The family that blogs together, well, um, fights…
by Features Editor Shelah Miner
Last Monday morning, I opened the door to the pediatrician’s office and sighed. My kid was scheduled for a well visit, but every other kid in the packed room suffered from the same unspecified viral illness. Bracing myself for two inevitabilities– a long wait and sick kids two days later, I treated myself to the best reading material available, a copy of Cookie magazine well past its expiration date. I thumbed through the pages for a while, then settled on Pilar Guzman’s editorial, in which she talked about telling her mother that she and her husband were expecting their first child. The gist of the story (I wish I’d snuck the magazine out in my purse so I could quote the editorial verbatim) is that although Guzman was in her thirties and both financially and emotionally stable, her mother wasn’t excited for her. She kept asking her if she was sure she was ready. And Guzman went on to say that she thought her mom was reacting based on her own lack of readiness when she became a mom, her own marital failures, and her own self-absorption. She said some good stuff too, and came to a positive conclusion about her mom as a grandma, but the criticism was there, in black and white.
The thing that totally caught me off guard? The picture of her mom, snuggling the now-preschool-age grandchild, smiling from the middle of the page. She must have read what her daughter had written, criticisms and all, and been okay with it. At least okay enough to have her picture published in a national magazine.
That so would not happen at my house.
The last time I wrote about my mother on a blog, I tried my best not to say anything that she’d take issue with. To cover my butt, I hacked into her Google Reader and marked the post “as read.” But a couple of days later she found the post, and I got an angry email in my inbox. I’ve posted about her several other times, garnering either comments on the blog or tearful phone calls. Every time I mention my mom in print, I end up groveling.
But I can’t help myself. For one thing, she’s such an interesting character (is it a bad thing when you start viewing the people in your life as characters?) and for another thing, she’s such an important person in my life that I inevitably end up talking about her when I talk about myself.
So how do you balance writing about the people in your life with not alienating them? I recently read Emily January Petersen’s essay “I Love You No Matter What” in the December 2008 issue of Sunstone. She talks about coming to terms with her dad’s homosexuality, and while it’s evident that she loves her dad, her essay doesn’t shy away from the way she suffered because of his identity and his choices. She found the balance, and did it without hiding behind a pseudonym. I don’t know yet how to talk about myself and my family, and be honest, and be fair.
How do you do it? Do you write with your image of someone sitting on your shoulder, keeping you in line? How do find the courage to write the truth as you see it? The pleaser in me would so much rather be nice than be honest. And how do you deal with people being hurt by what you’ve written?
In the end, I’m just afraid of no one showing up to Sunday dinner at my house. But I guess that would be all right, because I’d probably have sick kids.
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March 2nd, 2009 at 8:34 am
Shelah, I am a big fat chicken when it comes to creative nonfiction for the very reasons you just described. But I *love* good creative nonfiction that both lovingly and honestly depicts complicated family relationships. Scott Russell Sanders is a master at this. Our own Stephen Carter is really good at it too. (And I also enjoyed the Sunstone essay you noted above.)
Last fall, a former professor of mine was a contributor to an anthology called _Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers_. It’s an excellent book, and I found my former professor’s essay particularly able to strike that balance of honesty and love. I had my creative writing students read it and emailed her to ask about process, and one of the things she told me was that she worried over the essay for months and wasn’t able to write it until she changed the point of view to second person. So throughout the essay, she addresses her mother as “you,” imagining her mother in front of her, in conversation with her, and that allowed her to strike the tone she felt the essay needed. I think you’d really like the anthology.
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:58 am
I actually have the anthology in the “to-read” pile next to my bed. Maybe it should take precedence over the novels under which it always ends up buried. Thanks for the recommendation.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I’m glad to see this post. I think this is a big issue in Mormon writing. We have Spencer Kimball telling journal writers to portray the “best” and not dwell on the bad. (Ironically, his published depiction of his struggle when he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve is a wonderful example of telling the whole story, warts and all.) Anyhow, I think many members of the Church think that a life lived righteously is going to be, per force, a happy life. Highlighting faults, struggles, despairs, depressions, etc. sends the message that the particular person is less than valiant. (A gross generalization, I know, but I think this sentiment is accurate for many.) And it’s too bad – some of the most loving writing I’ve read has also been very honest when dealing with faults.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
My essay “The Weight of Priesthood” was the first time I incorporated my family into something I wrote. When it came out, I called the one person in my family (a great-uncle) who subscribes to Dialogue and begged him to not tell anyone in the family about the essay. The only way I could write well was if I could write honestly, and my honest self at that time would not have been met with approval by most of my family.
It’s pretty amazing but, so far as I can tell, no one in my family is aware of my writing except for those I have explicitly let in on my dirty little secret. I suppose they know I write, since you have to know how to write in order to be an editor (don’t you?), they just haven’t bothered to find any of it.
This is OK with me. I’d like to think that if any of my uninvited family read my work, they’d think I had been fair. My first rule in personal essay writing is that my view of the events I write about are just that, my view. I steer as far as I can from generalizations. I think this actually strengthens my writing because it frees me up to focus on the story instead of insisting on the validity of my point of view.
I wrote an essay once about my grandmother who was an important mentor in my life. After my sister read it she told me that she had had pretty much the opposite relationship with her, and was surprised to find out about my experience. I encouraged her to write her own story so I could understand her experience better.
That’s what I want writing to be: people understanding each other’s unique experiences and using those as launching pads to write about their own experiences.
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I think it’s a tough call: you can’t write essays with power unless you’re honest, and that can reflect badly on the people you write about. Here is how I have gotten around it so far:
1-I write about me, very narcissistic, and about all my own struggles and problems, so that family members are only supporting roles.
or, 2-I write about family members who don’t care that I’m writing about them (my deceased mother-in-law, my grandmother who had a stroke). And I write about them in a pretty positive way, so the still-living relatives aren’t bothered.
3-When I’m concerned about a possible post (one that referenced my sister’s baby, another one that dealt directly with my father-in-law’s illness) I ask the people involved to read it first, so that they know what I’m going to say, and we can talk about any concerns they have first.
What this has meant for my writing is that there are some places I don’t go. I know this decision can’t be the same for everyone, but for me, if I can’t discuss what I’ve written with the person involved before it gets published or goes up on the internet, I’m not going to publish it.
That doesn’t mean I won’t write about it, just that I won’t publish it yet.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
i don’t write other than for school, but i’d like to thank you heartily for supplying insight to my own mother’s reaction to my pregnancy (many, many years ago…). i was employed, insured, married, old enough, etc and my mom acted as if i had made the worst decison ever and could not possibly handle a child. thank you for explaining her likely motives all these (near 18) years later!
March 28th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
April 14th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I solve the problem by not writing candidly about people in my life who make life…interesting. I wrote a post once about a friend, and then upon reflection, I realized that I would have been hurt if she had written something similar about me. It wasn’t a crticism, per se, it just showed her in a less than flattering light. I don’t think it’s fair for me to publically describe somebody’s faults, even if they are true. And judging by my family’s reactions the few times I’ve blogged even positively about them, I’ve just decided that it’s easier to leave the less than stellar stuff alone. Perhaps not very honest, or revealing, but it sure makes for more peaceful family reunions.
Heather O.