Beauty in Discomfort: In Defense of the Trauma Narrative

A few years ago, I had a miscarriage. It happened early on, so early that, had we not been trying, I might not even have known we were expecting. Physically, the loss was uncomplicated. There was barely any pain, no need for drugs or intervention. I had a healthy two-year-old.

In the grand scheme of things, I was lucky. Countless women go through far worse every single day. But to me, the grand scheme of things meant nothing. I was devastated.

In the weeks that followed, the need to pour out my thoughts onto paper was almost compulsive. The last time I could remember that sort of a yearning was over a decade before, in the aftermath of a close friend’s death. It was only then that I started to recognize what was happening; the consistent pattern of behavior that has been a part of who I am since I was a child.

In times of grief or pain or confusion, I write. It’s what I do to make sense of things. As Joan Didion once said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” And I’m not the only one. I’ve worked with countless men, women, and young people within the prison system who find a sense of cohesion through writing. Some are perpetrators of pain. Most have suffered unimaginable trauma themselves.

Almost all of them use the creative writing workshops I lead as an opportunity to revisit their own traumatic experiences. Often by the end of these sessions, the room feels different; the pain now existing (at least temporarily) on the page rather than in their heads. There is a tangible sense of lightness. Of unburdening.

The word “trauma” derives from the Greek word for “wound,” but the definition that I find rings truest comes from American psychiatrist, Judith Lewis Herman: “Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.” The egalitarianism of that statement sits well with me; the idea that trauma depends on your personal circumstances, and so our perception of it cannot be universal. If a difficult experience changes a person in a lasting way, it’s trauma.

Writing about trauma is nothing new. Religious scholars have suggested that human trauma gave birth to the Bible, theorizing that it is the spiritual text’s ability to speak to suffering which has retained its relevance for thousands of years.

It’s impossible to ignore though, that in recent years, trauma has become something of a buzz term. In 2022, it was named the Word of the Decade by Vox Magazine, cited as “part of the zeitgeist.” Literary critic Parul Sehgal too has written against the idea of “the trauma plot” in literature. At a time when the World Health Organization estimates over 250 million people globally are affected by PTSD, perhaps it is unsurprising that, as Sehgal puts it, “the notion of trauma has proved all-engulfing.”

It’s true that more people are writing, thinking, and speaking about trauma: Western society has evolved from a culture of silence, of pull-up-your-bootstraps stiff-upper-lips, to one of unprecedented openness, where pain is commodified to the very the widest audience possible; where snappy clips of influencers sobbing into their smartphones are uploaded to TikTok in exchange for likes. Our approach to trauma has about-turned so abruptly that it’s no wonder the heads of anyone born pre-Gen Z are spinning.

But voicing trauma shouldn’t be discounted. Because trauma goes hand in hand with truth.

After my miscarriage, writing became a way for me to explore parts of my past which I hadn’t revisited in years. It led me to write my debut novel, Wild Ground, a story that some might say includes “trauma narratives”— stories of sexual assault, classism and prejudice set in a small Yorkshire market town at the turn of the millennium.

At times, the writing felt agonizingly close to home. At others, I had to confront the gaps in my understanding of experiences outside my own. Although the themes of the book are hard hitting, they’re not sensationalist. Anyone who grew up in the north of England in the nineties will attest to that.

I became a teenager before the advent of social media, which allowed me and my peers a type of freedom that no longer exists. We spent a lot of our time loitering around the fringes of the town we grew up in, getting up to things which don’t bear repeating, and making mistakes that no one kept a record of.

But it also meant our world stayed small, with far too many transgressions from the adults around us shrugged off as “just the way things were.” Outsiders were looked upon with suspicion, anyone “different” seen as “not right.”

From the age of fourteen, I worked in a pub where racism, homophobia, and misogyny were frequently passed off as banter. A quick grope from a drunken punter wasn’t to be made a fuss over; lewd comments expected to be received with a good-natured smile. Alcoholism and drug use in the town was rife, and violence erupted as a form of entertainment most Friday and Saturday nights.

There were many times when I found myself in situations that were out my depth. Specific experiences affected me deeply, changing me in a lasting way.

Wild Ground is a work of fiction, but it sprung from a need to tell a story that felt authentic to the place, time and people it portrays. If writing about difficult subjects can help me make sense of them, perhaps reading about them might do the same for someone else. We all have the right to decide what fills us up and what depletes us.

But trauma within literature shouldn’t be dismissed as a cheap narrative ploy, and readers shouldn’t avoid realities which make them feel uncomfortable. The human experience is filled with both light and shade. Pretending otherwise can only be harmful.

A piece I wrote in the wake of my miscarriage ended up being selected as the winner in a writing competition centered around grief. I often wonder about the judge who chose it. Had they too been through something similar? Had they suffered the same grief under different circumstances?

It doesn’t matter, really. What matters is the universality of shared pain, the connectivity that reading about it can provide. Literature needs to reflect every aspect of life; the good the bad and the ugly. What one person might reject as trauma porn; another person will recognize as truth.

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Wild Ground by Emily Usher is available via Random House.