Diving In
Witnessing and supporting my daughter go after her goal of being accepted to her top-choice school shifted my desire for safety.
I am still having trouble calling myself a writer. While I have published scantily over the last decade or so, and written a Master’s Thesis and Dissertation, I continue to stay close to the shore, only venturing into the breaking waves when I feel safe. It’s not that I don’t think I write well, I do. But there’s no safety in writing, sharing, and being vulnerable. Instead, I have spent my career as an educator supporting students on their writing journeys – from kindergarteners forming their first sentences to high school students making their way through the curriculum and working to gain entrance to college to college students who are now being told (most, for the first time) that their interests are worthy of academic scrutiny and their knowledge-base is valuable. I was a lifeguard who didn’t swim.
I have hand-written hundreds of unseen pages because hiding them added to my safety. I have over 1,000 written and voice notes on my phone with sentence starters, ideas, observations, and full-blown paragraphs. I have kept them close because they keep me safe. The truth of the matter is that I have valued that safety more than being seen as being able to do something well. At least, I did. Then something happened – I became an empty nester. This major life transition sparked my desire to stop walking along the shoreline and dive in. Witnessing and supporting my daughter go after her goal of being accepted to her top-choice school shifted my desire for safety. I am no longer intimidated by the rough waters of the writing life nor am I relegating myself to one form of writing. The time I have gained since my daughter has gone to school has allowed me to get present and reflect on what I want to say, how I want to say it, and my writing process. It has made me realize that I am a writer.
I have written so therefore I am a writer and I now understand that this gathering of written pages, phone, and voice notes are part of my process. I have the privilege of now being able to sift and sort through this work, establish patterns, decide what I want to keep and expand upon, and what I can either save for later or do away with. I am a gatherer and this allows me to generate my own frameworks for the stories I want to tell. As my writing coach recently reminded me, “There is no one way to be a writer. Create a process that works for you.” I have made this saying into a lock screen for my phone. Reframing my need for safety as being part of my writing process has been an act of liberation and has given importance and heft to this part of my work. Writers don’t just write. Before they put words to the page, they walk the shoreline, dip their toes in, wade in deeper, and eventually swim.
Don’t miss Dr. Turman’s course! Register now for this workshop. Learn more about WRITING THROUGH LIFE’S TRANSITIONS.
Starting May 1 · 7:30PM ET
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ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Aiesha Turman holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Union Institute & University, where she also received certificates in Creative Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her dissertation, There’s Always Been an Afrofuture: Black Women’s Literature as Technology of Protest explores Afrofuturism’s Black feminist literary lineage beginning with the mid-19th century to the present. Dr. Turman is also a Reiki Master teacher and she co-wrote the curriculum for the Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary, Crip Camp, which can be viewed on Netflix. She currently teaches English at a public college in New York. You can find more information about and connect with her via her website aieshaturman.com.
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