Writing Memoir ‘Moon in Full’ a Cathartic, Emotional Process

When writing about trauma, self-care is important.

My memoir "Moon in Full" took me eight full years to write. Partly because I kept myself busy finishing law school, trying to make ends meet, and engaging in political and community organizing.

The writing process, for me, was a cathartic, emotional, and therapeutic process that involved digging up and digging into traumatic experiences from my time with my Cambodian family, foster care, adoption, living in rural America (in this case Maine), and coming out and extracting myself from a heavily evangelical, conservative, and religious upbringing, community, education, and worldview.

As any writer will tell you, unpacking any trauma, including the trauma you've processed already, takes a lot of emotional energy and if not done carefully, can retraumatize you or take an emotional toll.

At this point in my life, however, I had reached a point where I had an understanding of trauma and its effect on my overall health. It took time and some therapy to get to that point.

As I write in my book:

"That’s the thing about untreated trauma: You get trapped in it, because it’s all you know. To step outside of it can be just as scary and uncertain as the trauma itself."

So for me, the writing process wasn't a matter of just getting up each day and finding time to just sit and write. I had to consider emotionally how I felt that day, and physically as well. Was I in the headspace to deal with whatever emotions might come up and was I in a space to do so in a healthy way?

This was where my therapist was helpful and often those sessions would help me make sense of emotions that I couldn't quite define.

Often, I wouldn't come back to writing another page or chapter or part for two to three months because it was important to me to develop and sharpen my coping skills and to be in tune with my mind and body and become better at taking my own internal temperature and regulating it.

Fortunately, the writing process is one of the greatest tools in the human toolbox for taking on, dealing with, and processing trauma and getting to the proverbial "other side."

Some tips that I offer to writers or people looking for good ways to process trauma, both past trauma and in-the-moment trauma, include some obvious but not so obvious tips.

Breathing is important. Breathing comes so naturally to us and it's one of the things the brain and our body subconsciously regulates without expending too many neurons or calories. But over time, stress and trauma warps our behavior and triggers our brain and bodies to respond differently as adrenaline and cortisol flood our systems. Practice deep breathing, the kind where you can feel your upper stomach or diaphragm floating up and down. Also, learn to catch yourself and notice when your breaths are short and even if you're holding your breath too much, because that means that you're not giving your brain and your body enough oxygen.

Drinking plenty of water. Water is life. It makes up 70% or so of our bodies. In fact, scientific research shows a direct correlation between drinking water and reduced stress levels. It can prevent stress because it alleviates stress on your body having to generate fluids, etc., with a limited supply of water. It can also help you cope with stress because when you're stressed, your heart rate goes up and you're using up more fluids.

Eat yogurt and protein. Like many Americans, I drank ALOT of coffee in college. And the stress of college and food insecurity issues I had (college meal plans are a whole discussion and a half), often meant I went to class hungry or I was only able to afford coffee. This caused me to be both dehydrated and extra anxious. My school nurse told me to not drink coffee on an empty stomach and to add something as simple as yogurt. So I tried having my coffee with greek yogurt and a banana, which was cheap, and it cut down on my stress and anxiety levels resulting from caffeine on an empty stomach.

Sleep and meditate. Sleep is obviously super important for mental health and dealing with stress. When you don't get enough sleep, you're not in your best state of mind and to deal with trauma and process it, you need to be in a good state of mind to do so. Meditating was also a practice I picked up, especially when I started getting into secular Buddhism. A lot of people start and get into meditation thinking that you have to have a completely empty and clear mind. But meditating isn't about controlling your thoughts (that will surely lead to overthinking), instead it's about regulating your mind and body's response to those thoughts and learning to simply let thoughts come and go without giving them your energy and attention.

These are only some of the tools and tips I used during my many, many years of writing my memoir. They are also generally good for when you're going about your day.

Feel free to share some advice you found helpful and if you're a writer, what your writing process was when dealing with trauma.

Thanks for reading!
Marpheen Chann
Author of Moon in Full