasters.

As novelists we understand how important the interior lives of our characters are. We give them backstories with wounds that fuel their choices. We build narratives that force them to reckon with their flaws. And when we force our characters into emotionally-charged scenes, we provide them the time and space they need to process their feelings fully.

But as people do we allow ourselves the same time and space to process our own feelings or do we demand—no matter what’s happening internally—that we smile and muddle through?

The last time you got angry did you let yourself feel angry or did you smile and muddle through?

The last time you were disappointed, did you acknowledge the loss and mourn it, or did you smile and muddle through?

The last time grief swelled like high tide did you let your heart ride the wave or did you force yourself, yet again, to smile and muddle though?

If we want to be writers who craft characters who feel like actual people, then as people we must fully feel our own feelings first.

Less anyone misunderstand me, this isn’t a call to neo-toddlerhood. I’m not advocating incivility or regular tantrums. No lashing out at the mortified server who dropped your entrée into your lap. No public blubbering when someone dings your feelings. No screaming at the jerk at the party who spends the whole time you’re talking scanning the room behind you for someone better to talk to. I am, however, completely on board when it comes to screaming on rollercoasters.

But we absolutely can—and really should—pay very careful attention to our feelings. The way we pickle in embarrassment at the thought of spending the rest of our day with our entrées staining our shirts. The way our hearts bruise when someone says something casually cruel. The anger or shame—or both—we feel talking to someone who’d clearly rather not be talking to you. The way our screams on a roller coaster give way to belly laughs which in turn give way to even more screaming.

If the feelings are small, naming them and taking a deep breath might be enough to make them ebb—I’m always surprised how often deep breaths feels like stealthy hugs from our better angels. But when the feelings loom larger—grief, I’m looking at you—our hearts may need more deliberate tending. As novelists we intuitively understand how necessary it is for our characters to square off with their most difficult feelings, but as people we often prefer to stuff those feelings into a box and forget about them completely. That said, we can’t ignore our feelings any more than we can ignore our bodies’ need for nutrition, exercise, and rest; and as writers who hope to write about the full humanity of our characters, we really mustn’t ignore our feelings at all.

But while nutrition and exercise and rest have tangible solutions we can track—food eaten, steps taken, hours slept—feelings often have maddeningly intangible solutions, so we tell ourselves that cleaning up the aftermath of emotions—wiping away tears, say—is synonymous with feeling our feelings, but that’s just handling the fallout. Feeling your feelings—really feeling them—demands that when we find ourselves running away from an emotion, we do three things:

1. Stop running.

2. Turn toward the emotion.

3. Name it, feel it, and let it pass through us.

By calling each wave of emotion by name—for me this weekend that looked like admitting I was really missing my mom—the feeling crests, crashes, and turns into foam. The grief remains, of course, but now it’s mingled with the rest of the ocean of our hearts so we can float again.

That said, I’m keenly aware that metaphors—helpful as they can often be—aren’t the same as tangible solutions, so I’ll offer you a few concrete ways to handle big emotions you’d much rather flee:

1. Journal—Write about the full range of emotions you’re feeling. If you’re afraid of something, write down everything you’re afraid of happening, say. Journaling is especially powerful because it’s private and endlessly adaptable—dash off a quick list when you’re overwhelmed or dive into a long letter you’ll never send when you want (or need) to vent.

2. Guided Meditation-But journaling only works with emotions you’re willing to face. If you’re still running from your emotions, guided meditation can offer a safe place to hang up the sneakers. The Center for Mindful Self Compassion’s has an excellent collection of free guided meditations that include an entire section dedicated to working through difficult emotions.

3. Poetry—Not a huge fan of guided meditation? Try quieting yourself enough to feel your feelings by reading a poem that moves you. And if a particular poem doesn’t immediately spring to mind, try starting with Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.

4. Reach out for help—If you struggle to face your emotions regularly, you may need help from a counselor trained to help you do just that. If you’re not sure where to start looking for help, try talking to your primary care provider. If you find it hard to broach the topic of mental health when sitting across from your PCP, consider writing an email ahead of your appointment detailing what you’re feeling.

If we allow ourselves to feel the emotions we’d rather flee, any walls built to protect our hearts from grief or anger or fear will start to crumble, opening us to the full range of emotional life. We’ll still feel anger and fear and grief—loss is an immutable fact of life—but if you let anger and fear and grief wash over you instead of bottling it up, there’s more room for awe and wonder and love. More room for joy and humor and peace. More room to scream on rollercoasters. This emotional cocktail of a life fully felt is a vitally important tool for writers because the richer a novelist’s emotional life, the richer the emotional lives of our characters—heartbreak’s written best by those who’ve been heartbroken, after all.

So honor yourself as a writer and a person both by feeling your feelings. For me that meant carving out time this weekend to honor my mom by screaming my ever-loving brains out on roller coaster after roller coaster.

It also meant hours of quiet contemplation of a woman whose kindness I aspire to for reasons I detailed in the eulogy I wrote for her a year ago:

The only way I could get myself to even start writing a eulogy for my mom was to tell myself that there’s no way I’d ever get it right.

Truth be told, I’m already off to a bad start because Mom would hate my saying I’d never get it right.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” she’d say. “You shouldn’t worry so much; you understand me?”

And I did understand her because our brains were similar, hers and mine. Our brains told us lies about the world around us.  One minute depression made us feel heavy and hopeless; the next minute anxiety made us feel fearful and small.

But as troubled as my mom was, she was always kind.

There’s a weird photo in the tribute slide show that played during mom’s wake—an extreme close-up of Mom’s left eye that you might have written off as an outtake that wasn’t supposed to make the cut. The truth is, I was always trying to get the perfect shot of mom’s beautiful brown eyes. Not that the color was what made mom’s eyes beautiful—it was the way they looked right at you when she listened to you. They danced when you were happy, brimmed when you were sad, and they never, ever looked away. Even during the worst days of her final months, when her eyes stared into the distance as often as they stayed focused, if you called her name and told her you loved her, mom’s eyes would spark to life and focus on you as she told you she loved you, too.

And she did love you.

She loved all of us in a full-hearted way that’s far too rare in this stiff upper lip world we find ourselves in. Is there any legacy more important than that one?

When I was a girl, the elderly woman who lived next door died expectedly, and her widower turned gruff. Angry, even. Looking back, it’s clear this widower was grieving, but as a kid all I saw was his red face and angry voice, and, during one particular neighborhood gathering when his grief made him rage against the world, I backed away. A few minutes later I returned to the room with a plate of something delicious—mom certainly knew how to put out a spread—to find that everyone but my mom had backed away from that widower, too.

Mom, though, never flinched.

She sat on the edge of the chair beside him, her peaceful face turned toward his bright red cheeks, those deep brown eyes of hers never once looking away as he yelled about everything wrong with his world.

That was my mom:

A woman who stepped forward when other people stepped back.

A woman who didn’t flinch at the pain of others.

A woman who had the strength to listen as long it took for this grieving man to calm down.

Of course, if mom could hear me describing her like this, she’d shrug off the idea that her brand of kind, patient attention was in any way extraordinary, but just because she made kindness look easy doesn’t make it any less extraordinary.

So maybe the best way to honor mom isn’t with a litany of the kindnesses that made everyone who knew her recognize her for the bighearted woman she was.

Maybe the best way to honor her is to ask all of you to spend the next week being kind the way my mom was kind.

Look people in the eye.

Listen patiently, no matter how hard it might be to hear what they have to say.

And above all else, love people as my mom loved all of you.

And if you’ve come to the end of this post thinking this one’s a bit all over the place, then I’ve made my point. Because the best way to write fully rounded characters is to make your peace with being the kind of person who can deeply desperately miss the kindest woman you’ll ever know one minute and scream on a roller coaster the next.

The author (right) and her sister screaming their ever-loving brains out on the Apollo's Chariot rollercoaster at Busch Garden in Williamsburg, VA

Take Away from Mood Tools Week 4: Screaming on Rollercoasters

“Heartbreak’s written best by those who’ve been heartbroken.”