Family History

This is a true story written in March of 2003 about my great-great grandfather, David Crockett Lockhart (1842-1929), who was quite some man. I heard this story at our family reunion back in 2003 and wanted to expand on it. His wife was Amanda Tennessee (my mamaw, Tennessee Jo’s grandmother) and she was about thirty years younger than him. I’m sure she was an amazing lady.

“God made man because He loves stories.”

-Elie Wiesel

That day she was so tired she couldn’t untie her own apron strings. Her matted blond hair stuck to the sides of her face and hung down her back in a loose bun. It hadn’t been washed in weeks and if he saw her now he probably wouldn’t recognize her. It was the dead of winter, with no running water, and the kids were starting to smell like it. Her dress was worn so thin she could see her elbows through the threadbare cotton when she raised her arms. It was time for supper, but she had no bread, no butter, greens or even potatoes left. They would be hungry soon, but as she slumped down into the peeling, white chair with no cushion, she was broken, lost and helpless. She had spent her last two dollars on Satchie’s medicine, and there was no telling when more would come. Taylor and Trimble had a fever and if the others got sick she would have to find some help. Every night for two months now, after all the work was done, she sat in that same place, felt as if she’d never get up and wondered, “How can I make something from nothing?” And every night she reached back into the deepest corners of her mind, back to what her momma used to teach her as a little girl, and thought of a way to make it better. But not tonight; tonight her thoughts, her eyes were somewhere else.

She remembered the last time he left. It was months ago, when things weren’t so bad. He said he’d be back soon enough, like he always did, but this time with more money and in time for Christmas. She had been raising his three kids from the wife before, and seven more for the past ten years, and somehow, someway, he always made it home just when things were starting to run out, just when she needed his arms, his touch the most. This time, things had been run out for weeks, she was worn down, and so worried she couldn’t sleep. She wondered if she’d ever see him again.

Her daddy, King, warned her about his kind, but when they were married he had owned half the land in Dickenson County, and most people thought of David Crockett Lockhart as some sort of god. Since then he had traded off most of the land, once for a hunting rifle and a dog, and she loved him for his ways. He had fathered babies all through their parts over the years and would try to take care of them the best he could, dropping money here and there whenever he was around. Some people thought he really was some sort of Davy Crockett, on his way to rescue them all from that little town, or whatever they needed to be rescued from. He always had mysterious ways, and at that particular moment, with her eyes somewhere far off, she remembered the last thing he said to her.

“If things ever get tough, so tough that you don’t think you’ll be able to make it another second, just turn to God.”

And so, that night she moved from her peeling white chair and got her bible from the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet. She gathered up the kids around her skirt, and read the verses she had read as a child. Just as she was about to break down and cry—for her babies, her hunger, her sadness, her life—she turned the page and saw a hundred dollar bill fall to the ground.

The 5-Minute Sprint

from The Way of the Journal, Kathleen Adams

When? This activity is useful when:

-you're overwhelmed

-you don't have much time

-you don't know what to write about

-you have a lot going on

-you need clarity and focus

-you really don't to write

-you want to track an issue/feeling/project over time

How?
-Pick a subject
-write as fast as you can

-at the end of the five minutes, STOP

-re-read what you've written

-continue if you want-- or put your journal aside!

What? Try writing about--
-what's going on

-the present moment

-a person or relationship

-a feeling or mood

-something silly or irrelevant

-background issues

-a decision or choice

-a check-in with yourself

-best thing/worst thing of your day

-an insight, awareness or "aha" moment

-last night's dream

-something you don't want to forget

-your goals for the day

-things that are going right/things that are going wrong

-something upsetting

-YOU NAME IT! You can write for 5 minutes about anything!

Tips:
-Use a timer or note the time of the start of your entry

-STOP when you told yourself you would

-You can always write more

Suggested Topics:
-How do you feel about writing in a journal?

-What's going on for you right now, in this moment?

-Review your day from the time you opened your eyes this morning

-Name a feeling you're having right now and explore it

Learning to Fly

Written April 19, 2000
“Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly.”
--Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

My whole life I wanted to fly and like most children, I just expected that I naturally could. After jumping off my father’s brown, corduroy reclining chair and landing on my arm hard enough that it could have been broken, I was utterly shocked and disappointed in myself. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I manipulate my body into that smooth flight? What was it about my inelegance that would not just lift off? Were my arms too short, my motions too awkward, my feet not pumping hard enough? No matter how hard I tried, I began to believe I would never fly.

Therefore, that was all I wanted from that day on. If I could not fly through the air, I would fly in other ways. I would declare my independence and fly as far as I could from my parents. I sat and dreamed of all the exotic places I could go, leafing through books of Italian chapels trying to decide under which gorgeous sculpture I would be married. I planned every possible exit out of my small, Virginia town and once I made it to college I tried as hard as I could to pretend I was not some girl from some dead-end backwards place. I was not some girl who could not fly.

Soon I realized I that I could no longer run from who I was. Trying to do so was making me miserable. Instead of running from my past, I started learning about where I came from and realized I was not bred from such a long line of fighters for nothing. I came to be proud. I came to love myself, and those who made me. I learned that anyone can escape their past, or declare their independence; however, not anyone can readily accept who they are, unashamed of the choices they have made.

Recently I wrote to my mother, needing advice. I asked what made her happy, what made her love, or not love her life. Someone had questioned why on earth I would ever want to be a teacher because in most places their salary was less than a garbage man. Once again, I felt that I would never be successful, never make my family proud, never fly. I asked her if I should give up my dream of teaching to pursue something that would give me more accomplishments and if she had any regrets for having so many children so young. I expected her to sound like a typical mother who wanted her daughter to be well taken care of; to tell me not to have children at all, to marry rich and get a job that paid better than a garbage man.

Instead, she told me to follow my heart, first.

In her own, funny way, she wrote, “Screw money. It don’t mean shit if your heart ain’t happy.” However, it was the last lines she borrowed from The Beatles that meant the most:

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night take these sunken eyes and learn to see. You were only waiting for this moment to be free. Blackbird, fly…”

She told me to take what I had, what I loved, what I wanted from life, and use it.

She told me that I could fly, even if I never left the ground.

Sentence Stems

from The Way of the Journal workbook, Kathleen Adams

Completing sentence stems is a great journal exercise when you feel overwhelmed , want information quickly, don't have much time, or aren't sure what to write about. This activity is well-structured, concrete, practical, and immediately useful. 

Begin by completing these sentences with the first word that comes to mind. Try not to censor or judge your choices.
A word that describes me is:

A word that describes my journal is:
When I check inside, I find:
My Inner Writing Critic says I'm:
My Inner Wisdom says I'm:
The person I feel closest to is:
If my present mood were a color, it would be:

Complete these sentences with a longer thought. Again, try not to edit your thoughts.

I am a person who:
If I had time I would:
I am grateful for:
Journal writing is:

Complete these sentence stems in at least three different ways.
When I think about writing a journal, I...
The most important things to do right now are...
I want...
The biggest challenges I am facing now are...

Write your own Sentence Stems next. Complete them in serveral different ways.

When you're done, as yourself, how was it? What did you like/not like about sentence stems? What did you learn about yourself? When might you use this technique?

Where are You Now? Part 1

from Writing and Being, chapter 1

You will be writing on loose paper rather than in your journal, so you can seal these pages in an envelope. Title the entry: "Letter to Myself."

During this time, reflect on the following questions and write down whatever comes along for you. These questions address issues that will be explored in greater detail as you go on in your daily journal writing.

Questions:

How are you feeling about yourself right now? What things about yourself do you feel good about? What things about yourself do you feel "unhappy" about right now? In what ways do you feel yourself changing or wanting to change?

How does your  past feel to you? How much "weight" from the past do you feel you carry wtih you now? does your past feel "light" or "heavy"? Where is the weight of the past coming from? What are you angry about from your past? What regrets do you have? What would you like to let go of?


What do you value in your life now? In what kinds of things do you find meaning, value and purpose? What matters? Who matters?


What are your dreams, goals, needs? In what directions do you need to go with your life?
 
What are your spiritual beliefs now?
 
When you are finished , fold the pages like a letter, seal them in an envelope, and write your name on the outside. Put the envelope in a drawer where you can find it when you finish your current journal. you can then read it--like a letter from someone you once knew--and reflect up on changes and growth in your writing and being.

Writing for Survival

February 2003, 2nd semester, senior year of college

“Every piece of writing contains this tacit message: ‘I wrote this because it’s important; I want you to read it; I’ll stand by it. ‘”

--Matthew Grieder

Two summers ago, while sitting at my boring, nine-to-five office job, flipping through a Reader’s Digest, and waiting for the phone to ring, I had an epiphany. I had already exhausted the entire office stock of Entertainment Weekly and People, and while trying to make time pass faster, I had moved on to something more intellectual. It was while reading a study on how journal writing can improve one’s psychological well being that I realized exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I had kept a journal before, thanks to Dr. Heller, and I had felt the magical powers that were stored within those pages, but I had never truly realized how writing could actually “heal” someone—maybe because I had never really opened myself up for healing, or even realized the “wounds” I had been carrying. But it was at that very moment, while sitting at my mundane, little desk, waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen, that I realized the power of the word, and that I couldn’t live with myself until I began to pass it on.

The “epiphany” led me to do an internship at the Maternal and Infant Education Center in Roanoke, which is a school for teenage girls to attend after becoming pregnant. At that school I met forty-six young women from ages 12-20 with forty-six different lives to live, stories to tell, burdens to bear, and scars to heal. Like me, very few of those girls had opened up their wounds, ripped off the band-aid or allowed themselves to heal. Yet the girls walked in the classroom each morning, bag of Hardees in hand, with a glazed, hurt look in their eyes, and I knew somewhere down the line they had been broken. The problem was nobody had ever bothered to put them back together, not even themselves.

I soon realized that as a twenty-one year old college student, I wasn’t going to be anyone’s hero. I didn’t have all the answers, or have the power to heal each one of those forty-six girls. What I did have was the power to teach them how to become their own hero—and that they are the only person that can change the direction of their life, face their fears, and heal their wounds.

A lot of people walk through life thinking they have no wounds, no baggage, no scars showing on the outside, but yet, they also walk through life complaining, unfulfilled, and miserable on the inside. It is like they are trapped from the inside out. We all know people that constantly grumble about how lonely, incomplete, and unhappy they are—yet it is always someone else’s fault. I wish I could tell them to use writing as an outlet, to let themselves heal, but in their eyes, they have no wounds, I can only wonder what are all of the things they carry, if not wounds, and how they can ever let them go if they don’t become open to them.

The truth is, we cannot become the person we are meant to be until we let go of our baggage, our pain, our fears, and begin to put our lives back together piece by piece. What I learned from my tiny epiphany on that boring summer day, and from those forty-six girls, was that we all want to be heroes. We all want to help someone, and most of all, to help ourselves. The amazing thing is that we can do it so easily, by writing, by sharing; not just our darkest fears, but those perfect moments in life when everything makes sense and we become complete.

Why does writing have the power to change our lives, to make us fall in love, make us angry, or make us different people? Maybe it is the sturdiness of the pen in our hand that gives us the purpose. Maybe it is the fluent feeling of the keys under our fingers that gives us the freedom. Maybe it is just the act of setting our feelings in stone that makes writing so important, so therapeutic, so heroic.

“Write to make the great escape. To save yourself. “ (G. Lynn Nelson, Writing and Being)

G. Lynn Nelson, Writing and Being

At Roanoke College I was lucky enough to come across the book Writing and Being: Taking Back Our Lives Through the Power of Language. The author, G. Lynn Nelson, visited our campus and took part in a "Drive-by Sharing" in which his Native American students from ASU read some of their most intimate and powerful pieces inspired by the book. My amazing professor, Dr. Mike Heller, had already been teaching us from Writing and Being and to hear their examples first-hand was awe-inspiring. I guess you could say this is where it all began for me on my journey in writing and healing... Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

"I only wrote when I thought I had something to say...Now, I write to find out what I have to say. The point is: for things to happen, you must write…It is the most important relationship of your life. It determines all others.” (pg. 22)

“If I do not seek quietness around me, I cannot hear the words that my heart whispers.” (pg. 50)

“We tell our stories first in anger, then in letting go, and finally in love—the freeing love for our fathers and for ourselves.” (pg. 66)

“To write the stories of your past is to change your life in the present.” (pg. 96)

“As we do our journal work and come together to share open and honest messages with each other…we discover one terrible/wonderful truth: We have all been, and we all shall be, wounded by life. There is no choice in the matter. It is an inescapable condition of living. Despite the fairy tales, no lives “happily ever after.” So the question is not whether we will be wounded by life. We will be. The question is: How do we respond to our wounding? What do we do with our wounds? For beyond our wounding lies our power and our salvation...we can choose to hide our wounds and pretend and go on bleeding throughout our lives—or we can tell the stories of our wounding…and we can heal ourselves.” (pg. 105)

Going Home

Originally written in January 1999

“I will sail back home again
Back to where my heart will always be

And like a bird that's on the wing and is flying free

He can hear the song of home endlessly.”

-Van Morrison, “Song of Home”

The first time I heard Van Morrison was when my mother sang “Brown-Eyed Girl,” while trying to put me to sleep as a baby. The only thing that ever made me stop crying was a long drive, and that song playing in the background, with her comforting voice in time with his Irish accent, unaware of the melodies she made as she drove. Of course I cannot remember that far back, but to this day that song still puts me at ease, as I drive unfamiliar streets in my own car and wonder how I got so far from home.

When first arriving at Roanoke College, hundreds of miles away from my own small, Virginia town, I thought I would never feel at home again. I missed sitting outside on my back porch, journal in hand, watching the old barn that never changed, framing the sunset each night. I sang to the Tupelo Honey album, playing on a miniature Fisher Price record player, stretched outside as far as the orange extension cord would reach, while I wrote every evening. I believed “the music made me feel so free, made me feel like me,” just as Van sang. With each verse came the inspiration to fill every last blank page of my journal, if not with the poetry of lost loves, or newfound adventures, at least with the lyrics to the songs I had memorized. The words meant something different each time I heard them, but they always told the same story: no matter what happens along the way, you would always find yourself back home in the end.

In the beginning of my freshman year, while feeling homesick and alone, the only thing that seemed to put me at ease were my nighttime drives through the streets of Salem. I drove as if I owned them, sometimes alone, sometimes with a close friend, and always ended up in the same place, on the same hill, within the same valley, listening to the same three songs. I always started with “Brown-Eyed Girl” as I was making the loop around the parking lot because the upbeat tempo and lyrics made it a “driving song.” As I stopped the car, in the same spot as all the times before, “Sweet Thing” would soon be playing, and I would be singing until my voice become hoarse once again. I sang, my voice in time with his, as “I raised my hand up into the nighttime sky,” finally realizing why I was here, not only in this car, or at this college, but on this earth, alive. I saw how I fit into the roundness of things as if I were one of the little leaves that made up one of the thousands of trees on the mountains above me.

Although it took a little searching, and some aimless driving, I had found my home once again, in these small moments in my car, singing my favorite songs into the crisp Salem air. As in any Van Morrison song, the lesson is always the same—no matter how many wrong places you turn, how many words you may forget or sing off key, the important thing is that the roads that lead you home will always be there, if only hiding in the background of a song.