MAID and Writing

The other night I finished watching ‘MAID’, the much talked-about Netflix series. A young mother lives in a trailer with her daughter (a toddler not yet three), and an emotionally abusive husband, an alcoholic. He’s not always mean and abusive. When he is not drinking, when he’s trying to win her back, he has his likeable and redeeming moments. Which is why it’s also difficult for her to break free.

She gets a job as a maid, cleaning other people’s homes, seeing the insides of their lives. She’s a writer. And this is the part I loved about the series: how, despite how difficult her life is, she writes. And writes. Scribbling away in her notebook, dreaming of going to college and becoming a writer.

She is a wonderful mother, playful and tender with her daughter, and also a caring daughter to her own mother – an unconventional hippie/artist, still struggling to claim her place in the world, still searching in all the wrong places.

‘Maid’ is at times haunting and poignant, yet also troubling and a grim reality-check that these situations exist;  that domestic violence shelters are still a necessity; that men still hold power over vulnerable women and children.  After each episode there’s a message that if you, or anyone you know, is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. 

During COVID, with people forced together into long periods of isolation at home, under difficult circumstances, domestic violence rose. For those of us who have never experienced it, it might be hard to comprehend, as might be poverty or hunger or desperation. But they are there, often in our midst, sometimes unseen.

The maid (Alex) finds solace in her writing, which ultimately saves her. In a group setting she says something that would resonate with writers, myself included: ‘Writing helps me understand how I feel.’

And this is exactly why I write, daily, in my journal – to understand what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, to make sense of it all.

It’s said that writing can be therapeutic, and I suppose that’s true. It’s more than that though. It’s creative; it’s a way of noticing, of forming thoughts, expressing them for no one but yourself. Recent studies also show that creativity helps with aging. If that’s true, then bring it on.

Writing and creativity may be an avenue for making sense of life, but to some, it may also be a lifeline.