Transforming Trauma Through Writing
In Eastern Europe, where historically almost every family has experienced Russian cruelty, it is known that in order to break a nation the enemy first attempts to break that nation’s women.
On February 28, 2023, one year after Russia invaded Ukraine, I was at the Ukrainian Center in Vilnius, Lithuania, about to begin my creative writing workshop, “The Transformation of Trauma through Writing.”
The work of psychologist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Dori Laub¹ on healing trauma through storytelling and empathetic listening are significant tools in the process of integrating traumatic experiences. Reading Laub’s work inspired me to lead this writing workshop for Ukrainian refugees. I have been teaching creative writing workshops for almost thirty years. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq I had students who had served in those conflicts and then returned to the University of Southern Maine. I found that the process of writing through their experiences helped them release some traumatic memories. At the same time, I know that asking traumatized people to write about their trauma directly can lead to re-traumatization. The memory of trauma is a place few are willing to go, and yet that place where the trauma is held begs to be released. Therefore, I have taken a circuitous route.
I volunteered to lead the workshop out of a desire to give something of value to the Ukrainian refugees who came to the center seeking community. But there, seated at the imposing wooden seminar table with fifteen Ukrainian women, one young man, one teenage girl, two American Fulbright scholars from the United States, and the director of the Ukrainian Center, Algirdas Kumža, I was nervous. Every displaced person from Ukraine seated at that table — most of them from Mariupol, Kharkiv, the Donbas and Donetsk regions, some from Kyiv — had experienced and witnessed unimaginable trauma. Their homes had been destroyed and they had lost everything. Those whom they loved most in the world had been killed. In Vilnius they were being sheltered by Lithuanian families, and most of them were working minimum wage jobs as cleaning ladies and cashiers. A few of the women had sons fighting in Bakhmut; these mothers clutched their phones throughout the three-hour seminar, vigilant for any news. Many had witnessed death. Some had witnessed the deaths of those closest to them. Many still had family in Ukraine. Who was I to presume that my writing exercises could help them work through any of the trauma they’d experienced or find some momentary relief from their relentless pain?
I gazed around the table. All the women in the group were dressed well in brightly patterned tops, dresses, suit jacket and skirt sets, had done their make-up and hair. The attention to personal appearance that is prevalent among Ukrainian women should not be misunderstood as vanity or coquettishness. It is a statement of pride, of survival, of holding onto their own humanity despite the war. Their impeccably coiffed appearance is intended as a sign of respect for themselves and those with whom they interact. It could also be seen as a form of protest of dignity against Russia’s war, or a refusal to be humiliated by Russia, to lose one’s humanity, to lose the simple pleasure of dressing up and looking your best. Rising from the rubble wearing lipstick is a sign of defiance.
Algirdas Kumža opened the seminar speaking Ukrainian. In the early 2000s, at the time of the Orange Revolution, he had been appointed Ambassador to Ukraine for Lithuania, and quickly added Ukrainian to his fluency in Lithuanian, Russian, German, and English. He introduced me and emphasized to the group that my father had been a displaced person from Lithuania after World War II. I grew up in a Lithuanian émigré community in New York made up of war refugees.
Yelyzaveta Drach, a talented young Ukrainian writer and literary scholar, translated between English and Ukrainian during the workshop. Some of the women seated at the table who were from Eastern Ukraine were Russian language speakers. With my basic Russian language skills I could understand them, but I had trouble understanding Ukrainian. One of the first things Yelyzaveta translated to me was that the group felt that as the daughter of a war refugee, I could understand them, perhaps even more than people who’d never had to flee their country. They also expressed that they saw me as an example of who their children may become if Russia succeeds in occupying all of Ukraine and they never return. While in Lithuania — although I speak fluent Lithuanian — I sometimes perceived myself as a person seeking to be part of her homeland, but always kept on the sidelines by those who’d never left home. The depth of complicated feelings of the displaced is difficult to articulate, but we all sensed those emotions in the room and understood each other.
Some of the workshop participants knew each other already, and some were meeting for the first time. I asked each person at the table to introduce themselves. The introductions were intended to guide the workshop participants to engage in storytelling about themselves while building a community of writers to support one another during the time we would spend together. I asked them to share their thoughts on this question: “Who are you as a writer?” Each woman talked about who she had been before the war. They spoke of themselves as members of a family that was no longer intact, as professionals who had done work they were proud of in Ukraine, as members of a community. They talked about what their dreams for the future had been. They had been therapists, literature professors, high school teachers, artists, musicians, writers, journalists. Their past lives were testimonies to what they’d lost.
Anzhelika Medvedeva was the last to introduce herself. She had arrived a few minutes late and quietly seated herself to the right of our translator, Elyzaveta, who was seated beside me. I studied Anzhelika as she gathered her thoughts, noting details, forming a first impression, an old habit from years of teaching. Anzhelika’s nails were beautifully polished and just the right length. Her hair was coiffed stylishly. She wore full make-up, foundation, lipstick, eyeliner, all tastefully applied. I considered that she might have a career as a beautician or make up artist.
When she began to speak, her story was quite different. She had taught literature in Mariupol and lived a good life there, happily married to her husband, pleased with how her grown son had turned out. Then the Russians invaded.
Anzhelika paused, took a deep breath, and said, “I came here today because up until this point I’ve allowed journalists to tell my story for me. I’ve not been able to speak my own story out loud. I came to this writing workshop today because I am resolved that this is the first step I will take that will change my life from here onwards.”
With those words, responsibility weighed on me. Anzhelika's eyes were filled with pain and hope. Then she told her story.
In the early days of the Russian invasion of Mariupol, Russian soldiers were systematically killing the able bodied men of the city in cold blood. While they were out on the street one day, Russian soldiers murdered Anzhelika’s husband and son right in front of her. They were unarmed bystanders. Anzhelika watched, helpless, as her husband’s and son’s bodies were lifted from the ground by Russian soldiers and tossed unceremoniously onto a heap of corpses in the back of a truck and driven away to be dumped into a mass grave.
Her story took all the air out of the room. She dared to speak out loud what others had experienced but were not yet ready to talk about.
I invited the group to participate in an exercise I adapted from Bill Roorbach’s Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature (Story Press, 1998). I asked them to draw a detailed map of the place where they lived as a small child, and on that map to write down the names of streets, family members, neighbors, and pets, including as many details as possible. This exercise is designed to help writers not only return to their roots as children, but also to give them the opportunity to tell a story to an empathetic listener in their natural storyteller’s voice. The group drew their childhood maps for twenty minutes, then I paired them up according to common language. I paired Anzhelika with an older woman who’d been a psychotherapist in Ukraine and had worked with traumatized children — I felt that she would have the skills to listen to Anzhelika and perhaps help her.
I asked everyone to tell their partner a story that had arisen in their minds as they were drawing (preferably a story they’d long forgotten) and to use their map to explain the place they came from. I could feel the palpable energy of release taking place through the storytelling in four distinct languages — a beautiful cacophony of communication. They were talking about times that were far removed from the horrors of the present war, giving the group a brief and calming respite. As everyone talked over their maps, I glanced over and saw that Anzhelika and her partner were deep in conversation.
After everyone had told their stories and listened to their partner’s story, I asked them to return to the table and for the next twenty minutes to engage in a freewriting exercise, simply writing whatever came to mind without self-censorship, whether it was related to their story maps or not. Now the energy in the room became dense with heads bent over notebooks and the stillness of deep concentration. The language we wrote in did not matter; the depths we uncovered are what mattered. I peeked up from my notebook. Anzhelika had a serious look on her face as she wrote. Some of the other women brushed away tears. When time was called, they reluctantly stopped writing, asking for a few extra minutes.
I asked if anyone would like to share what they’d written, explaining that they were under no obligation to do so.
Anzhelika shyly lifted her hand and said in a soft voice, “I’d like to read.”
This is her piece:
I am Anzhelika Medvedeva from Mariupol. When I was a little girl, we lived next to the forest, and I loved walking there. I collected flowers and herbs, learned how to dry them correctly, and enjoyed drinking herbal tea. But most of all I liked to pick flowers, lie on the ground among them, admire them. How they smelled! The smell of plants always followed me. I walked among the trees in the forest, along the slopes, and dreamed that when I grew up I would become a fairy of the forest. I dreamed that I would learn to understand the language of trees, flowers, and herbs, that I would be able to live among them, that I would be able to protect this beauty. They are alive, they told me their stories. I loved yellow flowers most of all. How sunny they were! They were special. Each yellow flower looked to me as though it were a droplet of the sun. I didn’t like flowers from the flower shop. For some reason, I called them, “corpses of flowers.” Amazingly, I referred to cut flowers as flower corpses throughout my entire childhood.
I remembered this a year ago. When Russian soldiers collected the corpses of people on the streets of Mariupol, they threw them into the truck, one on top of the other, like firewood. I just stood by. I watched how my murdered son and husband were taken away. Beautiful... They were beautiful... In the midst of the fires and the ruined street and houses. And not a single flower. None!!! People were taken away. I do not know where and how they were buried. I could not save them. I could not put a single flower on the grave. There was no grave. There were no flowers.
When I managed to escape, the first flowers I saw on the street were tulips. Two tulips. They were yellow. I sat down next to them. And cried. Aloud. I was torn by pain so that I fell to my knees, bent over the flowers, and sobbed, so that the birds became silent. I didn’t see anyone... Every time I see yellow flowers, I remember my childhood, my murdered relatives, these two tulips... I hate dead flowers!!! They must live!...
She finished reading and there was a stunned silence ringing within the room. I asked the group to honor Anzhelika’s story and take the time to sit with her experience. After an appropriate amount of time had passed, I asked if anyone else would like to read. Algirdas lifted his head and said, “After that, nothing, there is no more to say.” Olena Enka, a young woman who was attending the workshop with her teenage daughter, said, “I’d like to read.”
I am Olena Enko from Kharkiv. Well, let me start now though I already know that the picture of my childhood is not what worries me at the moment. With the outbreak of war, I had very little to worry about. No, of course, sometimes we all bother with something because we all live our everyday life, but now all small problems are not problems at all. Because when a woman nearby says that her son and husband were killed in front of her eyes, I can’t help but feel a lump in my throat and sobs choke my breath. We all are happy people because we are here now. And every day, though facing problems, we know that the most important thing is that we are safe. Now our soldiers are fighting, they are cold and probably frightened. Or maybe not... I wonder if they are afraid or maybe they don't care. Do they believe that the price of freedom is calculated in their lives? Sometimes I feel ashamed. Because I put my head down. But then I tell myself: “You must be strong.” Currently, things are not easy for all Ukrainians. And that’s when I think of our warfighters. Someone is fighting... and someone is afraid... Nonetheless, I have my own weapon, it is creativity. You can also fight through creativity. Well, if God made me a woman and gave me the gift of singing, so I have decided to sing a song repeated those words: “Russian warship, go f*ck yourself.” Was I scared? Of course. After all, I am a blogger on topics for children, and I had to pronounce a swear word to sing that song. But no matter how much I tried to change the words, it was impossible to formulate it differently. Therefore, for now the blog for children is on pause. But I still understand that I have to continue writing my blog one day. That’s because I must bring good to this world.
Olena stopped reading. She burst into tears. She stood up, walked around the table to Anzhelika, and embraced her. They held each other for a while and cried. We all cried, everyone at the table cried. Only Algirdas managed to keep his eyes dry, a true Lithuanian man of his generation, taught never to openly show emotion.
Olena returned to her seat and burst into fresh tears. Now I stood, moved by some unseen force that compelled me to let go of my role as workshop leader and give in to my emotions. I walked over to her and held her.
No one could read a word anymore, but we all felt the words, lived the words, released the words together. This group of Ukrainian refugee women, mostly from the devastated areas of Eastern Ukraine, from Kharkiv, from Mariupol, who had sat around the table only three hours earlier showing stoic self-control, believing that they had no right to be emotional, to speak of their suffering because so many others back home in Ukraine had it worse, cried now, releasing a year of pent-up emotion.
“We never felt we could give ourselves permission to cry,” one woman said to me later, “when others had suffered and lost so much more.”
A student came into the room and informed me that it was 9:00 pm. The building would be closing in five minutes. We’d been there three hours. We were supposed to have left half an hour earlier.
I made the announcement, and everyone gathered up their notebooks. As they walked towards the classroom door, women came over and thanked me. Several shared with me that the workshop had given them permission to feel their emotions again, and to work through those emotions by writing. They told me they would keep writing.
We left that evening in a trance, not saying too much, careful to hold what we’d experienced inside our hearts, braced for the new horrors the morning news was bound to bring from Ukraine.
The freewriting examples by Anzhelika Medvedeva and Olena Enko were translated into English by Yelyzaveta Drach.
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1 Dr. Dori Laub’s work on Holocaust testimony stresses the healing power of bearing witness. In his book, Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (Routledge, 1992), co-authored with Shoshana Felman, Laub states: “This loss of the capacity to be a witness to oneself and thus to witness from the inside is perhaps the true meaning of annihilation, for when one’s history is abolished, one’s identity ceases to exist as well” (Laub 82). According to Laub, the need to tell survivor stories, and the need for someone to listen, is at the core of healing: “Yet it is essential for this narrative that could not be articulated to be told, to be transmitted, to be heard” (69). Being heard, being listened to, takes on special significance in the trauma recovery process. In addition to being listened to, Laub stresses that “What ultimately matters in all processes of witnessing […] is not simply the information […] but the experience itself of living through testimony, of giving testimony” (Laub 70). Through this process, the trauma survivor “reclaims his position as a witness” (Laub 70).
Laima Vince is a poet, literary translator, writer of both works of nonfiction and novels, playwright, artist, academic and educator. She has published over twenty books in the United Kingdom, United States, and Europe. She earned a PhD in Humanities from Vilnius University, an MFA in Writing with a concentration in Poetry from Columbia University, an MFA in Nonfiction from the University of New Hampshire, and a BA in English and German Literature from Rutgers University. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, a National Endowment for the Arts grant in Literature, a PEN Translation Fund grant, an Academy of American Poets Honorary Mention in Poetry, an Association of the Advancement of Baltic Studies book subvention grant and dissertation grant, among other honors. Vanished Lands, her academic monograph on intergenerational trauma and postmemory in Lithuanian diaspora literature, is forthcoming this autumn with Peter Lang Publishers.