A Source Of Support

The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with author, speaker, and writing instructor Alle C. Hall

Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please subscribe to Beyond.

Alle C. Hall is an author, speaker, and writing instructor who focus is the joy and creativity resulting from trauma recovery. She identifies as a person in recovery for 35 years from bulimia, compulsive overeating, alcoholism, and sex & love addiction. Her debut novel, As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back, has been honored fourteen times; most recently, Book Viral’s Crimson Quill Award as well as “Best Women’s Trauma Narrative Fiction.” Her many short publications include short stories and essays in: Dale Peck’s Evergreen Review, Tupelo Quarterly, New World Writing, Litro, and Creative Nonfiction.

Alle lived in Japan for three years, writing for City Life News and backpacking through Hong Kong, The Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. She lives in Seattle with her husband and their two shining sons; with some subset of whom she has traveled to Bali, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Taiwan, and Shanghai.

1. What are you reading now?

I just finished Yellowface. Most of it was fantastic, really well-observed, and vicious in a much-needed way. Though the ending was too Single White Female meets Hercule Poirot for my tastes, the novel would make a great movie.

2. What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?

Series were everything to me. Aiken’s Wolves of Willoughby Chase books! I loved how minor characters in one book took leading roles in another. I’d never seen that, prior to reading Wolves. Then I went very American: the Little House and then Little Women books.

I simply adored one of Alcott’s books that wasn’t part of the Little Women series. It was called A Round Dozen—12 short stories. I’d never encountered such a thing as a short story! It took me a while to understand that each “chapter” didn’t carry forward the narrative. I don’t remember more than two of them, but I do remember sucking up the descriptions of the food. Finally, we have everything ever written by Judy Blume.

Then there are two single-titles I cannot track down. One is The Egypt Game, about a group of kids in—I think, Sacramento? Somewhere seemingly dull to me. Except! They create ancient Egypt in their backyard and then solve a child-kidnapping case, kind of by accident. Wild.

Also, Mr. Mysterious and Company, about a pioneer-era family who is not looking to settle down. They are a traveling variety show. The dad’s the magician and MC. After reading it, I would pretend to put on a show, singing all the songs I thought would be appropriate to the time-period. “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage,” and “Bicycle Built for Two.” I was decades off.

No, I never hid anything from my parents. Boundaries weren’t a big thing in my house. (I’m an incest survivor, so … ) I remember reading Jaqueline Susan’s Once is Not Enough—I suppose I was in middle school; all my mom said was, “Your eyes are really big.”

3. What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?

As an adult, there is only one book I’ve ever re-read, if you don’t count research. That is Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem. She can do something with sentences that I don’t understand how to achieve; she’s just better than everyone.

Re-visiting the previous question: as a child, I re-read the books I mention above tens of times, if not hundreds. There was something so comforting about reading one of those books as I worked my way through a bowl of unshelled sunflower seeds. Crunch, split, eat, read. I believe the ritual gave me a comfort and a stability that wasn’t present in my home. And triggered my imagination. Having that imaginative side saved me from succumbing to the abuse that characterized my childhood, I am certain.

4. What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?

It’s a Chinese style short jacket, You can see from the photo that they are characterized by a Mandarin collar that closes at the front, and buttons right down the middle.

I found this jacket at a thrift store in Park City, Utah—the only store in town I could afford! (Swimming pools and movie stars, baby.) I wear it with velvet pants the darker plum color of the embroidered embellishment.

The reason this jacket makes me feel so myself is twofold: primarily, these are the style of jackets we wear to Tai practice (sometimes) and in competitions (always). The practice jackets are much less fancy, of course. The competition uniforms are flowy silk.

The second reason is the female quality the jacket embraces. I’m a tough chick with the mouth of a drunken sailor. That said, I enjoy a strong female aspect. I love lipstick and eyeliner, and shoes and bracelets and purses and full-on vaginal orgasms. And pinkly embroidered jackets, it would appear.

5. What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?

I read a quote by Ernest Gaines: “Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”

6. Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?

I dream about family Delphinidae: sometimes killer whales, but more often dolphins. Dolphins are definitely my power animal. I wish I liked dolphins in jewelry and visual art more than I do. I’d be jangling with them. That said, there are very few things IRL such as seeing a dolphin leap. Their swimming looks like God doing Japanese calligraphy.

In Mexico, once, I did that terribly touristy thing where you swim with dolphins. One of them was pregnant. I hugged and hugged her.

7. What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?

Can I say, “My entire adult life?” The abuse in my childhood set me up to be eating disordered and married to an addict. Looking at my emotionally healthy kids, my loving marriage, I am knocked out. Though I did work hard for what came about, there is no doubt in my mind that God is in the picture.

8. Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?

I do both, occasionally whapping into an open cabinet with an over-enthusiastic if mistimed pirouette.

My body expresses itself most thoroughly through my Tai chi practice. Tons and tons of research shows that mind/body practices such as Tai chi and yoga actively free your body of the consequences of trauma. When I started my practice, I did so for a year and a half, twice a day for about an hour each session, without any intent toward healing. Then, the need to heal became impossible to ignore. In the first five or so years of recovery, my twice-daily practice was one of the few things I had in my life to create stability.

9. What are your hopes for yourself?

I want every trans person to be safe. I hope I find ways to reach out to the trans people in my life, especially the young adults, to give what I can. At least to be a source of support, if I cannot do anything.

10. What’s a kindness that changed your life?

Leaving after five weeks at an in-patient treatment center, for PTSD, I had nowhere to go. I didn’t consider myself homeless, though, in effect, I was. I wasn’t broke—I had about $600 on me. The director of the treatment center called an MSW he knew. Donna J. Bevan Lee. Donna was one of the two women who pioneered the co-dependency model for healing from childhood trauma.

Donna found me a place to live, encouraged me to stop lying on job applications so that I could land work I was actually able to do well, and went on to guide me through what became a 30-year therapeutic relationship. Working with Donna, I was able to re-integrate and thrive.

11. What’s a guiding force in your life?

My love for my children. They are the first phenomena in my life that I ever put above my own wants and needs. Even my relationship with my husband; he’s another adult, you know? I can’t save him or make him happy. But my children; when they were young—their lives and emotional health were my job to ensure, to nurture. My own depression, dissatisfaction with my career, exhaustion; really, none of that mattered because they needed me. As young adults, they need me less; but when they need me, it is my joyous job to be there for them.

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If you enjoyed Alle’s questionnaire, you might also like this one with

Dr Sharon Blackie

:

A Privilege And A Joy

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