The Power of Personal Narratives: A Visit From Melissa Febos

The power of personal narratives is no small matter, as they can serve a wide variety of purposes. On one hand, they can encourage and inspire others to think differently or work towards their own personal goals. On the other hand, they could act as an outlet to explore and discuss pressing societal issues. However, what makes personal narratives stand out from poetry or fiction is their ability to create a level of emotional intimacy between the author and their audience. 

Our personal experiences shape the narratives we share. Often, these experiences involve profound feelings. Yet, writing with emotional integrity and intimacy isn’t always easy, especially if the moment someone wants to write about is intimate or about a particularly dark period of their life. How should someone write about such moments? How might a personal narrative serve as a way to bring light to oppressive or simply difficult histories?

Luckily, this last February, Ohio Wesleyan was honored to welcome, best-selling, queer author, Melissa Febos to host a writing workshop in collaboration with associate English professor, Amy Butcher, to answer a few of these questions and discuss her own struggles with addiction, sex work, and academia. Born and raised in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Febos works as an essayist and professor of English at The University of Iowa. Many of her works, which cover such topics as she explores the moments in her life which have shaped her: her father’s absence in her childhood, her adventure to discover her female identity, her work as a chambermaid, and her continuing journey of recovering from a heroin addiction. 

From this workshop, I learned that there is no wrong or right thing to include in your narrative. However, what you include should help make your point clear to the reader. At the beginning of the workshop, Febos instructed all her attendees to pull out a notebook and pen, and in three sentences write about our lives. Initially, I was incredulous. How could someone possibly scale down the full experience of life down to three sentences? However, what I wrote, though not my best work, was able to capture my life as an aspiring author: “From my earliest moments, I always knew I wanted to be a writer. Yet, circumstances and my naivety held me back. I am determined to change that.”

What these three sentences lacked, however, was an acknowledgment of the circumstances that held me back and how I sought to overcome them. Though still integral to my nineteen years of life, those three sentences lacked emotional depth and were rather cliché. Thus, I knew that I would need to dig deeper into my history to make my point. 

Following this exercise, Melissa Febos asked us to write about our lives again except, this time, to reduce our experiences down to one sentence. I wrote: “She saw herself as a desert flower, transplanted; yet despite the monsoons which sought to drown her, she was determined to flourish.”

I was much more pleased with this single, highly symbolic, and metaphorical sentence. I was able to show my audience who I was, and what my life was like: I am a woman, born and raised in the southwestern United States, who abruptly moved to the midwest. Though this change has been difficult and will continue to have its challenges, I’m determined to learn and grow from them.

If you’re someone who’s struggling to write with emotional intimacy, I recommend that you try these writing prompts by Melissa Febos. Perhaps your story can influence, inspire, and reveal as well!