One of the negatives about having a really juicy story to tell–especially a childhood story–is that the juicy bits usually involve other people behaving badly. And the other people are very frequently parents, grandparents, or others of close relationship. I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone reading this that when you start writing all the rotten stuff that happened to you as a kid and how messed up you are from it, you also start to think about repercussions from some of the people involved. It goes without saying that my own recollections of childhood experiences and the effect they had on me are likely different from how the other people involved remember things. By now, most of us are aware that everyone experiences any given moment differently, based on personality, background, world-view, and so on. So what seemed like extremely traumatic events to me could have seemed like no big deal to the adults involved at the time, and I’m sure some of them will be appalled to read my memoir and find themselves portrayed in less than flattering light. (I try to keep this in mind when I parent my own kids–I know I’ve traumatized them with actions or words I really thought were nothing. Can we even help it?)  I wonder what they will say, and how it will affect my relationships with them. A few of the people involved are now dead, so that’s not an issue, but others are alive and well and perhaps don’t want the world to know about some of their less than stellar choices.

Something else I’ve been dealing with as I’ve been writing about these experiences is that my dreams are getting really weird. I’ve dealt with all of my baggage in therapy, so it’s not upsetting to write about–at this point it’s almost like all that stuff happened to someone else. But my dreams are full of monsters these days. It’s so unexpected, and the part of me who once wanted to be a psychologist is fascinated.

I’d love to talk to other memoirists about how they dealt with airing family secrets and also about what effect writing about traumatic events had on their psyches. At this point, it’s just me and my laptop and my dining room table. It’s a little lonely.