Sweetest human. I adore you and this is some of your best writing. Your bravery in memoir writing continues to guide my own writing. The way you weave (braid!) all of this together with unwavering honesty is stunning and I am consistently grateful for your ability to tell hard truths gracefully. The tightrope all memoirists walk in trying to honor their own truth while making space for the inherent subjectivity of truth is something you have mastered. Not only that, but you understand that women writers tend to experience (whether on our own or a societal pressure)an obligation to protect our loved ones even if that protection costs us part of ourselves. When women like yourself share painful truths they are often derided while men writers doing the same are celebrated. I will never forget how differently my ex-husband was and still is treated for writing about our children. Always the “best dad ever” while others debated whether I should be sharing so much about our children.
Thank you for the thoughtful nuance with which you write about Hal. Despite what anyone thinks, It IS your story to tell. An important one. And you owe no one your silence. Ever.
I am a fellow "essayist, memoirist and writer of first-person non-fiction." I also am nervous to write honestly about my marriage. I have written about my dead first love. I figured that was "safe" but it's not really.
Thank you as always for your clarity and your words. You're blazing a trail for the rest of us.
I read this yesterday morning and I just wanted to say I haven’t stopped thinking about it. So many complex issues a lot of us struggle with; most of all, the difference between truth and fact, and deciding when a story is yours to tell. This is going to stay with me.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for this. Your perspectives on writing the truth and complicated love stories lifted a veil I’ve been struggling to see through in my own writing, specifically regarding writing about past infidelity (mine) in a way that is not too shame-filled, or too salacious, too demure, too apologetic, too over-explanatory, too risky to mine and other people’s reputations/marriages/hearts, too too too etc etc etc. When I finished this piece of yours, I grabbed a notebook and wrote a complicated nugget of honesty: “It would not have been betrayal if I hadn’t loved him.” Reorienting myself to that truth makes it easier somehow to write, in the plainest way possible, my story. Mine. Through reading your words I realized just how afraid I’ve been of the people I love, and loved, and the ones who once loved me. But all of that is just trying to cling to a fragile ego that I, myself, am the best at tearing down.
As Cheryl Strayed says far along in “Wild”: “Perhaps by now I’d come far enough that I had the guts to be afraid.” xoxo
I resonate with this a lot because I’m writing a memoir about my complicated relationship with my verbally and emotionally abusive father - who is dead. But my sisters and mom are still very much here and we are close. I fear that if they ever read what I wrote, airing all our dirty laundry, they will feel betrayed. But like you, I choose myself. This is my story.
Sweetest human. I adore you and this is some of your best writing. Your bravery in memoir writing continues to guide my own writing. The way you weave (braid!) all of this together with unwavering honesty is stunning and I am consistently grateful for your ability to tell hard truths gracefully. The tightrope all memoirists walk in trying to honor their own truth while making space for the inherent subjectivity of truth is something you have mastered. Not only that, but you understand that women writers tend to experience (whether on our own or a societal pressure)an obligation to protect our loved ones even if that protection costs us part of ourselves. When women like yourself share painful truths they are often derided while men writers doing the same are celebrated. I will never forget how differently my ex-husband was and still is treated for writing about our children. Always the “best dad ever” while others debated whether I should be sharing so much about our children.
Thank you for the thoughtful nuance with which you write about Hal. Despite what anyone thinks, It IS your story to tell. An important one. And you owe no one your silence. Ever.
I am a fellow "essayist, memoirist and writer of first-person non-fiction." I also am nervous to write honestly about my marriage. I have written about my dead first love. I figured that was "safe" but it's not really.
Thank you as always for your clarity and your words. You're blazing a trail for the rest of us.
I read this yesterday morning and I just wanted to say I haven’t stopped thinking about it. So many complex issues a lot of us struggle with; most of all, the difference between truth and fact, and deciding when a story is yours to tell. This is going to stay with me.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for this. Your perspectives on writing the truth and complicated love stories lifted a veil I’ve been struggling to see through in my own writing, specifically regarding writing about past infidelity (mine) in a way that is not too shame-filled, or too salacious, too demure, too apologetic, too over-explanatory, too risky to mine and other people’s reputations/marriages/hearts, too too too etc etc etc. When I finished this piece of yours, I grabbed a notebook and wrote a complicated nugget of honesty: “It would not have been betrayal if I hadn’t loved him.” Reorienting myself to that truth makes it easier somehow to write, in the plainest way possible, my story. Mine. Through reading your words I realized just how afraid I’ve been of the people I love, and loved, and the ones who once loved me. But all of that is just trying to cling to a fragile ego that I, myself, am the best at tearing down.
As Cheryl Strayed says far along in “Wild”: “Perhaps by now I’d come far enough that I had the guts to be afraid.” xoxo
“Claimed love as the culprit, but the love in my heart was for me.” Thank you for your words 🔥🔥
I resonate with this a lot because I’m writing a memoir about my complicated relationship with my verbally and emotionally abusive father - who is dead. But my sisters and mom are still very much here and we are close. I fear that if they ever read what I wrote, airing all our dirty laundry, they will feel betrayed. But like you, I choose myself. This is my story.
This is a vitally important essay, and one I absolutely needed to read.