Retracing Your Steps

“When in doubt, I find retracing my steps to be a wise place to begin.”

Albus Dumbledore

If you’d like to see and hear this post in video format, hop on over to my YouTube Channel.  

Last month I talked about how we yearn to return (and if you missed that video, you can find it here.)

But this month, I’d like to talk about what happens after you do.  

What happens is you retrace your steps.

When you misplace your keys or your phone, you are retracing your steps. You are going back over the route you took, step by backward step. It’s a review. Tracing a thing back to its source.

Before I began to actually write my memoir, I didn’t just show up to the intersection where I experienced that crash, I spent time there, engaging with it. I walked the corners. Stood quietly at each vantage point. Took photographs. Reconjured what I could in my minds’ eye. I was still numb – it would take many more years for me to fully feel what happened to me there – but it was a vital first step.

That was a retracing - a process that dovetails with writing personal narrative.

When you return to a person, place or a subject that you feel compelled to write about – especially a sensitive or challenging person, place or subject -  you can be flooded with feelings or numb, as I was when I retraced my own steps. Either way, it’s easy to freeze up and be unable to begin.

But imagine the retracing you did when you learned to write the letters of the alphabet (do they still use that technique?) or when your fingers track a route on a map. In both cases, you aren’t starting with nothing – the paths have already been laid. You are simply returning at your own pace, moving back through them, and taking notes along the way.

Retracing is a redoing with the advantage of arms-length distance.

Necessary for gathering both the details and the strength to take your story to the page.

Photo by Oxana (Unsplash).

Coming Up

“Honoring Heirlooms through Words: Writing to Discover & Declutter,” Ritualwell (online) Wednesdays, 11-12:30 pm (CT)

October 18- November 8, 2023