The Art of Pouring Forth

Covid doesn’t like the chat. At the school gate, the other mothers and I hover, adjusting our masks. A bit flat, says one woman, you know yourself. Tesco, mutters another, barely audible through her mask, was the highlight of my weekend. There is the sense we would all like to say more, but we can’t. Not that I’m complaining, says the flat woman. Not at all, says the one who went to Tesco. And I know what they mean: we have not lost loved ones or jobs, we have not had to say goodbye to someone we love on Zoom. But as I walk away I wonder where all this stoicism is going to get us, and if the anger and edginess so apparent on the streets is not borne of this horrible bottled-upness.

Psychologists have been telling us for years that it is by telling our stories that we heal. Scientists agree: telling our stories in the presence of a caring witness turns off our body’s stress responses and encourages the release of oxytocin and dopamine. In all cultures where there has been loss and disempowerment, there is a strong storytelling tradition. Native Americans have been known to call stories “medicine.” The other day my children begged me to tell “a story from my head” while they were in the bath. Well, I began in my Once Upon A Time voice, and in a single movement, they both jumped out of the water and sat shivering on the edge, their hands clasped in their laps. You’ll freeze, I said, get back in the bath. But they refused, coming closer and closer until by the story’s end they were both sitting, dripping, on my lap.

Of course, some stories are harder to tell than others. Some are so traumatic the memories are hard to access, for the brain had filed them somewhere else. Others are full of shame and regret. And yet if we find the courage to speak, we understand how shame dissolves in the presence of empathy. “You either walk inside your story and own it,” writes the researcher Brené Brown, “or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” In her book, Daring Greatly, she writes: “When we bury the story we forever stay the subject of the story. If we own the story we get to narrate the ending.” She doesn’t pretend any of this is easy. “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process,” she writes, “is the bravest thing we will ever do.”

Understanding the story of our life gives our existence shape and meaning.

I read Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father in awe, for it seemed almost impossible to me that someone so young could assimilate such a complex childhood with such humanity and forgiveness. But in doing so Obama made sense of the world and his place in it, seeing himself not as a victim but as an agent for change. I see the same in Biden, whose grief narrative has clarified his values and sense of purpose, enabling him and those around him to identify this moment in history as his.

For every story that is told, there is a listener. In The Good Story, a fascinating discussion between psychologist Arabella Kurtz and novelist J.M Coetzee, Kurtz describes how, in a therapy room, it is often the resistance to the telling of the story she hears rather than the story itself. How many of us have listened to a friend or loved one seize on another person’s story and become consumed by it, in a way that would suggest they are circling their own wound. Or listened to ourselves being triggered by a time or a person, our stream of criticism or indignation only serving to cover our deep sense of hurt. These stories might not be the real story but they are telling us something if we can only find the courage and patience to listen to them.

Kurtz says: “I think we are looking, from the beginning of life, for a place to pour out what is inside of us. But I think there is always truth, even of a distorted or an indirect kind, in any outpouring. How can there not be? What is inside is poured out, and the form it comes out in is usually not a matter of very much choice or conscious intent; it always involves distortions, whether big or small, which communicate something true, if only a listener can understand something of their relationship to truth (the principle of distortion) and what lies beneath.”

The other day I put it to two other women on the street that we needed to move beyond small talk. We discussed the pain of separation, the ill health of an in-law, the loneliness of an elderly relative. We stood for an hour in the bone-chilling cold and the effect was cathartic.

So I fancy I know what I need to get through this – a garden, a fire pit, a flask, some tissues, a few shawls. I have none of these things so I’ll have to make do with a walk and talk in the park, snatched how are you reallys? in the street.

But when this is done I wonder what will emerge from the silence: a stuttering of truths or a violent outpouring of grief?

Joan Didion wrote: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live...” Kafka was more brutal. For him a book, a narrative, a story is an axe - “for the frozen sea within us.”

Nikki Walsh is a journalist and writer who gives writing and well-being workshops on Zoom.