Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing
The Writing Your Resilience Podcast is for anyone who wants to use the writing process to flip the script on the stories they’ve been telling themselves, because when we tell better stories about ourselves, we live better lives.
Every Thursday, host Lisa Cooper Ellison, an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and trauma survivor diagnosed with complex PTSD, interviews writers of tough, true stories, people who've developed incredible grit, and professionals in the field of psychology and healing who've studied resilience.
Over the past 7 years Lisa has taught writers how to write their resilience. Each time her clients and students have confronted the stories that no longer serve them, they’ve felt a little safer, become a little braver, and revealed more of their true selves. Now, with this podcast, she is creating a space for you to do this work too.
Equal parts instruction, motivation, and helpful guide, Writing Your Resilience is an opportunity for you to join a community of writers and professionals doing the work that helps us cultivate our authenticity and creativity.
More about Lisa Cooper Ellison: https://lisacooperellison.com
Get Your Free Ditch Your Inner Critic masterclass—your shortcut to a confident, S.H.I.F.T.ed mindset: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing
Summer Rewind: Writing about Intergenerational Trauma with Margaret Lee
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About this episode: In this summer rewind episode, I revisit my conversation with Margaret Lee, author of the highly acclaimed memoir Starry Field. In it we explore the impacts of intergenerational trauma on our identity, the challenges of writing a researched memoir, staying motivated over the long haul, and the problem of getting an agent too soon. Since recording this episode, Starry Field has been named a best book of 2024 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Independent Review of Books and Largehearted Boy. It was also the winner of the Discovery Prize for Nonfiction by the Writers’ League of Texas.
Episode Highlights
- 4:00 Why Explore the Past?
- 7:00 The Impact of Intergenerational Trauma
- 9:00 The Role of Stories in Identity Formation
- 15:00 Maintaining Your Momentum Over the Long Haul
- 20:00 Getting an Agent Too Soon
- 22:00 Structuring a Researched Memoir
- 26:00 The Miracle of the Memoir Process
- 29:00 Turning Yourself into a Character
- 35:00 Understanding Situation versus Story
Resources for this Episode:
Margaret’s Bio: Margaret Juhae Lee is an Oakland-based writer and a former literary editor of The Nation magazine. She has been the recipient of a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korean Foundation. She is also a Tin House alum and has been awarded residencies at the Mesa Refuge, Anderson Center, and Mineral School. In 2020, she was named “Person of the Year” by the Sangcheol Cultural Welfare Foundation in Kongju, South Korea, for her work in honoring her grandfather, Patriot Lee Chul Ha. Her articles, reviews, and interviews have been published in The Nation, Newsday, Elle, ARTnews, The Advocate, The Rumpus and Writer's Digest.
Connect with Margaret:
- Website: www.margaretjuhaelee.com
- Instagram: @mjuhae
- Twitter: @margaretjuhae
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-juhae-lee-2b95905/
Building Better Memoir Scenes: https://janefriedman.com/building-better-memoir-scenes-with-lisa-cooper-ellison/
Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
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Produced by Espresso Podcast Production
