Nonfiction MFA Alumnus Alexandria Haynes on Navigating Trauma Writing: In the Midst

While some traumatic events are simply a commonality of human experience, such as car crashes or the loss of a loved one, the socially isolating factors connected to continuous trauma, like a chronic illness or a change in ability, can differ widely. Ultimately, this affects when, how, and if we can process the event or situation, heal, and move forward. This was personally highlighted when my expectations for hyphenating and adding the word post to the front of the phrase “traumatic event” never coincided with the return of my life as I’d previously known it after a health discovery, with limited medical resolution, that detoured everything. Consequently, the aforementioned healing process was elusive to me.

As a fiction writer, the words written on my pages have always been my chosen method for examining my experiences, my dreams, and subconscious. It was the re-illustration and giving of the images and motion pictures that flutter through my mind to my potential readers to process with me. Curious about my new social parameters, the desire to examine the socially isolating factors connected to an ability loss or shift, the burden of dependency, and the daily navigation of an unforeseen life, led me to a new creative space—nonfiction and trauma writing.

While my current projects were intended to be my parasocial offering of guidance for those navigating trauma, disability, and social isolation, my navigation of nonfiction and trauma writing has been a different experience entirely. It has been the harrowing mental process of choosing to relive said trauma. It’s the uncomfortable emotional vulnerability, the churning and regurgitation of painful experiences, and often the first time I truly face some subconsciously buried thoughts or feelings about a moment within my experience.

Writing my story, which is lengthy, complex emotionally, and fragmented in memory, was a strenuous creative process, often plagued by the inability of knowing where to start. In my desire to write and create better, I landed at Northwestern’s School of Professional Studies, Prose and Poetry program. My time in the program taught me everything from how to advocate for myself, my writing, my experience, the “creative” sides of writing nonfiction, and the unapologetic boundaries I’m allowed as a nonfiction writer. However, the most pivotal lesson from my time in the program, and the tool I will use indefinitely, was the exercise and creative warm-up of “glimmer writing,” taught to me by Professor Rachel Webster.

Glimmers are the fragments of a story, the opening thoughts of an idea, or the slim sections of a moment or memory that flicker into mind when you’re asked a particular question. They do not arrive in your mind in any specific order; they might be the middle, end of, or sidenote to a story. Glimmers are simply the first thoughts that come to mind on any topic, and they gave me the creative freedom to work my stories from the inside out. The glimmer exercise would provide the question, then set a two- or five-minute timer, and allow my first thoughts on the topic to rhythmically slip from my subconscious mind before we switched to our next topic. My glimmered paragraphs or sentences often helped with memory recollection and writer’s block, and were then further developed, rearranged, and pages later told the story I couldn’t previously write.

There are plenty of mentally and emotionally volatile factors connected to writing about a continuous trauma story. For me, that’s actively grieving the body and life I’d once known, while writing about new societal parameters or inaccessibility issues, or being physically able in some spaces but limited in others. Glimmer writing has offered the uncomfortable moments that are hard to unpack or put into words; the space to exist in the raw and uncensored way they need to. It is the surprisingly therapeutic but vulnerable process of allowing all of my feelings about my experiences to slip from the webs of my mind and fully expose themselves to me. Glimmer writing has become the safe space I need when reengaging specific topics, as it gives an entry point to stories I couldn’t previously find, with the option to develop further, or simply release, reset, and heal.