Entombed By The Shadows — A Deep-Dive Into Haley Newlin’s Take Your Turn, Teddy
“Mourning can be incredibly freeing”
It is no secret that I struggle with mental health. There was a time, only a couple of years ago now that I attempted to conceal my anxious tics, my restless nerves, my ever-shaking hands, and the days that felt far more submerged than “low points.”
And I’m still learning.
In my first book, Not Another Sarah Halls, I faced only the first layer of my inner shadows. There was something more hidden underneath. Something far uglier. Something insidious.
It was anxiety and depression’s ghost — trauma.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it, Not Another Sarah Halls was an uplifting, feel-good story. Take Your Turn, Teddy is a far darker, cautionary tale, manifested in the crevices of a broken soul.
What writers often get wrong in their depiction of mental health is the violence or panic because of the illness. It’s not the illness that’s steering the wheel in those moments of destruction, but the repressed trauma. We exist within a culture that rewards those who can mask their internal struggles. We say things like, “She’s handling herself well,” or “She seems to be doing great.” And when the pain is right there, when someone says they need help, we cringe in discomfort until we can slide away. For many, this response creates a headspace that echoes poisonous taunts like, “You truly are alone,” and suppresses feelings of validation or the confidence to talk about it.
It’s that repression that feeds the shadow within. The shadow lives in all of us. And with each fracture to the soul is a new crack from which it can emerge.
It is that very formula of trauma, repression, and pain that shapes Teddy’s character arc.
I knew I wanted to create a story like this after I started therapy last spring. The more I talked, the more I uncovered depth that I had forgotten I buried, or did so unknowingly. There was resentment, anger, and a hell of a lot of confusion. So there it all was, venomous and foul, and free to roam.
What was I supposed to do with it?
I’ve always said that gore in horror stories is like truth without tact — everything is out on the table, but everyone is just uncomfortable.
So, like gore in a horror story, I needed to give my truth purpose. I weaved flashes of it here and there into Teddy’s character and let it fester with each sharp, unexpected turn of his childhood — beginning with the day he saw his own parents in a new light. Teddy started to see them as flawed beings, rather than the paradigm image we all create of our parents as kids. With that came a new lens and a wave of questions that led to less than appealing answers.
And like I did, Teddy became angry.
Teddy tries to bury his frustration with his parents and his feelings of helplessness. He succeeds some days, playing and talking it out with the shadow, playing with his baseball cards, and remembering his home in New Hampshire. Readers will see that that frustration extends beyond his rising anger, but in Teddy’s need for a sense of control. Until one day, he’s hit too hard, and the venom of the shadow seeps into the world.
With the shadow attached to Teddy’s heel and its whispering in his head, Teddy feeds into the darkest part of his psyche, a part in which he may have never known to exist otherwise.
It’s here that Teddy gets a false sense of control. He feels almighty and safe in the hands of the shadow.
That’s where I decided to infuse the gore and the truth; hopefully, giving both a sense of direction beyond jump-scares and bloodshed.
I hope that readers will find a part of themselves they need to free in Teddy’s character, only not as Teddy did. But to pour their trauma onto the table, in whatever oozy mess it takes, and allow themselves the time to meet it, understand it, and mourn it.
Mourning can be incredibly freeing. While we can never argue the shadow out of existence or bury it away, we have the power to decide how it lives within us. And no one taught me that more than Teddy Blackwood.
Take Your Turn, Teddy has shown me if we don’t mourn our trauma, we will become entombed by it.
— Yours (Horrifically),
Haley Newlin
Take Your Turn, Teddy will be available on Amazon on December 7th, 2020.
https://www.amazon.com/Haley-Newlin/e/B08P7WVFN2?ref_=dbs_p_pbk_r00_abau_000000
Connect with Haley Newlin on social media:
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Twitter — https://twitter.com/haleynewlin22
