Sometimes the bear saves you

About a week ago, I signed up for a Split Rock Arts Workshop called The Writer as Shaman. We'll be spending a week in the north woods, harnessing hard material from our own lives and transforming it into fiction, memoir, or poetry. One of the questions on the pre-retreat questionnaire asked "Why do you write?" I wonder if any writer writes for a reason other than catharsis. I bet most people even read for catharsis - for that one moment when they realize that someone has written down the little brain rat that they had no idea could be expressed in human language.

I remember the first time a writer resonated with me in that way. It's nothing profound, but it's a little funny. In one of the stories in John Updike's Museums and Women, the main character goes into the bathroom and closes his eyes for a bit whenever he becomes overwhelmed by people and stimuli at a party. It was illuminating! I was like - this guy knows what it's like to hide in someone else's bathroom for a minute or two!

Back to shamanism - I think some writers, rather than write down our common experience (which, for some reason, we need to hear and have validated over and over again), act like shamans. They take the hard stuff that you can't even bear to write down and transform it from pain to meaning, anxiety to comfort.One of the readings for the retreat is Barbara Kingsolver's Small Wonder. The first story tells a truthful account of a little Iranian boy who became lost in the mountains. Everyone has the same horrible, panicking thought - what if he wandered too far and was attacked by a hungry bear? Search parties find him three days later in a bear's cave - a female bear was wrapped around him to protect him from the funny-smelling humans, and he smelled of milk because she had been nursing him. The moral of the story is that good and evil are for fairy tales. Sometimes your worst fear is what actually saves you.

I like to think this is true. Anytime I'm dealing with fear, anxiety, sadness - perhaps it will save me. I try so hard to normalize everything, to put things into little, logical boxes, to push feelings away if they're unpleasant or intrusive. Maybe all feelings, all experiences are gifts - and maybe sometimes we're shamans who have to take on the hard stuff in order to pass the resulting gift onto someone else.