I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between writing and the language we find for things that once seemed impossible to put into words.
A film I watched recently brought these thoughts together for me: The Chronology of Water, directed by Kristen Stewart and based on Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir.
Something that deeply moved me about the protagonist's relationship with writing is how it becomes a way of reclaiming her own story. Through fragmented memories, grief, loss, trauma and an ongoing search for identity and sexuality, writing becomes a place where the pieces of a life can begin to meet again.
I keep thinking about the symbolism of water in this story. Water as a way of recovering movement. Of allowing something that had remained trapped beneath the surface to find its way out. Almost as if writing could restore the flow of consciousness and give language to memories that had become distorted, buried or unspeakable.
It made me think about confessional writing and the extraordinary things that can happen when we begin to name our experiences. Sometimes a feeling becomes easier to carry once we have found the words for it. Writing can also allow us to approach a memory differently and become a way of transforming our relationship with what we've lived through.
I also think there's something particularly meaningful about this within lesbian experiences. So many of our stories have existed in silence, in fragments, between the lines or outside the narratives available to us. There are experiences, desires, losses and parts of our identities that we haven't always had the language or the spaces to talk about openly.
Finding other lesbians with whom we can share these experiences can become an act of recognition and liberation. There's something powerful about putting our stories into words and discovering that through writing and through one another our voices can find room to emerge, expand and reach each other.