A big The Writing Barn congratulations to author Leila Levinson! Leila’s book Gated Grief: The Daughter of a GI Concentration Camp Liberator Discovers a Legacy of Trauma is now available as an ebook.
Leila is one of the hosts of the joint Women’s Writing/Yoga Workshop at The Writing Barn on Feb. 25th, so don’t miss it!
The Writing Barn asked Leila about her book and the workshop.
WB: Gated Grief launched as a paperback to wonderful reviews in January, 2011. How do you feel today as the book launches in ebook format?
Leila: This ebook launch is much more exciting than I anticipated, because it’s revealing just how powerful social media is! Friends have forwarded the information about the promotion to friends who have forwarded it to friends, and by yesterday, I was already hearing from all sorts of people all over the country — the world — about how glad they were to learn about the book. The ebook format allows an author independence and creativity in promoting their book. I feel much more enthusiastic about ebooks than I did until now.
WB: Could you share a bit about writing Gated Grief and your work with trauma victims?
Leila: People often ask me how long it took to write Gated Grief, and I don’t have an easy answer. Parts of the book I wrote 30 years ago! But I had no idea what would come of those pieces. I once took a memoir workshop with Vivian Gornick, and she emphasized that writing a memoir entails much more than “excavating.” The writer needs to know what their story is about, and I really had no idea. My childhood was like being stuck in a fog, the fog being emotional pain, depression. I couldn’t see my way through it, let alone what was causing it. And then, days after my father died, I found his WWII photographs, and they parted the fog; the photos led me to understand what my story was about.
So writing Gated Grief healed me. Writing heals. The very act of writing enables us to express — literally — to get out our emotions, to take the pain out of our minds and bodies. I feel I was very lucky to stumble upon writing as a teenager. It saved me. But writing the sort of investigation/memoir like Gated Grief also enables understanding, and what could be more healing? Understanding brings forgiveness.
As I met WWII veterans and their children, at first, I thought I was asking them a great favor by talking to me and opening up their pain. But I came to realize I was presenting them with a valuable opportunity to speak their stories. Veterans must be able to express their stories if they are to truly come back home. We civilians must do all we can to facilitate veterans and other people who have known trauma telling their stories. And we must be present to hear those stories.
One result of my writing Gated Grief is I now work with people who have suffered trauma, especially veterans and their families. I can share with them the tool of writing; and having used that tool to heal myself, I am not speaking from theory but from experience, and that means a great deal to them. One of my biggest challenges in addressing my trauma was to move from the role of victim to warrior, spiritual warrior, where I believed I had the power and means to redirect my life, create a vibrant future, and make the painful past a source of strength. All of us can learn skills and strategies to become independent and self-directing. I see writing, yoga, and meditation key components of anyone’s toolkit.
WB: In your upcoming Writing Barn workshop, on Feb. 25th, you will be teaching the writing portion and Michelle Gatto the yoga portion. Could you tell us how you two came to know one another and how the day at The Writing Barn will unfold?
Michelle and I met at an event where homeless veterans were able to receive essential supplies for the winter. She shared with me that she had been trained in teaching yoga for trauma by the premier program for trauma in the country, the Trauma Center in Boston. Its director, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, was one of the first people to consider how trauma resided and manifested in the body. So Michelle and I immediately began planning on collaborating to create programs for veterans in the Austin area, and I am now creating a nonprofit to make those programs possible.
We realized what we were doing had great value for anyone, as we all experience stress, anxiety, depression at some point. We all can be pulled towards negativity. Many people say they wish they could write or draw or play music. Anyone can do any of those things. What keeps us from expressing our creativity is the negative voices in our heads, the old tapes we absorbed from our early environments.
The yoga/writing workshop we will be doing at the beautiful Writing Barn will share very concrete approaches and strategies to accessing one’s creativity: how what we do with our body can nourish and support our spirits and minds. We will show people how to open the door to their artist-self.
We at The Writing Barn can’t wait for the workshop. Find out more about Leila and Michelle’s Women’s Writing/Yoga Workshop.
And here’s more about Leila’s Gated Grief, available on Amazon for $1.99, from the 2011 President’s Award, Military Writers Society of America:
If you want to understand your father’s, mother’s, or spouse’s war experience, if someone in your family has suffered combat trauma, then you need to read this book. It will bring understanding and open the door to healing your family.
Leila, who sought to heal multigenerational traumas, takes on a journey of healing that began when she discovered haunting photographs her father had taken when he helped to liberate a Nazi concentration camp at the end of World War II. She learned from meeting other veteran liberators that what he witnessed deeply traumatized him and his fellow liberators. And they brought their trauma home with them, where it rippled through their families.
Check out the touching trailer for the book: