Kelly S. Thompson on writing about hard things

By Fiona Campbell

Award-winning author Kelly S. Thompson doesn’t shy away from writing about hard things. Her first memoir, “Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes from the Forces” (McClelland & Stewart, 2019) was about harassment and sexism in the Canadian military. Her second, “Still I Can Not Save You” (McClelland & Stewart, May 2022), is about grief, addiction and the loss of her sister to cancer.

Chatting with Thompson from her current home in North Bay is like connecting with a friend you haven’t seen in a while but the conversation picks up effortlessly. There is an unbridled joyfulness when talking about craft, and a confidence from writing her way through the fire. And yet she’s open (both in speaking and in her writing) about her mental health struggles, notably her anxiety and depression. Given this, I’m curious about her motivation for memoir and tackling hard things:

“When I’m having a really hard time writing, I will ask myself, 'Who needs this book?’ I’m writing this book about my sister because it’s the book I needed when she died. And it didn’t exist. And, I think this is true for a lot of writers, it’s how we move through the world and try to understand it no matter what” she says. I first connected with Thompson for the Prince Edward County Arts Council’s 3rd Annual Wind and Water Writing Contest. She lived in Trenton between 2014 and 2019, and launched the contest while volunteering as a response to a dearth of programming for local writers. (She’s still a judge.) While Thompson is a retired military officer, her husband still serves, which means frequent moves. Volunteering, she says, “puts me in touch with community and community that is like minded with something you love.”

These moments of connection, especially those birthed in a place of honest and vulnerable writing, are foundational to Thompson. In an essay called “Keeping it Together when it’s Falling Apart”, she says: “Baring my tender belly in writing often results in readers nodding and saying, ‘Uh, I get that.’ I write memoir so others feel less alone. I write memoir so that I feel less alone too.”

There is also an altruistic motivation for writing: change comes from speaking out.

“Rarely does a week pass, even now, when I don’t hear from a woman (especially), or a man, who says, ‘I want to help support women in the military and your book has helped me do that,” says Thompson. “If they [women currently serving] don’t have the power to speak up, I now do without any fear of repercussions. And so I do it for them. And now, bases all over Canada are inviting me to speak. We’re recognizing there is a problem and now we’re inviting people to talk about it - and that’s why I still love the military. We’re starting to see people want change and it has to start somewhere.”

Memoirists, especially women, have long been criticized for over-sharing or making the personal public. Katherine Angel notes in a recent essay for Aeon, that “Women who write about their pain suffer a double shaming: once for getting injured, twice for their act of self-exposure.” I ask Thompson about the reception to her book that not only pulls back the curtain on the typically shrouded culture of the military but exposes the reality of sexual misconduct - especially as she comes from a military family.

“I would say for every bad email there are 10 beautiful ones. I’ve had men write to me saying they hope I get raped silent. I wish it was only once I received that. But for the women who write me and say, ‘I’m getting help now because you talk about getting help’ makes it 100% worth it.”

Thompson wrote her first book almost a decade after leaving the military; she wrote her second about her sister dying while her sister was dying. (She had her first draft two months after Meghan’s death.) I asked if she needed to write her story before her sister’s: “I don’t know if I need to write my own personal story first because I think with memoir your whole goal is to collect experiences of your life around a theme and write about those themes. The themes that relate to my sister are very different.”

She adds: “The response has been so much nicer than I thought it would, which is a horrific statement, but it has been nicer. And what a beautiful thing that is. It keeps you going even when you’re talking about really hard things.”

She says, however, that she needed the experience (writing and emotional) of writing about something further in the past to prepare her for the “the intense challenge of writing about something that is still happening that is a kazillion times more painful.” But capturing the hard moments before her brain could block or soften the memories (a natural response to trauma) offered not only a place for legacy but understanding.

“When you look at books on grief and examine loss, we often don’t get access to that actual moment the person dies. I think it’s because it’s so horrific to sit with that. And yet what can come from that? To really sit and settle with the actual moment my sister died, to really look at what grief was and how we cope with that - I didn’t want to turn away from that. The benefits for me from writing about things that were actually happening in that moment.. there was this palpability to it… I think you feel that experience in your throat when you’re reading it,” says Thompson.

“When my sister was dying, and she was in hospice, she liked the sound of me typing. It was very calming. And then she would ask, ‘Are you writing the book about us?’ and I’d say, ‘Yes.’ She’d say, ‘Do you think someday someone will read this and it will help someone?’ and I said, ‘If it doesn’t, what are we doing here?’”

Kelly S. Thompson has an honours BA in Professional Writing from York University, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and is a PhD. candidate in Literary and Critical Studies at the University of Gloucestershire. Her work has appeared in Macleans, Chatelaine, andMaisonneuve, as well as in various anthologies. She writes and teaches from North Bay, Ont.