WRITING WHAT’S TOUGH – from Trauma to Health

Move at the Speed of Trust, a friend painted in gold one Xmas – she said it was inspired by a Black Lives Matter credo – and that card has been on my inspirational shelf ever since. Beside it stands my homegrown motto:

I choose health. 

Three years ago when agents and publishers started to show interest in Six Women in a Cell, they naturally asked for a sample chapter. Nothing wrong with that, except this: I could not manage to part with a chapter. 

What?

Was this writer-self-sabotage? Let me explain: 

When I write the really challenging stuff, when I do the work of dropping inside a sentence and down the ladder a word or phrase can lead to, I often arrive in hot country, the story within the story—not “just” the arrival of seven police into my backyard and finding myself some dazed moments later, injured, handcuffed, and screeched off to jail, but the discomforting mind-moments beneath that (“how did I get here?”) as well as the actual surface beneath me, 

(mud? leaves? grass? stone?). Drop and drop and drop—even if it never makes the cut—this is the practice, laddering down to the surface beneath.

But it’s emotionally challenging and requires trust moment by moment. I hone my focus: translating thought to page is the priority. It’s not about “me,” it’s about translating from experience to page. Move at the speed of trust.

When the publisher wanted a chapter, I could no more part with Baby (chapter one) than I could part with Alexa, Richmond, The Social Worker, or Mudd (chapters two through five). Extracting one and not the other was impossible. It literally made me ill—heat, rashes, face inflaming, familiar and frightening fear responses I’d come to know since the assault. Eventually, I negotiated with myself, because I cared more about living without punishment from my book than I cared about the book finding a publisher:

“I choose health,” I decided.

That didn’t mean I was exempt from pain and shaking it off—crying, dancing, or pounding things in order to write—not at all. This bravery was a daily and patient-demanding part of writing and re-writing what was tough. 

But it meant that the choices I made were directed by health for me and for my book—and not constructed by should voices ( “I should have a stronger backbone, thicker skin, tougher nuts”) to supply what they wanted. 

I choose health does not mean I wimp out. It means I gather courage daily, I fight the demons of despondency with all my methods and my powers (more on that next time), but in the end, this is my chance to care for myself while pushing my boundaries ardently, boldly. 

And—most importantly—it’s my chance to heed the lucid messages from my body, the flashing alerts such as: 

This is making me sick.

Turning those flashing alerts into health-saving messages requires that I listen, really listen, beyond the choice I wish I could make, to the choice my body is already directing. Listening, itself, could potentially release the barrier and make action (such as sending in one chapter) possible. 

Or it might require another step. “I choose health” might require that my goal shift from the track I thought was my “big break” to a track that breeds real love, the kind that adjusts. The kind that listens not only to my supercharged strong self, “Let’s GO,” but to my most delicate vulnerable breath, even when she whispers “No.”

In the case of Six Women in a Cell, it has meant that the book waited three years past the time that publisher asked for a chapter. I’ve published another book in the meantime, won some awards, offered my trainings in acute trauma care, and strengthened my spirit, my backbone, and yes, toughened my nuts. I also re-wrote most of Six Women yet again.

It’s a better book now. I’m still bleeping scared to release it. But I listen daily. Writing takes guts. Publishing edgy writing takes guts. “I choose health” means I resist further self-punishment, but I still have to brave the heat. When I’m writing what’s tough, I’ll drop down and down: the fire may be hot. All the more reason to choose the healthiest way through.

—

Diana Tokaji, C-IAYT, M.Sc. is a writer, choreographer, and registered yoga therapist specializing in a strength-focused protocol for survivors of assault and trauma. Winner of the 2020 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest, and 2019 finalist with The New Guard, her essays and poems are published in feminist presses, parenting magazines, newspapers, and lit reviews, while others await publication in Book of Essays Before I Die and in SPOKE: book of poems & small things, 2021.

Her intimate resource book, SURVIVING ASSAULT – Words that Rock & Quiet & Tell the Truth, (2019), is a heart-to-heart conversation from one assault survivor to another, rendered with four beautiful hand gestures, or mudras, to guide ourselves through traumatic event. The writing of Six Women in a Cell, a product of sweat, tears, immense faith and strength-building practices, was driven by a passionate desire to share this real story with women of the world.

Dianatokaji.com
https://www.facebook.com/diana.tokaji.1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-tokaji-636a9552/

Sold at all booksellers and on Amazon

SIX WOMEN IN A CELL

A Story of Sisterhood and Survival After Police Assault

Six strangers are locked in a jail cell for one long night—their stories of muteness, power, humor, surrender, and police brutality intertwine in bizarre and familiar ways, leading to an understanding of ourselves and each other.

Meet: Baby, Alexa, Richmond, The Social Worker, and Mudd…

Under the mean blaze of all-night fluorescents and clanging cell doors, six diverse women tell their stories—a teen who beat up her bully, a divorcee framed by her violent ex, a sex worker, a social worker, a pregnant mom caught up with the wrong gang, and an older yoga therapist—our writer—who is accused of singlehandedly assaulting four cops. It is her story, their stories, and our U.S. history of bullying and dominance in law enforcement; and it’s a story of kindness—six cellmates who share pain, trust, and their own brand of love, even as “criminals” in an unforgettable night of darkness.

“A lyrical stunner. It sings. It also roars.”
Debbie Weingarten, writer

This unsparing memoir reveals the reality of surviving an assault, and the moral injury of police brutality. It is for the power-full and those rendered power-less, for assault survivors and those trained to work with trauma, and for everyone in this country awakening to what is real. A police assault is life-changing to its victim; here it leads to a long and determined fight for marriage, sanity, and physical health while the threat of jail is looming.

Diana Tokaji, winner of the 2020 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes award and author of the resource book, Surviving Assault – Words that Rock & Quiet & Tell the Truth, brings to bear a masterpiece of witness and writing that will enthrall the reader as story, and open hearts and minds to truth.

For mature readers of mixed ages and backgrounds.

Reviews:

I couldn’t put it down.
-Maria Washington, founder, Mothers for Justice United

I laughed, cried, and truly connected with this story.
Diana Tokaji gives us a deep understanding of the intersection between
injustice, survival, and humanity.

-Nadia Salazar, Community and Labor Organizer

With lyricism and candor, Ms. Tokaji has produced a mirror–
everyone should read this necessary work.

– Devi S. Laskar, Author, The Atlas of Reds and Blues,
Winner of the 2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature
Winner of the 2020 Crook’s Corner Book Prize

A work of art and a manual for change.

-Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D. Co-director, Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER)

This is not just a book. Not just words on pages. This is a taste of what life is for many.
When you read the last word, your eyes are opened wider, your heart has more understanding, and your mind, your mind is wiser.

-Debra Bennett, Executive Director, Change Comes Now,
advocacy for incarcerated women

Told with searing honesty and great courage, Six Women In a Cell takes its place alongside Henry David Thoreau’s, Dr. Martin Luther King’s, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s, and Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg’s prison testimonials. Read it and weep, read it and recognize your own story, read it and speak truth to power as this author has done with rage, compassion, poetry, and wisdom gathered over a lifetime. Then share it with someone you know.

-Joanne Rocky Delaplaine, author, The Local World

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing