Writing yourself out of the tunnel

Writing yourself out of the tunnel

16 September, 2007 Posted by Joanna As Snippets

I first came across the words of Rachel North in an on-line diary published by the BBC in the days after the 7th July bombings in London, back in 2005. I remember being gripped by her account of what had happened when the Tube train she’d been on had been blown up, and the weird experience of attempting to return to normality – to go back to work, to travel underground again – in the days that followed. It was first hand, real, raw, emotional, but also level headed, trying to understand, trying to make sense of what had happened. She wrote about her experiences in a direct way that created a connection with anyone who had ever travelled by Tube across London.

I lost track of Rachel’s voice until I started blogging earlier this year. I had been on the look out for quality UK blogs and was pointed towards her site: Rachel from North London. It started as a follow on to the BBC diary, and continued to chart her journey through the dark days after the bomb and out the other side.

If you go to Rachel’s blog just now you’ll see that she’s taking a blogging break. The events of the last two years (and beyond) have finally caught up with her. Knowing even the bare bones of her story might help you to understand why. Back in 2002 she was raped, brutally, and left for dead. She decided to tell people about her experience in the hope of helping other rape survivors. The article about her experience was published in a women’s magazine – the same day that Rachel’s train was blown up on her way to work. She kept writing her experiences after the bomb to help her deal with her own Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and to help others understand what was going on. With others she set up a support group – King’s Cross United – a group that provided vital support to members, helping each other to walk back out of the darkness, out of the tunnel.

Writing has helped Rachel to survive, to overcome her experiences – and I’ll come to more on that in a minute – but she continues to walk a rocky road. Writing and blogging success was overshadowed by a horrendous experience at the hands of an Internet stalker. Her mother was taken seriously ill shortly after the publication of Rachel’s first book, and died a few weeks later. I think all Rachel’s readers can understand why she needs to take a break from writing in the public eye.

But meantime, her words are out in print in her first book: Out of the Tunnel. It covers the twin traumas of the rape and being blown up and that does, inevitably, make it a hard book to read. I guess this might put some people off. I also wonder if the subject matter of the 7th July bombings might not be of such direct interest to readers in countries outside the UK. But it is most definitely relevant to readers here: relevant to how things have been, how things are, and how they might be, for good or ill. This book certainly helped me to a more informed perspective on some of the big issues of our time – not least civil liberties.

For me though what was perhaps most powerful, most inspiring, was to see how the process of writing helped Rachel to heal, to learn, to share, to connect with others. To hold on to her own values despite the horrendous onslaught of violence, hatred and attack – not once, but twice – on her body and her person.

You get a sense of this as you read the book and share her journey – literally and metaphorically – out of the tunnel. Sometimes it comes through at key moments – like her ability to find the most beautiful words in the tribute to her fellow passengers at a memorial service. But she also talks about how writing has helped her, the part it has played in her journey.

She talks about writing as a healing:

“a way to talk myself through the hours and days of a summer week where nothing made sense”

She talks about writing as a release:

“a way of releasing the demons, the madness and despair that can bend the shocked brain out of shape and fracture the sense of safety and self after too-close horror”.

Writing was part of her survival strategy – something she needed to do for herself.

“When I wanted to give up, I would write instead. About how going to work still felt like walking into a war. About politics, religion, terrorism, the nature of evil. About dancing and cooking and gardening. It was half an hour a day, my writing, but it was the difference between sanity and despair. A small space where I could connect with what I really thought, and say it, because nobody had to read it if they didn’t want to. A place to breathe.”

And I know there is power, and release, in writing just for yourself. But there is a different sort of power – the power to connect, to move and be moved by the stories of other people – when you write to be read. This passage sums up for me the power of our words – written, read, shared and spoken together – to transform even the harshest of situations. And that to me is also the power of authentic writing: because it helps us to connect, to feel strong, to find courage and hope in an otherwise fractured, disjointed, threatening world.

“When I was writing I did not feel alone; though the audience was faceless, intangible, nonetheless I could feel a connection with those compassionate strangers. Through that hopeful pull of other people’s presence, further along the path ahead towards the light of normality, encouragement sensed and read in other peoples’ written responses, I could feel it and find it: a way out of the tunnel.”

I was reviewing Out of the Tunnel by Rachel North as part of the September focus here on writing with authenticity. The book is available from Amazon (UK but not yet US).

You can explore more of Rachel’s writing at her blogsite: Rachel from North London

Joanna Young, The Confident Writing Coach
Because our words count

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