I didn’t mean to send that poem a little while ago – I was retyping some poetry that has been live on my website for months – it was supposed to be a page that could continue to lurk in quiet obscurity in the Threads/Poetry section but I accidentally set it up as a post which was emailed automatically when I hit the publish button. I am rather appalled that I’ve now gone so public with that side of myself…. well, my sentiments and my wild voice probably won’t surprise anyone, but they really don’t belong as a post in amidst my research and writing about a medieval saint. (You can find the poem here.)

But. Maybe they do. Sometimes writing wants to take on a life of its own.

I’m in an interesting place with Birgitta. I’m trying to portray her as the real woman she was before she became a saint. The woman the hagiographies don’t necessarily talk about. The woman who laughed and cried and battled with herself like every other human on the planet. To be honest, I’ve learned to read carefully between the lines of text that was written with an agenda – that of convincing the 14th century papal powers to declare her a saint. Those are the writings we have available – she didn’t leave a lifetime of journals and memoirs the way people do now. Bridget Morris, one of Birgitta’s most famous 20th century biographers, said it well: Most hagiographical material lies between the extremes of spurious legend and richly ornamented character portrayals. The word itself comes from two greek words, hagios (meaning holy) and graphic (meaning writing). I find hagiographies difficult to read because they are so slanted, and I feel manipulated. And deprived. To have done what she did, Birgitta was obviously radical, a force to be reckoned with. A woman like that is going to be far more interesting than her hagiography would lead us to believe. It bears mentioning that she was canonised in 1391, a mere 18 years after her death. The case they built for her was obviously a strong one. Which means it was almost certainly heavily slanted.

For the past week I’ve been playing with some new and radical ideas of my own. I am writing historical fiction about a real person so I get to create details and stories to flesh out the known skeleton of her life. The best that I can do is portray her as a relatable woman. A relatable woman who absolutely lived her incredibly deep devotion, but was not beyond her own struggles, challenges, mistakes, and quirks. The more deeply I read between the lines of her biographies (and hagiographies), the more inspirational I find her to be. Because she was real.

My fresh insights aren’t sugar-coated. Do I have the courage to write about her in that way? It makes for a better story, for sure, but… yikes! Am I badmouthing a saint?? That’s not my intention. I just want you to meet the incredible woman I am coming to know. She had grit. She had juice. She had courage.

So, who do you want to hear about? A woman with more than a bit of wildfire in her? Or a sugar-coated ascetic? I think accidentally posting my poem earlier shows how I really feel and what I want to do, even if it scares me…

I can tell you this much – I’m awake now!