Writing is a love-hate relationship for author

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I often hear people talk about writing. Some say, "Oh, I would just love to be a writer but it takes me so long to write what I want to say. And then, it never comes out sounding how I want it to." My response is usually pretty standard: I try to tell people that writers are not born "good" writers, it takes considerable time and effort - and the only way to get better is to write, write, write!

For me, writing is a very political act. It's about reconstructing my family, community, and nations. Because my relationship to the English language - as an Indigenous woman - is loaded with memories of oppression, cruelty, and much pain, I approach English cautiously, guarded, and with suspicion.

And in a kind of perverse way, I at once both love English and hate it. As a writer, I love it because it is a tool that I can exert power over and use it to liberate that part of my being that remains imprisoned by oppression and pain. As an Indigenous woman, I hate it. I hate it because it is rooted in a white-Christian-patriarchal colonial foundation. That foundation was deliberately and strategically placed upon our own Indigenous ways in the hopes of crushing and destroying those ways.

Bearing those things in mind and, contrary to what most people think, writing is not easy. It's not an exercise that simply requires the dumping of brains on paper, indeed, one is more likely to find me at the computer pulling my hair out in an effort to find appropriate words!

Moreover, writing is a very emotional exercise for me. By the time I've completed what I set out to do, I'm usually exhausted. I remember once consulting an Elder about it.

I told him that writing is very painful and that pain (which I can only describe as spirit pain) never seems to go away. He told me that some of us inherit our ancestor's pain. But he also assured me that some of us who do are given the special gift of remembering. I have thus come to realize that even though that spirit pain is excruciatingly hard to carry at times, I have also been blessed with a very special gift.