Filling the Empty Space Inside Me

A month after my miscarriage, I lifted my head and peeked out at the world around me. I wrote a blog and admitted I’d been sucked into a strange, dark place. After writing it down, I decided to return to life. Maybe I thought: now that it’s out there, I can move on, heal. Written words are often little echoes of the things I feel inside me, the things I can’t understand until I see them written out before me.

I might as well still be eleven when it comes to needing to see my words. Only now I use this laptop instead of pencil and paper. Blogging helped me, writing helped. Returning to life was freedom, hope. I tapped out words and more words, filling in the gaps left in the LDS teen novel I’m working on, ready to face a future of possibilities.

And then I miscarried again.

The day it happened, I tried to pretend it wasn’t. I didn’t want to go back. I’d been there. It was dark. Empty. Lonely. And so many things I didn’t understand at all.

People wanted to fix me. Maybe this will help, or that. My friend tired this. But I wanted to let it all go. I wanted to live like another child wasn’t tightly wound around my happiness. I wanted to be strong.

I poured myself into my book. I stayed up all night. I was going to finish it. I wouldn’t let another miscarriage put me more behind. I would move on, and it would be easier this time.

It was only after a week of this—when the pulse of my story world faded under the tender touch of the Holy Spirit on the sound of primary songs—that I found out I was not okay.

I’d been filling up my book with words, but I was still empty. So, so empty.

The answers were around me, little whispers left by my Heavenly Father that I’d yet to explore beyond the muted sound of His Spirit’s voice. He’d been speaking, but I’d been writing, writing, writing.

Four days after miscarrying, I took my nine-year-old son to walk the Provo Temple grounds. The Spirit bubbled out on his words, “I’m so happy, Mom. Why am I so happy?”

His joy was beautiful to me, but I found myself wishing that the flowerbeds we passed hadn’t been emptied already. They were also beautiful just weeks before. Now nothing but dark earth remained. We circled to the fountains at the front of the temple and sat watching the sunset, a large, empty flowerbed directly before us.

My thoughts converged. I’m empty too. Will something like flowers eventually grow in the spaces that have been dug out of me? What could I learn by seeing myself as empty as those beds? Was it simple hope in something coming someday? A distant Spring I’d been prepared for?

A memory of snow came, of walking up to the Provo Temple in the dark of last winter and seeing that very flowerbed in front of me filled, not with flowers, or bushes, but with a Nativity.

This was the place where they put the Christ Child at Christmas.

The bed was empty for Him.

The truth of that thought stayed with me. I held it tucked inside, a soft burning light that didn’t lose or gain anything for weeks. Since then, I’ve waded through the ups and downs of emotions, and more than anything, waves of unhealthy anxiety and anger. I’ve been drowning in unreasonable guilt and worry.

At our ward Halloween party, I found myself confiding in friend. I wished at once that I hadn’t said anything, but her love for me wasn’t uncomfortable or awkward. She didn’t try to fix me. She listened. She shared her personal experience without making me feel judged. Her love, somehow, freed me again.

I went home and every time my anxiety tried to horrify me with the thought of, “What were you thinking telling her!” I replaced that thought with a prayer. “Father, thank you so much for Sister Tolman.”

And the light inside me grew warmer.

I read conference talks, went to the temple, sat in my living room pondering, and returned to a pen and paper to write out my thoughts. I studied how to put the Savior at the center of my life. I stood in the warmth of an autumn darkness as my children played with flashlights in the backyard, and I laughed freely for the first time in a month. My burden lifted. I told Him I was ready for Him to take it. I needed Him to take it.

I breathed.

And I kept writing.

I’m empty. No child grows within me. The spaces inside me have been hallowed out by loss and then rubbed raw. I’m broken a little, and oddly enough, the title of the book I’ve been writing so obsessively is Break. But when things are broken, that is when the Savior finds His space.

These places inside me are empty for Him.

I know Him a little better now. I believe Him a little deeper. I love Him a little stronger.

My healing is in Him. Not so empty, not so lost. I am not alone. My night has been full of angels and flickering lights of hope. Darkness can be warm and beautiful too. It was, after all, night when the angels appeared to the shepherds. And under a starry sky, the wise men searched until they found their Savior.

Developing that thick writer's skin

by Jewel Allen

The other day, I told my husband I was worried about whether or not I should have posted a brief but interesting conversation I had with the Utah governor about my recently published political memoir Soapbox.

His response went something like this: “You just wrote this revealing memoir, and you’re worried about that?”

He was right, of course. I laughed, shrugged off my worry, and left it up.

Non-fiction writers are an interesting bunch. Revealing what we think and feel in our stories is about as natural as breathing, but our psyches can’t handle the prospect of rejection, real or imagined. This goes for fiction writers, too, but it’s especially tough for non-fiction writers. Criticism of a true story, our true story, hits too close to home.

So we say that we want to write our story, but we find excuses not to, because it’s too scary to put ourselves out there.

What if I told you that you not only can share your story, but that you must, for your well-being? Because the longer you hold on to that inside you, the harder it will be to remember the truth. The harder it will be to move on to other projects. I promise, it gets easier, the more you do it.

But I will not lie, it does take a thick skin to put an essay out there, let alone a memoir.

A thick writer’s skin develops over time. Mine came about as a journalist/essayist over a period of twenty years. I've mined my life liberally for material. I wrote about the time I saw my brother after his military academy boot camp, his body gaunt and eyes hollowed from him not being allowed to eat enough food; then another time when, at 16, I almost married a 30-year-old guy from Idaho, had my mom not been my roommate and intervened; and yet another, as a 30-something stay-at-home-mom, when I auditioned for and became the lead singer for a garage rock band which I eventually had to walk away from.

What if you don’t have the luxury of a long-term publishing experience? Here are some ways you as a writer can develop that thick skin.

1.Be honest in your writing. Oddly enough, the more honest you are, the sounder you’ll sleep at night. Even if people criticize the content of your story, you can say with confidence, “That is my story and I’m sticking to it.”

2.Practice, practice, practice. Start in small doses. Write an essay about a happy subject. Then write  about a painful one you’d just as soon forget. Develop a theme in your writing projects, and pretty soon, you will have the makings of a book. Not only that, but you’ll also get the hang of revealing more of yourself each time.

3.Own your story. For good or ill, so long as you are honest, stand by it. Raise your head up high. Swagger down the proverbial Main Street like a gunslinger and don’t lose sleep over it. Any outcries will only make detractors look foolish.

4.A note of caution, however: If in doubt, consult a lawyer. It’s good to be honest, but some people might decide to sue you for defamation.

5.Imagine the worst possible reaction to your story and decide it won’t be as bad as you think. Your family could disown you. You could get fired from your job. You could make your mother cry. The butcher down the street could ogle you with a glint in his eye because now he knows your secret.

Most likely, what will really happen is this: your mother, bless her heart, will not have time to read your memoir, not with her packed schedule of bridge on Tuesdays, canasta on Thursdays, and the Friday hairdresser appointment. As long as you aren’t slandering your family, they will most likely want to have a selfie taken with their published author-child.

6.Establish your credibility by sharing your writing publicly. Start a blog and update it frequently. Write your family a travelogue about your vacation. Guest blog. Write essays or opinion guest columns for a newspaper. After you write essays and have them published, your readers will trust you. Even your family will get used to them being the subject of your pieces.

7.Remember that some of the most powerful writing out there stemmed from a writer’s honest exploration of events that happened in their life. How much richer our lives are because Anne Frank wrote her diary, Frank McCourt regaled us with anecdotes from his Irish childhood, and Elizabeth Smart shared her inspiring story of resilience. You, too, can enrich other people’s lives.

8.Pray for courage. Sometimes, we can't do it all on our own. We are just the conduit to an important message that someone else needs to hear.

You have a story worth sharing. Trust in yourself and set it free.

Jewel Allen is an award-winning journalist, author and ghostwriter. She is the author of a young adult paranormal mystery, Ghost Moon Night, and a political memoir, Soapbox: How I landed & lost a columnist gig, fought a prison, and got elected. Visit her at www.jewelallen.com.