Major Project

Anne Turner – 40923479

24^th October, 2021

ENGL 8075 Major Project

Abstract

It is generally accepted that writing can be a cathartic experience, used in psychological therapy or simply to help process emotional situations. But what is it about writing – specifically creative writing, or story – that “helps humans adjust to the messy and often disturbing reality of living” (Hamadache, 30 Nov, 2020)?

Ficto-criticism is writing that “utilise[s] fact and fiction to explore and analyse ideas.” (Muecke, Mother’s Day Protests, xvii). This paper will engage in a ficto-critical exploration of both the value and the impact for writer and reader of writing the mess of life and what it is about story that generates these effects.

In this practice-led research project, my own creative non-fiction story is meshed with knowledge gained from interviews, survey and a review of the literature across the fields of psychology, cultural studies and creative writing.

The conclusion drawn is that, while not necessarily always positive – indeed there is some work on potential dangers (Gibbs) and limitations (Richardson) – writing shame or trauma or pain creatively cannot help but have an effect on both writer and reader as we interact with text in an almost bodily way.

There is excellent literature dealing with the interactivity of writing and reading (Lee; Gibbs). We have the grounding work of Affect Theory to understand how and why writing can affect us (Atkinson & Richardson; Gregg & Seigworth). We have the example set by Aboriginal Australian peoples of using story to teach, to understand and to grow in respect and wisdom (Quayle & Sonn).

This paper will discuss all these contributions. However, I am yet to discover in the literature any specific examples demonstrating through the very process of their writing exactly how and why creative writing is beneficial to navigating shame and trauma. This paper aims to help fill that gap.

Managing the Mess: How Creative Non-Fiction writing affects reader and writer alike

“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”- Brené Brown

Two years ago I received a phone call at work that made my heart turn cold, my mind tumble through awful imaginings – and memories – and my world spin into crisis management.

My brother had been arrested, something to do with a minor. His partner Sally was distraught. My parents were overseas so she immediately called me but could barely speak. I left work to sit with her and wait for more news, until I had to collect my children from school. Sally (petite, dark, timid and smart) was the best thing that had ever happened to Declan. Now, she couldn’t sleep or stop crying for three days.

 Sally called me again later that afternoon.

“The police have raided your parents’ house. That’s where he took her.”

The police had filled Sally in by now. Apparently, there had been no physical force; but deceit, sex and the grooming of a 15-year-old child.

“They called to say someone should go there and clean up all the fingerprinting. I don’t think I can do it.”

“There’s no way you’re doing it! I’ll go, don’t worry,” I whispered as I moved away from the other mothers outside dance class.

“They said that stuff really stains. You’d better go tonight.”

Fingerprint dust is not like in the movies. I had thought it would be white, like the magic of invisible ink. But it is dirty, like soot or ashes. And it was everywhere.

While I wiped and sprayed and scrubbed and flushed, I did not cry. Those choking clutches for breath waited for the solitude of night, when I could pause from holding everyone else together.

Instead, I told my sister the news on speaker phone. Bernie, a busy mum and medical student, prefers to stay out of family problems. She is younger than me, attractive and social. Opting-out is her preferred stance on unpleasantness.

Still, she exerted herself to support me and protect Mum and Dad. We discussed how to tell them (“meet them at the airport, don’t ruin the last of their trip”). We worked out how to get in touch with my brother. We contemplated who else needed to be told. And most of all, we worried that we weren’t completely surprised and tortured ourselves over whether we should have seen this coming.

*

This was the beginning of a personal story essay, “The Way Back”, that I wrote a year ago. The story, like any story, is not finished. They never are. We write a fragment, search for meaning, emphasise a resolution that could only ever be partial-at-best in reality. My essay marker’s comment brings this home, noting the “messy and often disturbing reality of living”. Hamadache’s suggestion that writing plays an important role in helping humans to navigate this reality has sat with me, like a cherished talisman, for a year. On one level, it seems obvious – but why? Why has story been used for millennia, to teach, to pass on wisdom, to process feelings and ideas? Why are we drawn to write and read stories, particularly about painful or traumatic experiences? What is it that creative writing offers – even in the production of knowledge itself – that informational text alone cannot match?

This article will continue the story and research of “The Way Back” in order to try to answer these questions.

*

Declan is seven years younger than me. As a small child, he was affectionate, sensitive, sneaky and wilful. He was occasionally caught shoplifting lollies, but was always made to return them.

When my brother was 15, there was an incident where he touched a younger cousin and employed the usual “it’s our secret” manipulation to keep it hidden. It was hushed up by the adults and no one ever really healed. I did not know about it for years. 

When he was 26, Declan was studying at university and in a steady relationship. He finally felt able to tell us that he had been abused by his babysitter when he was 11 to 12 years old. With his tendency to lie and make excuses, along with my own distractions of sleep-deprived early motherhood, I only half-believed him and assumed he would seek help himself. Nobody spoke of it again.

*

Why Ficto-Criticism – what is it and how does it help?

This is a story of becoming, of coming to be here, writing about writing. The ficto-critical researcher aims to tell “how he came to know, rather than display what he knows” (Muecke, Mother’s Day Protest, xiii). Why is this important? Well, of course there is learning in the journey and you, the reader, have the right to understand the journey as well as well as the destination: in fact you may as a result arrive somewhere slightly different to where I had intended. You may interpret differently to me. You may react to my reactions. The experience is the point – it must not be smoothed over. We mustn’t pretend that things that are subtle, complex, contradictory, even unknowable can be reduced to an objective treatise of knowledge. There is no easy answer when it comes to human, relational knowledge or understanding. So there is no easy way of writing.

Science researcher and communicator, Carl Sagan, recognised the value of creative insight as well as critical thinking, saying “both … are necessary to understand the world” (293).

Ficto-criticism can provide Sagan’s “bridge” (293) between these supposed dichotomies. As Muecke says, “The world is obviously fictocritical, ‘simultaneously made up of fact and fiction’” (“Postlude”, 233). And therefore, fictocritical writing is able to do things that other writing may not: “document honestly and with nuance and conundrum” (xvii). Louise Katz concurs, referencing Hugh McKay’s 2009 article that there is “truth in fiction” (Katz, 145).

In “The Way Back”, neither the manipulation of dates (to create a simpler narrative arc), nor the compression of characters (to simplify the plot for the reader) feel like a fabrication to me. When I re-read this piece, and when I have shared it with those involved, the pain it recalls is real – almost too real. The relationships, sensitivities, fears and hurts are real. The story weaves a tale but it speaks a truth.

*

My phone rang. It was always ringing these days.

“You are about to receive a phone call from a correctional facility. This call will be recorded and may be monitored. If you do not wish to receive this call, please hang up now.”

How I wanted to hang up!

“How’s things?”

“Usual. I just keep thinking about Sally. How can I get her to see how sorry I am?”

“You’ve told her. You can’t control anything else. Just focus on sorting yourself out.”

“I know. It just sucks in here. I feel like I can’t fix anything until I’m out. And everyone will have moved on by then.”

I have received hundreds of these calls over the last two years of Declan’s imprisonment. Sometimes half a dozen a day. But each time I knew I only had six minutes to give before the call would cut out. Then I could go back to my life, ignoring the fact that my brother was in gaol.

Declan’s release is now imminent.  He is not yet 40, still tall and strong, but with mottled skin due to psoriasis that has embarrassed him for years. He feels sorry for what he did, also sorry for himself. He is determined to seek help – finally – for the mental health troubles that led to his crime.

My parents insist, “He has done his time”, daring someone to argue.

I wonder how his victim is coping, two years on. Not that we are allowed to know. I do know the struggle his now ex-partner has had, to forge a new life away from him. Away from us.  

For me as the family mediator, I wonder if the hardest time is just beginning. He is getting out. I’m happy for him, but no one wants to face what it means for our family. I feel anxious and exhausted thinking about it.

My sister told me her highest hope is to avoid awkwardness as much as possible, preferably for the rest of her life. Unfortunately, having a released convicted criminal in the family is unavoidably awkward.

How do I answer the children’s questions?

Should I tell the neighbours?

Will he be invited to our cousin’s wedding?

Will my mother cut off anyone who snubs him?

Do I need to be afraid for my own growing daughters?

I am afraid, whether that’s rational or not.

Life was so much easier with him in prison.

*

Narrative therapy, indigenous story culture, creative writing: What makes a story and why do we tell them?

Every culture has always told stories to explain, to teach, to create a sense of belonging. Aboriginal Australian peoples have a particularly strong oral culture; it is at the heart of their identity (Lynore, 15). Growing up in Australia, I have always known this but had not necessarily thought about it deeply. Recently though, I was awed during a TV program, Back to Nature, when a Yugambeh man, Shaun Davies, was interviewed about his place (ep. 1). He said “the most important part of a place is its story”, but he clarified that what we call story in English translates to “gaureima” in his language. And it means “to take care of” or to respect something. He explained that by telling the story of his place, you respect it more, “take care of its wagoi … its spirit…we believe that’s made strong by telling its story” (ep. 1).

In the early 2000’s, the community of the Tiwi Islands in northern Australia was devastated by having one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Journalists from The Guardian came in 2006 to investigate possible reasons and write a story about it. In some ways, the story further shamed the community. However, ultimately it helped them take ownership of their own story and made the community determined to create change. One elder said “a lot of us felt shamed…and we felt tricked into telling our story. I remember thinking we need to have a different story” (Price, 10). This community is telling a new story now – of a dramatic reduction in suicide rates brought about through a culture-led and story-framed approach (11).

Narrative Therapy is a psychological therapy tool designed to help people “make sense of their lives” (O’Toole & Brewster, 478). It is based on the concept that people are, largely, “the stories they tell themselves and that are told about them” (478). It assumes that telling and re-telling narratives “allows new understandings and meaning to emerge” (479). It privileges the client’s story over other ways of knowing or understanding a problem (482). It has been shown to reduce conflict between individuals, open up dialogue and enable cooperation (480).

Decolonising research and psychology practice is an imperative beginning to be understood when addressing intergenerational trauma in indigenous Australian communities. To this end, Santos says reasearchers are expanding “the dialogue of voices and ecology of knowledge” (qtd. In Quayle & Sonn, 48). “Storytelling as methodology” is central to this work – whether narrative inquiry or narrative therapy. Projects striving for healing and empowerment through story are succeeding around Australia, helping clients tackle trauma-related issues, such as substance abuse (Bacon, 75).

Such benefits of narrative are hardly limited to particular cultures either. Brené Brown references Pennebaker, whose research has found that not discussing or confiding in someone about a traumatic event can be more damaging than the event itself (Daring Greatly, 82). On the other hand, Pennebaker’s book Writing to Heal details studies that demonstrate “measurable changes in physical and mental health” when people engage in expressive or emotional writing (qtd. In Brown, 82).

*

Everyone both loves and is scared of my mother. She is smaller than me now, quiet and reserved. She is usually calm and measured – unless you disagree with her. Or criticise her children.

Mum and Dad are worried that others in the family will “cause a rift” by not welcoming Declan back to the fold. Mum hopes no one will make her choose between them and her son. My sister and I sometimes feel like Mum has already chosen Declan. But why?

I think it’s about defending his worth and her mothering.  It’s also about protecting this myth of family identity – we are poor, Irish migrants come good: loyal, sentimental, proud, honourable. We do not acknowledge failures or discord. We do not speak of the dark.

I kept thinking Declan’s crime was the uncomfortable thing to talk about – a taboo topic, the most despised of crimes. But it’s not what he did so much as how we feel about it. I still see the fingerprint stains every time I visit my parents’ house. I feel dirty, tainted.

I asked my parents once if it bothered them, that the crime had happened there.

“I’ve never really thought about it,” my mother said, as Dad shook his head, a little shocked by the question.

I do not believe them.

It is a stain that spreads and discolours our relationships.

It is shame of which we dare not speak.

My Aunty Cara is warm, open and she loves this family. I am close to her, but old, deep pain means she can be touchy too. She and my mother have had a turbulent time, especially with how Declan’s issues have been handled over the years. I mentioned “shame” and Cara understood immediately. She suggested I watch the TED Talk, “Listening to Shame”, by American psychologist Brené Brown.

Dr Brown talks about the Jungian concept of shame as the “swampland of the soul”. She explains that shame will thrive exponentially in secrecy, silence and judgement.

That is how my family rolls. And dark secrets, kept, only get darker.

Shame has a high correlation to addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide and eating disorders. 

Even if we don’t personally feel shame, we are affected by those who do. It affects our parenting, our work, our relationships. To expose our sense of shame is a terrifying vulnerability. My family have not yet found the courage.

We are not the only ones. All of society is ashamed of criminality – especially sexual deviance – and families are cast out like those dirty rags I used to clean the crime scene. No one wants to see or know. If we acknowledge that “normal people” in “normal families” can do depraved things, surely the stains of criminality will spread? So, we focus on punishment, not rehabilitation. We don’t talk about complexities. There is only silence and judgement, pushing families to keep secrets. Shame affects us all. 

*

But why fiction?: Affect Theory, reader-response, and the participants speak for themselves

Metaphor is not just a pretty trick, useful to illustrate a point. Katz describes the work of Lakoff and Johnson who argued that most human thought is metaphorical, or symbolic language (123). It makes sense then that metaphors (and similes, myths, parables, fairy tales) are how we make sense of and then act in the world (123). As one of my survey participants put it, learning through story “is inherent in our being”.

Gibbs argues that “Language…is not (simply) a cognitive medium, but an affective and, therefore, corporeal one” (158). She further suggests that fiction (including creative non-fiction and ficto-criticism) “demand a more visceral form of involvement” than informational genres of writing (159).

This adheres to Silvan Tomkins’ theory that affect – “the relational stuff of encounter, its forces and capacities” (Richardson, 154) – is something involuntary, pre-cognitive and visceral” (155).

Angel and Gibbs discuss the “capacity of writing to capture the body and conjure the world, existent or imaginary, within the reader” (167).

Affect Theory aside, short story criticism has embraced the ideas of Iser’s reader-response theory, where the reader co-constructs fictional texts, switching between inhabiting the fictive world and making meaning and revising interpretations as they read (Lee, 12-13). Lee describes this as a deeply affective, virtual “kinship” relationship, which invites the reader to “create for ourselves a presence in the text” (198).

I sent my story essay out for readers to read, along with a brief survey for them to document their emotional responses as they did so. Almost half of respondents said they felt empathy for the characters. A quarter said they could not help sharing some of the emotions related, simply because the language evoked these. One person said it triggered traumatic feelings in them.

Brown has developed her “shame resilience theory” and urges us to write about shame as a powerful antidote to being consumed by it (Daring Greatly, 82). For, she says, “shame hates having words wrapped around it” (58). But, as Probyn says, “Shame is a painful thing to write about. It gets into your body. It gets to you” (72). It is also a painful thing to read about.

*

When I embarked on this journey of chronicling Declan’s release, I was afraid to ask my family for interviews. I thought I knew what they would say and I thought they might try to stop me writing. 

I didn’t think they would all be clamouring to be heard. That there would be torrents of feelings and worries and compassion too.

Until the interviews, I didn’t know the terrible stomach pains my dad had experienced every time he visited the gaol.

I didn’t know the chronic visceral ache – a sort of two-year holding of their breath – that both my parents felt until Declan’s parole was approved a few weeks ago.

It hadn’t occurred to me that Mum’s high blood pressure might be related, or that her emotional distance from her beloved grandchildren could be because she “is running on empty”. My sister offered that insight in her interview.

I didn’t know that people were so willing to let Declan back into their lives, as long as they’re allowed to do it in their own time.

The tensions and anxieties remain, but all who interviewed with me were grateful for the “cathartic” experience. They have begun to talk.

So, now at least I know that there is love as well as pain on every side. Dr Brené Brown says that empathy is the antidote to shame. That vulnerability is our way back to each other.

*

But can writing shame or pain also damage?

The message is flown

Into the ether they say

Hope, heart, curiosity with it

Only fear remains

What will they say?

Will we speak?

Why do I care?

The silence, I can hear it

I wake to it, check screen

A hundred times

No response

Empty air

Fibre optics

Shudder not

Tears slide into glinting drink

Shock at their self-concern

Is this so unspeakable?

Paralysing pain

I guess they

Do not think

Of me at all

*

Anna Gibbs has asked the question: “can writing actually be life-threatening?” (161). She discusses writings by Holocaust survivors, offering evidence from several documented experiences which suggest that “traumatic narrative…may be as unbearable to hear as it is intolerable to tell” (162). She discusses Probyn’s approach that writing itself is shameful, because “one exposes oneself to oneself” (163).

Richardson quotes Scarry who says that deep physical pain “actively destroys” language – that the pain itself is “unspeakable” (149). I believe that writing shame or emotional trauma is similarly problematic. Gibbs notes that shame “changes the body’s chemistry” (158) and Brown asserts that “Shame is real pain”, quoting neuroscience advances that have demonstrated the brain responds to shame or “intense social rejection” in the same way as physical pain (Daring Greatly, 71). Gibbs says “Shame is, after all, the silent affect” (165).

*

The Sequel: Part 1

My mother said nothing. When I asked, she said she read “The Way Back” quickly. There were a couple of things that surprised her, but she couldn’t really remember what they were. She would have to read it again. No, she doesn’t think she can do the survey about the effect the piece had on her. Why? Well, she never does surveys! She hates the things. Is Dad doing it? She’d check with him. It was lovely writing though, well done Anne.

My father said nothing. When I asked, he flustered. Yes actually, he needed to talk to me about that. Not now though, not now, the children are here. I told him to call any time. He didn’t. When I called him, it wasn’t a good time, he was just leaving work. He was keen to invite us for fish and chips though. He still wasn’t sure about doing the survey. When I sent a final email reminder to all participants, he admitted he had “agonised about how I feel about the essay and the survey” but said he had always intended to respond. Writing this now, I am still waiting.

My sister asked if she could participate once she had finished her exams. Which are after my project’s deadline. Which I told her. I didn’t hear back. Never mind. I get lots of Instagram shares from her, so that’s nice. Ooh, bitterness bites.

*

To speak or not to speak?

Richardson argues that affect is the way ‘in’ to writing about pain. While he believes that expressing the experience of a (torture) event itself is impossible (“representation”), we can try for “semblance”, or an emphasis on the “affective after” (168). He suggests that in fiction – that deeply affective mode of language – we can “think pain differently” (150). Quoting Ahmed, he says we can move from trying to answer “what is pain?” to describing “what does pain do?” (159). This is the affective quality of humans’ experience of pain, this is the trauma. Richardson does not shy away from the probability that the complete trauma will always remain unknowable. But then, he quotes Caruth, “Literature is interested in the complex relations between knowing and not knowing” (164).

Gibbs, as we have seen, is more concerned that creative writing will succeed too well in allowing the reader to “experience the lives of others”, as Lee puts it (198). I agree with Gibbs that creative language is up to the task – or at least the attempt – of resembling pain in ways that make the reader feel it. However, is it worth the risk?

Gibbs is not the only one to question how a writer can “give a coherent account of traumatic events without normalizing them, making them bearable, even explicable, when they are not, and cannot be, either of these things” (163). Charlotte Wood has just released The Luminous Solution and touches on the very same issue: “The matter of how to write about the exploitation of and violence against women without myself exploiting or causing psychic harm to women troubled me deeply” (137).

Wood can never say whether she succeeded in staying “on the right side” of this sensitive line, because “it moves for every reader” (137). Surely, then, an impossible task.

And yet, I must agree with Richardson, who concludes “To assign the pain of torture to permanent unspeakability risks – however unintentionally – repeating the original violence” (170). We must risk the attempt.

*

The Sequel: Part 2

My Aunty Cara sent an early email response, with love, so I knew she was speaking to me at least. But no survey response. For two weeks. And just as I was losing all faith in my family, she rang.

“I had a really strong reaction to reading your story, Anne, but I wanted to be sure that it was my true reaction and not a result of other stuff going on.”

“I understand. It’s confronting facing all that again.”

“Reading it brought it all back for me like a sharp memory. It triggered all those feelings of shame, shock, anxiety and huge disappointment. I felt exposed and vulnerable.”

“It was confronting for me too, writing it, reading it again, sharing it.”

“It must have been! There were events in there that I didn’t fully appreciate before – how caught up in all the distressing dynamics you were. The way you wrote about your experience was evocative and moving.”

“Thanks so much for opening up about how it affected you. You have so many brilliant insights that help me reflect on my practice, and on writing itself. Not to mention our family.”

“Well, as Brené Brown says, being vulnerable takes courage but it can be liberating. You have shown your courage greatly!”

*

And my brother Declan? He filled in the survey immediately. He found reading my story painful but “only because I know I caused it”. Reading about the fingerprint dust “hurt my heart for you”. It’s hard for him to know what it’s like from anyone else’s point of view, so he found the story actually helped him a lot. He also liked that it was called “The Way Back”. He values hope and open dialogue – he knows that secrets and shame are what led him to prison. He’s become quite good at self-reflection: he had two years to practise.

*

Those survey respondents who were not characters in my story universally declared that such writing has value. Truth, empathy, affirmation of choice, that we must “compose our own narrative” all featured prominently in respondent’s value assessments. There was an appreciation of the processing power of such narratives, and of the language. One respondent said “Articulating difficult, complex feelings helps give them shape and in turn…manage them and heal”.

Compare these sanguine, positive appraisals to my own family’s broad inability to engage with the text at all. It brings to mind Sagan’s quote about writing reaching across time (296). I wonder whether the further away a reader is from personally knowing the pain emanating from a creative text, the more positive value there is, without danger of “affective contagion” (Gibbs, 164)?

*

So, can creative writing help humans adjust to the mess of life? How, in the end, does it do that?

Writing as narrative therapy is proving to have clear benefits (O’Toole & Brewster), particularly for communities who have traditionally used story-telling to share culture and enhance a sense of belonging and respect (Bacon; Quayle & Sonn).

As Sagan discusses, writing can certainly be argued to be the “greatest of human inventions” because of its ability to disseminate vast quantities of knowledge, across space and time (296).

And, of course, it aids in building empathy and understanding of different perspectives and offers access to a range of experiences we couldn’t personally have in one lifetime (Lee, 198). We can even see that affective writing has the power to at least gesture towards expressing the experience of pain (Richardson, 170). This article has attempted to trace the effects of such an attempt, using my own personal story of family trauma. Whether creative writing in this sphere is more a force for good or ill is a discussion that would benefit from further exploration.

However, while valuable in many ways, surely the considerations above limit writing to a sort of functionality. A useful tool. A destructive one even, but simply a tool.

I have come to the conclusion that creativity itself – the “ficto”, the story – is what gives writing its “magic” (Sagan, 296). Especially when the topic is a painful one. Like all art, the value or beauty is in the how: the process, the technique, the poetry, as well as in its power to affect us. And by beauty I do not mean it must be pretty, or what Wood derides as “relatable” or even empathy-inducing (148). The “grit” of tackling the “unknowable and uncomfortable” is a reward that creative literature can offer (150). Creative trauma writing is not just therapeutic or cathartic (or even dangerous or damaging as Gibbs contends) but transporting, challenging, expansive somehow (Wood, 150). It draws us in and transforms us, whether we wish it so or not. It is this transcendence which is precious (Wood, 151).

Using writing as a narrative therapy tool – or even, as Gaiman said, a “little empathy machine” (qtd. In Wood, 148) – is like chiselling and shaping a block of wood to form a door handle: one that works perfectly well and enables me to open a door – to a new perspective, a new direction, a new life.

But ficto-writing is concerned with making that door handle an object of value in its own right. It is intricately carved perhaps, with care and thought and finesse. Maybe it looks strange, hard to understand, yet it is intriguing. And its uniqueness makes it precious. The carving is far from a redundant decoration. The door handle still works – I can open that door and move on in my journey of learning or healing or discovery. But how much more appealing is that journey now?! The crafted handle is like holding a promise in my hand. Perhaps more beauty, or mystery, lies beyond? There is hope in such a handle. There is also more joy in the journey: I can pause to admire, to wonder at the craftsmanship – and feel a curiosity, warmth, connection even, to the craftsperson. I can get lost in art, and the losing of the self serves to connect me to a wider realm (Muecke, “Writing the Indian Ocean”).

As the great poem Desiderata says, “For all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” Creative language, like this very quote, helps to make this true. And, I would argue, this losing myself in the art of creative writing is the uplifting spirit, the strength that is ultimately needed, to step through that door and skip more lightly, more compassionately, more hopefully down new paths.

*

My father and Aunty Cara met at the beach the day before Declan was released. My mother could not get herself there, she was too upset. She couldn’t understand why Cara wasn’t ready to see Declan as soon as he gets out. My sister, our kids and I were there, to take the edge off. 

We all splashed in the gentle swell of the beach lagoon for a while, Dad and Cara laughing with children but staying out of speaking range of each other. Gradually, the children moved to the sand and my sister and I followed them; Dad and Cara were left standing alone in the rhythmic waves. Knee deep, they talked for a long time. We watched as they slowly moved closer, then embraced, while the tide came in and their tears added salt to the cleansing sea.

***

Pas la fin

Works Cited

Angel, Maria and Gibbs, Anna. “On Moving and Being Moved: The corporeality of writing in literary fiction and new media art”. Literature and Sensation. Cambridge Scholars, 2009, pp. 162-172.

Atkinson, Meera, and Michael Richardson. Traumatic Affect. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Bacon, Violet. “What Potential Might Narrative Therapy Have to Assist Indigenous Australians Reduce Substance Misuse?” Australian aboriginal studies, 2007.1, 2007, pp. 71–82.

Brown, Brené. “Listening to Shame”. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, TED Conferences, March 2012. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame?language=en#t-5345

Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. Penguin Life, 2015.

Davies, Shaun. “The Green Cauldron.” Back to Nature, Season 1, Episode 1, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2021, ABCiview, https://iview.abc.net.au

Ehrmann, Max. “Desiderata”. Copyright-free, 1927. https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html

Gibbs, Anna. “Writing and Danger: the intercorporeality of affect.” Creative Writing: Theory beyond practice, edited by Kraus, Nigel and Brady, Tess. Post Pressed, 2006, pp. 157-167

Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J. Seigworth. The Affect Theory Reader. Duke University Press, 2010.

Katz, Louise. Critical Thinking and Persuasive Writing for Postgraduates. Palgrave, 2018.

Lee, Carolyne. Our Very Own Adventure : Towards a Poetics of the Short Story. Melbourne University Publishing, 2011. Online reader version.

Geia, Lynore K, Barbara Hayes, and Kim Usher. “Yarning/Aboriginal Storytelling: Towards an Understanding of an Indigenous Perspective and Its Implications for Research Practice.” Contemporary nurse : a journal for the Australian nursing profession 46.1, 2013, pp. 13–17.

Muecke, Stephen. The Mother’s Day protest and other fictocritical essays. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

Muecke, Stephen. “Postlude: Fictocriticism after Critique.” Writing Architectures: Ficto-Critical Approaches, 2020, pp. 232-237.

Muecke, Stephen. “Writing the Indian Ocean: Immersion in Seven Waves.” Performance research 21.2, 2016, pp. 85–89.

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