With each breath we take, our
life changes. September 11, 2001 was a testament to this fact.
As poets and writers, so many of us are trying to find the words
to give shape to what we felt last week as a nation, and what
we feel now. Whenever we've called 911, it is usually a critical
life or death emergency situation. Since 9-11-2001, it is as
though we, as Americans, have collectively sent up a 911 to God
to help us in this time of peril. 
Now I'm sending out a 911 call for writers to help
us use language as a way of healing. We, as Americans, are caught
up in an imbroglio-a confusing situation, which has us lashing
out and doing hate crimes against other Americans, particularly
Moslems. Why? Because we're hurt. We're afraid. We're angry.
I was scheduled to do a conference on "Creating
The life You love in Life part II" in San Diego. Motivational
speakers such as Depak Chopra and Marianne Williamson were scheduled
to be there as keynote speakers and guest. However, the conference
was canceled. I was relieved. After all, planning to have a meaningful
second career seems frivolous in light of all the lost lives
of loved ones and the suffering so many families are going through.
Like many of the survivors, I'm feeling guilty,
even paralyzed. I haven't written a word in a week. How dare
I have the audacity to sit around writing when people are suffering?
That was my rationale. Besides, like the rest of the nation,
I was speechless. This crime was as unspeakable as slavery.
So slowly, I've been trying to examine this space
and give words to this "twilight zone" space we are
now occupying. Over the past week, so many other writers have
written me, between their tears, to say that they are feeling
that their books are useless now. How dare they have the temerity
to even write about their concerns, such as "keeping your
virginity as teenagers," "fighting AIDs and Herpes,"
or writing their memoirs about how they beat the odds?
I felt the same way as I grapple with my recurrent
theme of healing old family wounds. After all, we now have this
great big gaping wound sitting at the heart of our nation--our
government and our economy. I even questioned the value of my
new novel, "The Hidden Sword," dealing with the violence
at the core of our most basic unit-the human family.
But the answer came to me. You must write it. The
same rampages we're seeing in the family-family members going
on rages and killing up each other-are what we are now seeing
on a global level.
Because you know what? As writers, we must write
to help, and perhaps even save others. It was because of books,
Amazon.com had the power and the ability to gather 6 million
dollars in a week due to its relief fund.
Books and the words of poets/writers have the power
to heal. As a counselor, I found that people often talk about
their pains because they must. They must give words to what ails
them in order to help heal themselves.
As writers, poets and publishers, we are still
searching for the words to describe how our souls feel raped,
violated and abused. We are moving through the same 5 stages
of grief as any one who has suffered a death of a loved one.
Seeing our country devastated on our own soil is
similar to what rape victims have disclosed to me in counseling.
Being raped feels akin to being a stranger in one's own skin.
Right now, Americans feel violated. Boundary-less. Like there
is no difference between you and the unsafe world out there.
Right now, school children are terrified. Adults
are terrified. I am terrified. We are all feeling violated, raped,
and afraid of another attack happening again. The false sense
of security and the
illusion of safety that we once harbored have been ripped from
us with what happened to all the victims of September 11, 2001.
Children orphaned, husbands and wives left as widowers/widows,
and worse of all, parents facing the horror that doesn't even
have a word in our culture-that state of being--bereft of their
own child/children.
What's worse, we really can't go through a stage
of denial-the media and our nightmares about people trapped in
twin towers won't let us. So we've become paralyzed in anger.
We are now living in a world as fraught with peril
and dangers as any other war torn country. Like many Americans
my concerns are these. Are the cells still operative? Will this
happen again when the airline standards relax? If the country
goes to war, is this the start of the Final War-Armageddon as
stated in Revelations 16:16? Now we are all understanding what
it is to live in fear as many third world countries have done
for years. Because we are afraid, we are angry. But in our anger,
we could ignite World World III-the final war.
Therefore, as we move through the five stages of
grief, shock, anger, denial, and finally acceptance, we must
ask to be guided to find a spiritual solution to this crisis.
As writers, it is our job to help others facilitate this process
by finding the words to embrace what we are all feeling, in order
for us to be move on and not annihilate the human race.
Thompson won $1,000 in Ebony's
first Writing Contest for her short story, "Valley of the
Shadow." In 1995, she received a PEN Award for her novel,
"The Ebony Tree," and an IBWA award for her short story,
"The Rainbow." She has self-published 2 novels, The
Ebony Tree and No Pockets in a Shroud and 2 ebooks, her short
story collection, A Place Called Home (now in print) and How
To Promote, Market and Sell Your Book Via eBook Publishing. In
May 2002, she edited and published her Saturday Morning Literary
Workshop's long awaited anthology, Saturday Morning. She is the
creator of On The Same Page, a column for new, and self-published
writers. Maxine E. Thompson is a columnist on www.bwip.org, 