That Embarrassing Thing You Wrote

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We were keeping "explorer journals” in fourth grade, the first time I felt deeply ashamed of something I’d written.

Each student was assigned an explorer—someone who “discovered new land”—and we were meant to write entries based on that explorer’s route and what the history books told us they had done. I’d just written about the day my assigned explorer landed in a “new world,” and I was so proud of my story.

I had penned a dramatic scene in which he arrives ashore, famished yet victorious, and encounters a woman, a native of this strange new place, who is holding out her sick baby. She is panicked and anguished, and she pleads for the stranger (me) to help.

My story was raw and emotional and full of drama—I was sure of it—and I was thrilled when my teacher picked mine at random to read aloud for the class. I beamed as he cleared his throat and began. But as my teacher read my words, his expression changed. He read slower, eyebrows furrowed, as he shared my vivid description of tears streaming from this woman’s face and the other details I offered to evoke her helplessness. When he was done reading he said something vaguely positive in my direction and quickly moved on—and I felt my face go hot, my own tears threatening to fall.

That night I destroyed the entry. I couldn’t throw it out because it was part of a journal we’d each bound ourselves, using twine and crumpled brown bags as the covers to make them look like something from the past. So I scribbled through every line, digging my pen deep until the words were all gone. They had to be gone. No one could ever read this again.

I don’t think fourth grade me knew exactly why I was so ashamed of what I’d written. But now I like to think some of the truth we hadn’t been taught in school was sneaking through in all that felt wrong in hearing it read back to me.

We hadn’t been taught the terms “colonialism” or “genocide” or “white savior complex” in our unit on explorers. We learned very little of the Indigenous cultures and societies that were disrupted when these explorers landed on their shores, claiming ownership of inhabited places, spreading violence and disease. Something in what we had been taught gave me the impression that white men arrived to save Indigenous peoples. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and the natives welcomed him with open arms and handed him their sick children! Perhaps a part of me already knew that was all so very wrong.

Also… I’d recently watched Little Women. I think another part of me realized after the fact that I had lifted that scene straight from the movie. When Beth visits the impoverished family next door and is handed a screaming baby who is sick with scarlet fever—that moment stirred something in my chest and I wanted my writing to do that to others. So, I made it my own.

I can’t really say how insightful I was on the source of my shame at that time. I just remember the deep discomfort and the compulsion to destroy what I’d written. Looking back, I want to hug little fourth grade me. And I want to tell her you’ll keep writing things that will someday make you uncomfortable or embarrassed. Because you’ll keep learning so much about the world, and over and over again you’ll realize how little you once knew of yourself and everything else. And that’s a good thing.

I recently took a workshop on essay collections, and the teacher told us that in compiling essays from their past, some writers choose to make significant edits in the collected version and some it’s important to leave them exactly as is.

My face contorted when he said that. Oh my god. Some of the essays I put out into the world in my early writing career, back when confessional essays were commissioned partially on a factor of mortification, I never want to see again, let alone rebroadcast them for public consumption. No. Thank. You.

But isn’t that all a part of the story?

I think we all have a tendency to look back at things we’ve written and see only the flaws. We see the typos and the awkward phrasing and the thing we said that we’d never say today. And I think that experience is inevitable if you take your writing seriously. We are each leaving little pieces of ourselves in everything we write, but then who we are is always changing. When we look back at old work, we’re confronted with two versions of ourselves. Which can be alarming. But it can also be deeply profound and satisfying, if you’re willing to recognize the growth.

We’re becoming better writers as we write.

As writers, and as people, we want to be always improving, always expanding, always incorporating more knowledge of the world into how we talk about it. And we will make mistakes along the way.

Especially these days. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I am learning SO much lately. All of these colliding crises we’re facing this year are exposing a lot of uncomfortable truths about the world and our own role in all of it.

When I read things I’ve written in the past, I often see words I would desperately like to edit. And I see holes that are newly filled. I suspect there are still holes. There will always be holes in what I know and what I write. And to live and to write is to keep filling those holes and discovering new ones.

That is why stories are so important. We teach others through our work. And we also teach ourselves.

The next time you come upon something you’ve written that makes you uncomfortable—in the quality of writing or the content or both—I invite you to be kinder to your past work and your past self. See those moments of discomfort as evidence of improvement. You're a better writer now. You’re still getting better.

Give that younger writer a hug because they did their best. You are a work in progress. Always. Right now. You’re learning and getting better with every word you write. Which begs the question: If you remain open to growth, what more will you one day know? And what stories will you one day share?

We can’t possibly know—and isn’t that exciting?

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Stay inspired,

Britany