Nadia grew up traveling the world and living in various countries before settling in Los Angeles. There she briefly worked at a vitamin factory and then began a long career in the film industry. In recovery since 1998 from drugs, alcohol and an abusive but privileged upbringing, she and her husband have now settled into the Nashville area, where she writes by the lake when she can escape their six kids and dog. Her stories “Fire” and “Scars” were both finalists in Glimmer Train’s writing contests. Her anthology SCARS was published in 2014 by Punk Hostage Press, followed in 2020 with her anthology DRIVING IN THE RAIN. Her story “Peace Accord” was featured in the Spring 2018 edition of Bluestem Magazine.
FWM: You have used grains of your once gritty life to infuse stories with cathartic realism. Tell us about your background
I am from Canada. My father worked for an oil company so we lived in Dallas, Egypt, Denver and Norway, and on then on my own in the Bahamas, London, Los Angeles and now Nashville. My father was an alcoholic and my mother was a codependent woman with depression. I was incredibly close with my mom. My father was emotionally and verbally abusive, and at one point he broke my mom’s nose and collarbone. I started drinking fairly heavily when I was 12 years old, and at 16 I discovered cocaine, which became my drug of choice. I drank alcoholically but had a good job in the film industry in LA. When I was 27 or so I discovered crack cocaine, and when my mother died of cancer in Tijuana a year later, I descended into a life of depression and crack. I lost my job in the film biz, and I started shoplifting (boosting) for a living. Eventually I lost everything I owned, and was squatting in an abandoned apartment building in East Hollywood that had no gas or electricity and had broken windows. I kept getting arrested for petty theft, which eventually turns into a felony. So I have 2 felonies. I spent most of 1997-1998 in jail. I weighed 95 lbs, had been raped and beaten, had guns and knives pulled on me, etc etc. I finally agreed to go to rehab in July of 1998. I spent 6 months in a residential rehab for women. It saved my life. Then 2 weeks after graduating, I got pregnant by an old boyfriend. He left as soon as I did the pregnancy test, and so I became a single mother. I got a job as a file clerk at a film company while I was in rehab, and while I was on maternity leave I was promoted to Vice President! I raised my daughter alone till I was reunited with an former boyfriend, and we eventually married. We have 5 kids! We have been married 10 years, and I am 23 years sober now.
FWM: You have been in recovery since 1998, from drugs, alcohol, and abusive upbringing. When did you decide to tell your story?
I have been writing short stories and poetry for years, just for myself. I was too afraid to show them to anyone. Then finally I started submitting to literary magazines and got some positive feedback. Eventually I got the courage to send something (“Fire”) to Iris Berry, who I knew vaguely and who had a publishing company, Punk Hostage Press. Six months later she called me and told me she wanted to publish a collection of my work, which became Scars! More on that later…but then I did a show with my friend Lois Berg, called Battered But Not Broken. We did it for 2 nights at a local Nashville theater to raise money for Thistle Farms, a home for battered women. People came up to me after the show and told me how much hearing my story helped them. I decided to continue telling it and to continue helping women and showing them there is a way out of abuse of all kinds
FWM: Tell us about “Scars.”
I had sent the story “Fire” to Iris Berry of Punk Hostage Press. She called, saying she wanted to publish my work. I spent some time collecting previously written pieces and writing some new ones. In November 2014 it was published. It has two fiction pieces, “Fire” and “Jesus in Her Head”, the rest are all true. Through short stories and poetry it details my life of abuse and addiction and eventually recovery. The story “Scars” itself is a litany of my physical scars and the emotional scars behind them. It’s a very emotional and vulnerable book for me, but also very cathartic. It was strange and scary knowing that my neighbors were reading all my secrets!
FWM: What is the synthesis for your new book, “Driving in the Rain?”
After Scars I took a bit of a break from writing, though now and then I came up with something. Finally my publisher Iris was like, “Nadia, it’s time!!” So I got down to writing and to collecting pieces I’d written over the past 5 years. Again, they are all memoir. No fiction in this book. And the title poem came to be because I’d sent her some photos as cover ideas…one of them was attached in error, and I told her to ignore it. She said, “No! That’s the one!! And the book will be called Driving in the Rain!” I said, “But wait, I don’t have any pieces called that!” So…I wrote it that night!
FWM: The book shows scenes in Egypt with servants and vacations in Cyprus to the most sordid of LA streets. Tell us more.
Well, as I mentioned I grew up all over the world because my father worked for an oil company. When we lived in Egypt, I was 7-12. My formative years, really. We would go to Cyprus every year for a month’s holiday. It was amazing. Then we lived in Norway. From 12-16. Eventually I moved to LA, when I was 21. I had an amazing job in the film industry, would go to Cannes every year for the film festival, to Italy and Tokyo. Then when I discovered crack I lost it all, becoming homeless and a felon. I weighed 95lbs, and I was 5’8″! Not cute. My old friends thought I was dead.
FWM: Can you share a few moving passages?
There’s a poem called Fara, Fara, Fair as Light. It’s about my old sponsee, Fara K. She was sober but suffering from mental health issues, and she shot herself in the head. It was devastating to me…I’d tried so hard to help her. This is the poem:
Fara, Fara, Fair as Light by Nadia Bruce-Rawlings (c) 2019
I prefer to think of her like she was
the day I gave her my boots that fit her so much better
Her laugh and lovely hair
Fara, Fara, fair as light
Her sparkling eyes and the little crooked tooth
We sat outside and watched the boats on the lake
A little sweaty and her smoke hung in the humidity
She told me of her life but it was no longer filled with fight
Then, she was Fara, Fara, fair as light
I prefer not to think of her before she went
I prefer not to see it in my mind
Her sobriety chips lined up, all earned with hard work and love
She’d told me of holding a gun in her mouth
but that was before, before she made it right.
Fara, Fara, fair as light.
I prefer not to visualize that day,
I prefer not to think her thoughts,
I prefer not to feel the metal weight of the gun in her hand.
I prefer to remember the sunshine in her hair and eyes,
not the shock and blood and pain and gone.
Fara, Fara, fair as light.
—end—
There is another piece called PTSD about being attacked by someone you love:
PTSD by Nadia Bruce-Rawlings (c) 2018
Crash of glass, and suddenly you’re inside, and I yell to the kids to run downstairs, and you’re grabbing my phone, and you throw it out the window, and you’re screaming such filth, and there’s spit flying out your mouth and you clutch my throat and how…how. You’d said you loved me. You smell like vodka and cigarettes, and your hands are cold around my neck, and it hurts, and you know about my metal plate, but you keep crushing anyway, and I can’t breathe, and I’m out of my body and watching us struggle, and then finally your eyes touch mine for just a minute, and you…stop. I’m crashing against the counter, hitting my other surgery scar on the granite, and I run and scream and run and scream and scream and scream, and you are yelling more bile and laughing and telling me you’ll destroy me, but how…how. You’d said you loved me?
FWM: What is the hardest lesson you have learned?
I think the hardest thing I’ve learned is to let go…to understand it’s not personal. I’ve lost sponsees to suicide, friends, and sponsees to drugs and alcohol. It hurts something terrible, but I know I can’t save everyone.
FWM: How have you evolved as a writer and as a person?
My writing…that’s a tough question. I’m not really sure, to be honest. I’ve started writing more poetry and gotten better at it. I have a hard time with dialog. I always have. I’ve always written little glimpses at humanity and insanity. How I’ve evolved as a person? Being sober and being in a 12 Step Program have really changed me. My life was so chaotic and unmanageable before. I’m now pretty serene, my world is peaceful and calm. The lessons I’ve learned are beyond valuable. I love my life now, it’s filled with joy and wonder. Before I wanted to die most of the time. Hence the drugs and alcohol…I wanted to not feel anything at all because my emotions were so painful.
FWM: You also co-wrote a song with fellow author, Lois Berg “Battered But Not Broken.” Tell us about joining forces.
The song was great…mostly written by Lois though I helped out some with the lyrics of course. As I mentioned we did a fundraiser for abused women. Lois had written a great book which I edited called Well-Behaved Cowgirls. She is a songwriter, and each chapter of her book tells the story of one of her songs, which are autobiographical. So for the show, she sang Battered But Not Broken, then I read a bit, then she sang and read, etc. Her YouTube is http://youtube.com/loisberg
The song lyrics are:
Battered but Not Broken
By Lois berg and Nadia bruce (c) 2017
Black eye, broken nose
Longing for the beauty of a rose
Popped from jail without no clothes,
How she’ll get fed, no one knows
Chorus
These are all familiar currents
That are washing me down stream
These are all familiar currents
Just a bad dream, just a bad dream
Meat on bones
A concrete bed
And the voices in her head
Some power from inside
Just won’t let her lay down and die
Chorus
These are all familiar currents
That are washing me down stream
These are all familiar currents
Just a bad dream, just a bad dream
Battered but not broken inside
Another angel heard her cry
Together they learned how to fly
Chorus
These are all familiar currents
That are washing me down stream
These are all familiar currents
So that we can achieve our dream
FWM: What is next for you in 2021?
I wish I knew! I’ve just finished healing from a major spine surgery (I have 14 levels of my spine fused!). So now that is over, it’s time to continue to help women heal, to write some fiction and poetry, to travel!
https://www.nadiabrucerawlings.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Scars-Nadia-Bruce-Rawlings/dp/1940213002
https://www.amazon.com/Driving-Rain-Nadia-Bruce-Rawlings/dp/1940213096
