Friday Dispatch: Start With One Story
Friday Dispatch: Start With One Story
Don't throw in the towel on your writing dream(s)
“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
Friday greetings,
Last night, we went to see the “hometown screening” in Northampton, MA of a documentary by Julia Mintz, Four Winters: A Story of Jewish Partisan Resistance and Bravery in WWII.
“FOUR WINTERS features interviews with the last living Partisans who are the centerpiece of this film. By also using personal photographs, letters, journals, rare archival film footage, historic war records, photographs, and artifacts shared with the filmmakers from Partisans’ personal collections, the documentarians weave together many strands to tell this layered story that shatters the myth of Jewish passivity. The film illuminates the many ways in which Jews resisted the Nazis -- and celebrates the soulful bravery, cleverness, and leadership, of the Partisans.” :: read more
After the standing ovation, Mintz – who wrote, directed, and produced the film along with a large and amazing team – joined someone from the Jewish Film Festival for a Q&A on stage.
One of the things that struck me most – yet did not surprise me – was that Mintz first got the idea for making this film, which she described as “a passion project,” after hearing a single woman’s story.
One story.
One story that led to the story of more than 25,000 Jewish partisans who lived in the forest for four years, fighting the Nazis and their collaborators in conditions it’s safe to say few of us can fathom.
One story.
One story that got this writer and filmmaker’s attention and then wouldn’t let go, leading to a decade of research, travel, interviews, relationship-building, meticulous editing, and ultimately, an unforgettable and crucial documentary that reveals another facet of the Holocaust. (Read more about her journey with the film.)
It’s like this sometimes. Maybe oftentimes. Something grabs us – from our own life or someone else’s. We may not even understand why, and perhaps the “why” doesn’t matter.
Say we respond, as Mintz did. We respond and follow the thread, with absolutely no idea where it is going to lead, how it is going to go. We simply we know we must.
I want to invite you to pause here for a moment. Can you think of such a story or experience from your own life?
Perhaps it’s something you have felt compelled to write about or create. Maybe it’s an urge to travel to a particular place that feels more like need than desire. You can’t explain it, but it is persistent, unrelenting even.
Or you avoid this thing because it feels too big, amorphous. There’s no way for you to see the big picture, because most of it remains hidden. The only way to proceed is by taking one step after another. You write a sentence, a paragraph. You sit with a single photograph. You make a phone call or send an email. You wait. You wonder. You write notes at your bedside at 4:00am. Life happens and you get busy and distracted and realize you are missing this thing, this thing that has begun to have contours and an aura of its own. Working on it feels like a relief. You suddenly wish you had a year or three to devote completely to this project, which is no longer one story but perhaps a multitude of stories, a puzzle that penetrates your dreams and overtakes your reading piles.
Does any of this sound familiar?
It is why there are grants and residencies and fellowships for writers and artists who long for time in a culture where time is money and money is necessary for everything.
It’s also why so many people don’t even start – because if you also have a j-o-b, if you also have student debt, if you are also a primary caregiver for other humans, if you also have a mortgage or rent and so many bills, if you also feel like it’s all you can do to keep up with all of the responsibilities and even the joys of your life, you might think, this is not to be. I don’t have (time/money/capacity).
This is one of the saddest aspects of our individualist, capitalist reality: Too often, pursing one’s passion project, no matter what that might be, simply gets pushed to the side because of the necessities that cannot wait. Too often, we are simply too bone tired to pick up a pen, much less apply for grant funding that we might not even have the paid time off to use. It’s a high wire act, living in this place and time.
Needless to say, listening to Julia Mintz last night after watching Four Winters brought all of this to mind.
And it brought me back eight years to when I created a series of 10 writing prompts called One Story: Ten Facets.
As you know, I am dogged when it comes to insisting that it is possible to start – and then not to give up. It may be slow. It may be painstaking at times. You may have lots of times when you think, what the heck am I even doing? You may consider throwing in the towel on your writing dream(s).
I’m here to say: Please don’t.
If Julia Mintz had given up, we would not have the stories of the incredible humans, some of whom have passed away since she met them, others of whom are in their 90s. This is the last generation of Holocaust survivors; soon footage like this is all we will have of their voices.
I am so grateful she kept going, “in fits and starts” as she said last night with a laugh.
Fits and starts are ok, inevitable even. The important thing is to keep going. Find your team, even if that’s just a single person who knows what you’re up to. Carve out time, even if it’s 10 minutes at a time.
If there is a story that won’t let you go – but that feels too big to tackle – come download the One Story: Ten Facets PDF this week for 50% off – that’s just $6
These 10 prompts are designed to give you 10 distinct doorways through which to see your story, 10 opportunities to get words on the page, just 10 minutes at a time.
Your story deserves to be told. You deserve to tell it. And the world needs all of our stories.
Together, they create a tapestry of humanity that will hold us together at a time when so much in the world is coming apart.
Shabbat Shalom and love,
Jena
Newly published
A vulnerable essay of mine was published this week by Cognoscenti, the ideas and opinions page or WBUR (Boston Public Radio). I say vulnerable because I write here about some of my own history around coming out, and how it has shaped me as a parent and as a person. My hope is that it will open conversations about the implications of the word "loss" when we talk about our children's sexual orientation and gender identities, and any path they may take that doesn't match our expectations.
This reader’s comment was the best response to this piece I can imagine:
"I'm struck by how it is your story but applies to so many kids taking unorthodox paths toward becoming themselves." ~ Beth Burrell
Here's to learning from our own life experiences to help us become better humans.
p.s. literally as I was finishing up this Dispatch, I received an email including this information: “There have been reports that two school counselors at Amherst Regional Middle School have been counseling queer students to deny their queer identity and to follow Christian principles and have been praying and reading Bible verses with them on campus during the school day.”
Our kids needs us.
April 18, 2023
[A Facebook post]
This is happening in a county just outside of Austin.
Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. There's a vigil this afternoon to support the Belchertown community – this is one town over from me – where at the public middle school, dozens of kids have been performing Heil Hitler salutes and harassing Jewish students with references to gas chambers for months now.
Ralph Yarl knocked on the wrong door.
Kaylin Gillis turned her car around in the wrong driveway.
Four young adults dead and 32 injured in Alabama.
I am usually fairly disciplined when it comes to not doom-scrolling. Today I am struggling.
The question, "What can we do?" Always looking for the next step. Rumination changes and solves nothing.
The undeniable reality that the right is closing in on more and more of the country, and it is everywhere. Everywhere.
The inevitable outcome of the past 400+ years.
A friend whose kid's school was on full lockdown yesterday, not a drill, SWAT teams, before finally learning it was a false alarm.
Frayed nerves.
Sitting in a full sanctuary on a beautiful spring Saturday morning, witnessing a young woman becoming a bat mitzvah, glancing every so often behind me at the doors, and imagining a shooter barging in.
How our rabbi, Ben Weiner, said, one of the best ways to combat hatred is exactly what we were doing: gathering, worshipping, honoring, celebrating, existing. [Read his full Yom HaShoah remarks.]
Take care of your hearts, my friends. This is a long fight.
Last Word
“Thank you for being you.”
~ someone identified only as “Someone” who bought me 10 virtual coffees this week.
Thanks, Someone!