Marnie Goodfriend
THE PERMISSION TO FORGET WHEN WRITING THROUGH PERSONAL TRAUMA

A few years ago, I visited Homosassa, Florida, after my mother’s death. She disappeared from my life when I was 12, so I didn’t know much about the life she lived since then. I trespassed on her property, peering into the windows to catch a glimpse of something familiar: a bedazzled purse, unfinished puzzle pieces on a card table, a stack of hardcover romance books. I noticed what didn’t match the parent I remembered as a child: a frog lovers garden sculpture, windchimes, a garden that grew life.

Months later, when I sat down to write an essay about the experience, my mind had drawn opaque curtains over part of my time in the Sunshine State: Where did I eat dinner? Was the hotel furniture wicker or wood? What did I learn about my disinheritance at the lawyer’s office? I had a “brown out,” a phrase Sarah Hepola explores in her memoir on addiction, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget.

The less severe and more common form is a fragmentary blackout, or ‘brownout,’ which is like a light flickering on and off in the brain.… Perhaps you remember kissing that guy, but not who made the first move. 

Trauma can behave like alcoholism, too, and cause brownouts or complete blackouts. In writing personal stories and dissecting our pasts like mad scientists, I often encourage students to create a writing practice that still honors our brain’s loving nature to protect us from memories we might not need to revisit. Still, it can be frustrating. As a human, I’m grateful for these gentle clouds of nothingness, but as a writer, it’s like discovering that those soft-looking pillows you long to sleep on are vapor—you reach for them, only to find there’s nothing to hold. 

When I need to write through a dimmed memory, I become a fiction writer. I don’t alter the facts. Instead, using phrases like I imagined that, In my dreams, I wished that, or just the word maybe gives me agency to write what I can’t remember. It adds layers of reflection and provides another path to emotional depth. In imagining what could have been, you can create a textured narrative while still honoring the truth in your nonfiction writing.  

Marnie Goodfriend is a health writer, journalist, trauma-informed writing coach, and creative nonfiction author, who will teach an upcoming Cleaver class on “Writing the Body.” Marnie has spent over a decade covering women’s health, as well as writing about topics including wellness, gender politics, travel, relationships, as-told-to stories, and profiles of celebrities and underrepresented voices. A contributing writer for SheKnows, HealthyWomen, and Flow Space, her work has also appeared in GQ, TIME, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and other publications. Previously, she was essays editor at The Nervous Breakdown and creative nonfiction editor at Angels Flight • literary west. Fellowships and residencies include PEN America Emerging Voices, Community of Writers, New York State Summer Writers’ Program, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She writes frequently about her own health journeys and is currently working on two memoirs.  Learn more at www.marniegoodfriend.com.

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