Memoir Handbook #3: Forensic Soul Work

Who Are Your People?

On a soul level, you may carry an imprint of those who have gone before you. On a cellular level, you are an imprint. Not only of those who had you, but of those who had them. Relatives who secured your birthplace, by raising the ones who ventured out and made the trek to your home country.

I know you’re in your hula hoop, on your square, cultivating your own stamp of grass and garden here on the planet. But may I also suggest some forensic soul work, a look back and all around at the facts, the dates, through the technology of time and timelines, to merge soul and cell. Blend the mystic and the minutiae. Seek your imprint. You are not alone.

Marie Malone

My grandmother Marie Malone came here from Ireland on a boat at the age of 15, and she is an imprint on my soul and cellular being. I’m not talking about Hallmark movie warm and fuzzy attachment. Marie Malone was truly the scariest person I knew as a small child, and I did not feel close to her, but the more creative risks I took, the more her imprint emerged. It has protected me at times in my life. She was fierce. I playfully activated the imprint of her in strategic ways like in a music club alone onstage, singing to people who weren’t used to holding space for emotionally intimate art.

Marie Malone

Press Photo, 2008

You see, publishers would tell me “no one wants to read your journal in a song” about songs like “Notion” and “Cavalier” which I wrote years ago, beginning around 2001. But that’s how I wrote. It was valued by some - I once got a call from a science teacher named Jeff asking did I want to write with this amazing 11 year old girl. He was on her “Street Team” which was what artists and writers used before Instagram.

My response to that call was “what the heck am I going to write with an 11 year old?” By the time I had gathered the money and people to record Cavalier and Notion, that girl was already on the top of her charts. You may have heard of her, her name is Taylor Swift. All those who had been writing confessional love songs for our own little folk shows looked like copycats instead of creators ever since her Dad put her on the map by buying enough albums for her to make it onto the Billboard 100. But some of us were out there bearing our hearts and souls before it was ultra cool.

It was hard sometimes. I was better suited for the backyard than a hi-rise hotel suite and like I have already said, I was spared from success in the music business. Man, am I grateful. I share this only to offer a glimpse into the very mean meantime of service to my soul through driving through my own solo folk tours.

Yes, one of the ways I made it through shows and tours was with that Marie Malone imprint, along with legions of Archangels, protecting me. I was often successful in getting a chatty crowd to shut up, and not by being snarky as I have seen some artists do, but by being quiet. By playing very quietly and witnessing them, thereby allowing them to witness me, and feeling something as a result. Perhaps a tug in them, some sense of initiative-as in “well I guess I am here, and she’s here, so I can either listen, or go somewhere else.” Playing quietly so quiet the audience was a purification of sorts, a kind of healthy shame that would arrive in them.

Sometimes when I did this I could feel Marie Malone’s essence of toughness from within me, alongside a proud Irish Grandma in heaven, wanting me to be heard. It wasn’t a pristine technology, but it made me feel loved regardless of a crappy crowd on day five of driving alone to shows. It legitimized the only relationship I was in at that time; one with an audience. And professionally speaking, on occasion it actually worked, and turned even the most callous audience member into a supportive patron after the show, buying one or two of the CDs I carried in boxes in my trunk. That is, until I-Tunes ended my CD sales, almost overnight, in 2006.

Playing live, early 2000s.

Your People

I believe studying ancestors is a tool for knowing the self in the context of a life. I’ve unconsciously or consciously surrounded myself with authors, mentors, and friends who acknowledge ancestry. My father emphasized it from the time I was small. When he was suspicious of a boyfriend I had in my 30s, all he had to do was lower his newspaper for a moment and say “have you met his people?” No long lecture was required for me to realize the boyfriend didn’t value me enough to introduce me, and at that age, it was time.

When I was unable to conceive, I heard Dr. Northrup on a podcast encouraging women to consider their impression of their ancestors’ mothering experiences. This allowed me to let go of a deluded expectation to effortlessly conceive after age 40 and enter into an experience as a devoted stepmama that has surprised and delighted me.

I feel confident I would not be writing this if I had two small children of my own right now, and I really want to be writing this! The process has allowed me to embrace the plan God had for me over a plot developed by my personality. Because there is a dark side to this phenomenon of an imprint. A great book on that is It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn. Some of the imprints can hold trauma. Unconsciously adopted generational trauma that doesn’t belong to you can inform, but carrying it on will not serve you. Instincts arrive from healing personal trauma that can help decipher generational trauma.

Respect for your ancestors and healing generational trauma in various ways has been accomplished, consciously or unconsciously throughout the ages. Both are often in sharp focus for those who have entered hell and returned better for it, blurry for anyone in denial, perhaps not even in the periphery for those who lead a cushy, charmed life. Whatever your category, here for you to explore by getting quiet, listening to God and yourself in reflection. Many ordinary things promote this. Sew. Knit. Change the oil, wash the car. Do needlepoint. Clean out a drawer. Put music on or off, whichever is unusual for you. Take a different route, park farther away. Trust the process. Open to the mystery.

We are living through a time that has rendered this work imperative. Look around. This is what you get when people trade in forensic soul work for screens and opinions. However, don’t lose yourself to urgency, ok? Good-scared will move you, but don’t freeze. As Sonia Choquette says, “the situation is critical, but not serious”.

Don’t lose your sense of humor, but don’t underestimate how crucial this work is right now. Humanity is at stake. I’m serious. People are picking A.I. over common sense. That’s frightening. I had no idea that all those debates I had with fellow songwriters who were using a thesaurus and spellcheck would catapult me into this moment. My resistance to allowing a computer to think for me, which causes your intuition and memory to atrophy is something I cherish. May you cherish it too, and go within.

Just start with what you have, where you are. Close your eyes. Breathe five deep breaths. Who in your family, who among your people, is there?

Now write about that, and you have begun.