Monica Wesolowska Guest Blogs for Good Day, Regular People
“From Scream to Smile: The Power of Memoir,” by Monica Wesolowska
Before my son Silvan was born, I was happy with fiction. I read it. I wrote it. I taught it. I considered fiction one of my most intimate friends. Fiction gets us out of ourselves, I told my students, and into the skins of strangers. Fiction teaches empathy. But what amazed me more in fiction than new characters was getting lost in a new form, feeling bewildered by the shape of a story, then coming bang up against a truth at the end that was both familiar and startling.
But after my son Silvan died, the reader in me changed. Suddenly, I wasn’t after newness. I wanted only one story. I wanted memoirs about real mothers who’d lost real children—to miscarriage, stillbirth, drunk drivers, sudden illness. Though loss is everywhere, it rarely enters ordinary conversation and I didn’t want to be alone in my loss. I wanted to find what felt like Silvan’s story.
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