Why Write Memoir?
3:15 pm in Uncategorized by Linda Gray Sexton
Why Write Memoir?
Well, I have to say that, through my website, I am getting many, many emails from readers now that Half in Love has officially been published.
After an excerpt of the book appeared last Saturday in Salon an online magazine, there were 38 posts in their Comments Section in the first day and a half—virtually all of them from people who felt the book reached them, touched them, spoke for them—and for their families, as well.
All these positive responses make me think about my family members, some of whom are not so pleased to once again see their private faces in public. Why do you do it? they ask. Why do you have to write something so personal about us all? And, even worse, put it in print for everyone to see?
It’s a difficult question. How do you protect the ones you love and still write about a topic you believe needs to be made public and to be discussed?
In the United States today, someone kills him or herself every seventeen minutes, a million commit suicide worldwide annually, and suicide outranks homicide two to one. You could say that if you are depressed, your own hand is more dangerous than a gun.
So, it is even more important to talk about the way in which it can be handed down through the generations. After Nicholas Hughes, the son of the suicidal poet Sylvia Plath, killed himself in the spring of 2010, I wrote a piece about the legacy of suicide for the New York Times Op Ed Page.
My own mother tried to commit suicide many times, and I had to learn to live with that. Half In Love is about that process. I wish, fervently, that I could have saved my mother, but I could not. My entire family wishes they could have saved Anne, but they could not.
And still, they ask why I need to discuss this publicly. In response, I can only say that memoir has its risks.
You take the chance that your family may be angry with you after you tell your story, that they won’t understand why you think it is important to talk about these issues. Maybe, over time, they forgive you. Or maybe, over time, they don’t.
Nevertheless, when my sister read Half in Love she told me that it had illuminated for her my mother’s suicide as well as my own attempts. She still didn’t like that I had written about it for everyone—even her friends—to see, but at last she did understand why.
I could not agree with you more!
I’m sorry that in the midst of your new book you must also defend it. I can’t imagine it to have been easy to write it in the first place, but I understand your desire to share the story. I have often said that if I ever want to fulfill my dream of sharing our family’s story of cancer I will not be able to do so until those ahead of me have passed on. There is MUCH to the story that some family members would not be happy about seeing in print. However, the desire is always in the back of my mind…but not knowing where to begin and fear of failing is winning out right now. So I applaud your courage and willingness to write this newest book. I’m happy your sister has a better understanding of why you wrote it. Congratulations to you Linda!
Peace and blessings to your day!
Jeanine
I’m glad to hear that your sister now understands the why behind the suicide attempts and depression after reading your book. I hope that it brings you closer . One of the most heart-wrenching parts of the memoir for me was the distance the illness and attempts put between you and your sister. That can only have been devastating to you, especially given that you were in need of a solid support system.
Serena–
You are so right. It was totally devastating and it has taken me a long time to forgive her for it, probably as long as it has taken her to forgive me for the suicide attempts. Or, maybe, she has not totally forgiven me–who knows how long that can take?
I think our new “closeness” comes from the fact that she was able to read the book, think about all that had happened before, and allow all the insights she achieved in reading the book to settle within herself.
So much of our time together, as human beings, is spent in directly and instantly– we respond immediately to another person or loved one, whether it be in speech or in email. It is rare that we take time to think, ponder, or consider before we say what we think. And yet that process is invaluable.
This is one of the things that makes me love reading so much. We are able to really take our time to think about all we are learning and to assimilate it into our lives in some way.
I believe that reading “Half in Love” helped my sister to put our relationship into some kind of new perspective, just as writing “Half in Love” helped me to do the same. Even if she didn’t agree with all I said, she at least “understood” it better. And, once again, that is one of the things that makes taking the risk of writing memoir so worthwhile.
Linda
I am a friend of Howard King and am looking forward to reading your book. I was so touched by the reviews..and I am particularly moved by your blog above. I feel as strongly as you do about being open about this subject matter. I have a 21 year old daughter who attempted suicide twice in high school. She is now a college senior and doing really well. We have been very open about our journey and the impact that her illness has had on her, my husband and I, and her 3 siblings. We have to stop treating mental illness as a ‘dirty little secret’. We speak about it because we can..my daughter is alive. Linda, you and Caroline are survivors. Yours are the voices that must be heard. The ‘notable statistics that I read in the review are incredibly revealing. We need the ‘Linda Sexton’s’ of the world to share their personal stories so that others will realize they are not alone and that with treatment, there is hope for a life beyond the pain. Sometimes I struggle with sharing too much of our families personal struggles but I know with all my heart..that if even one life is saved because of our openness, then we have made a difference. God Bless you.
Sue–
I am in agreement with you with respect to, “if even one life is saved because of our openness, then we have made a difference.” This has been my motto for some time now in many aspects of life. Thankfully, there are people like “us” who are willing to share a large portion of ourselves for this very reason. Your daughter is lucky to have such an open-minded mother! Keep on caring and standing up for what is right.
Dear Sue,
My heart goes out to you at your story of your daughter, who tried so young to end her life. How wonderful to hear that she is doing well, even though I do not know her. I think I can say with all sincerity that it makes me happy to know she is flourishing because we are linked by being, as you say, “survivors”. We survived a terrible illness and have lived to tell the tale. I think I have written now in the posts and on the blog about how critical it is that we begin to shed the layers of secrecy surrounding suicide and mental illness the way a snake sheds its skin–but we need to do it now, and continually, for it is a process of educating the public. I can’t tell you how much mail I get about the “statistics”. People are truly floored to hear that over a million people worldwide commit suicide annually. Or that suicide is twice the rate as homicide. (This REALLY brings it home to people.) We can’t keep it “a dirty little secret” any more, because it isn’t little–it’s big! And growing!
The daughter of a friend just wrote me to tell me of a “suspicious” death at her college, one that was being hushed up by the authorities, yet the students were suspecting it was probably suicide. Why is it that people feel they have to cover up another person’s desperation? Are we just too guilty about not having “been there” so that the person did not have to grow so desperate? Why is it that we feel a need to banish suicide into a corner and hope it will just blow away on its own? This is what scares me most about it all–society’s tendency, and desire, to look the other way, just when we all need someone to look directly at us.
Linda
I’m *so* glad to hear that your sister read the memoir. Like your sister, the way I perceive depression and suicide has completely changed thanks to your book.
Wow..I just finished your book….it was/is amazing and YES, such a story which needed to be shared. My Mom died August 11, 2010 of colon cancer at the age of 68. But she was mentally ill for as long as I can remember and I’m 41. She made numerous suicide attempts when I was younger and living at home. I, like you, had been depressed when I was younger but then I gave birth to my second son and went into a very deep depression. You are right…it is a fight for me each day but I have good doctors. I have more to write but wanted to encourage to keep speaking out and I will do the same.
I found your memoir to be very personal and has helped me to understand a little more how entrenching depression/mental illness can be. Thank you for writing so candidly. I hope your words can reach many on educating that mental illness is not something you can “just get over”. It is an chronic illness with a very real and misunderstood face attached.
Hi Holly,
My mother saying “tell it true, Linda” made me able to stand up to family members who didn’t remember things the exact same way I did. It made me able to say, “this is my story” and you are free to write yours, if you’d like. Of course, none of them ever do…
You are right that the reason we do this is so that we can help others avoid the painful things that happened to us. That’s certainly what I intended when I wrote “Half in Love.” And from my readers’ responses, I think I succeeded!
Linda
Karen–I am so glad the book brought understanding and empathy to you about mental illness and depression. These conditions are so often misunderstood. When I give readings from the book, one of the pieces I read most frequently is the part where I describe being in bed all day long and not able to pull myself together enough to move. After the reading, those who have not read the book often come up to me and say I have helped them to sympathize with those they have known who seemed so incapacitated in such a mysterious way. Thanks for letting me know that this aspect of the book is working for readers who just haven’t had much understanding of this topic.
Yours,
Linda
I’m currently working on a memoir and ran into the problem you have become familiar with… the ‘why would you do this to us’ question. I tell them, it may be your figure in the book, but it’s not about you – it’s about helping others to understand, so maybe they won’t go through the things we did.
I enjoy your honest writing in your books and blog.
Gina,
Writing a memoir can be very useful even when it is just for your and your family. It helps everyone to understand what has gone on in your life, and often times, in theirs. Especially when you are writing about a family legacy of suicide, which definitely affects everyone.
I agree that it can be a roadmap for your sons. I know my memoir was a roadmap of sorts for mine. (I love the word roadmap in this context!)
After a reading I did a few weeks ago, my younger son came up and put his arms around me, telling me how proud he was of me.
He was able to say that after all he had gone through. I know the book brought him closer to an understanding of everything we all endured during the time of my sickness.
My sons were absolutely one of the main reasons I got well again, that coupled with a commitment to take my meds and to continue with my therapy. All of these things were big motivators.
Definitely pursue the idea of writing your own story, and see where it takes you!
Linda
I too am considering a memoir – even if it is just for myself and my three sons. It will be a chronicle of my truth as I now understand it. In trying to combat the family legacy of suicide attempts an honest account of our history will be a roadmap for my sons. They are the reason that I continue on with therapy, medications and searching for a future
Hi Lisa,
I think the term confessional poet is a bit limiting. My mother hated the term. She wanted to be thought of as a poet, plain and simple. Also, it implies that what you are doing with your art is confessing, rather than creating. So I avoid using it at all costs. I agree that we should come up with a different title. What would you suggest?
You are so right when you say that you don’t have to be dependent on being in pain to do your best work. So many people ask me whether my mother, or I, had to be depressed in order to write, and I always answer that I never write anything at all–let alone great art–when I am depressed, or worse, suicidal. I am incapacitated when I am depressed and never manage even the basic necessities of life.
Hope you like the book and that it enlightens all these topics for you!
Best,
Linda
Dear Ms. Gray Sexton,
thank you so much for writing this book. I admit, I haven’t gotten it yet, but it addresses my main interests and dearest causes and I know I will get hold of it very soon. I am a poet, the sort that’s “confessional,” I suppose. What do you think of that title? Does it still apply to poets and writers today? I think we ought to come up with a different title. Confessionalism has a stigma, doesn’t it? What’s your opinion?
I am proud to be the type of writer and poet that I am. I am saddened by the pain I have had to go through to get my work, but I’m learning that my best work is not dependent on my being in a depressed or suicidal state. I hope us “confessional” poets can dispel the myth that one has to be mentally ill in order to create great art.
I look forward to this message board and, of course, your book!
Best wishes,
Lisa
Hey Leora,
I don’t think of myself as particularly courageous in writing about all this. To me what seems courageous is the willingness of all the people who write into the message board and make themselves vulnerable when they are not writers, but just people trying to connect.
Thanks for all your good words about the book. It makes it worthwhile to have gone through the pain of writing it to know that it touched other people.
So thank you for YOUR bravery.
Linda
Linda, I’ve just finished your remarkable memoir, “Half in Life” and found it so powerful, so truthful. I know that inside of depression and I have rarely read such an truthful account. I’m sure it must have been difficult to face these truths but your courage is beyond admirable. And, I just wanted to thank you for such bravery
Leora Skolkin-Smith
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to explain a situation: we have been working out a few kinks in our systems here and for some reason none of your comments were appearing. I couldn’t see how many wonderful friends out there were actually talking to me! Thanks for being patient–I’ll get right to answering you all.
Linda
Hi all,
I once had a VERY personal blog for four six years. It chronicled my lowest lows and my highest highs. Various people told me I shared too much, but I, like some of you, thought that if I helped only one person it was all worth it.
Well, my husband and I are in a bitter custody battle for my stepkids and she found that blog and used it to make me look “crazy.” Luckily, the courts didn’t take it as evidence or think me crazy or anything. Still, I closed the blog and now only people who are invited can read it. I wish it could be left open, but I can’t open it until this court case is done. I hate knowing my word and feelings are in captive somewhere.
I applaud you brave memoir-ists. I hope to join your ranks one day.
Lisa,
That has to be one of the sickest, most rotten things I’ve ever heard–to take the words from your blog and twist them for use in a custody battle. People can be really vile, I guess, and you never know what they’ll do. Well, I hope you will continue to let us know how you feel here in this “safe” place until you are ready to be up and writing from your own blog again.
–Linda
Linda, your words make me cry. Why? Because I’ve been crying off and on all day. I had a psychotic break today. I’ve been up and down for a few days now. Scared because this time last year, I had my first manic high. But my highs are healthy people’s “normal.”
Anyway, I’ve been a mess. We have the kids this week and I’ve been hiding from them. I can’t tell them that I’m very sad and have an illness, just like someone would have the flu… something like that because the kids would tell the psycho ex-wife and she would use it against us in the custody fight. And it’s pretty sure that we’re going to lose them. But that’s a totally different story.
What I mean to say is that I am crying because a woman I admire, who has been through so much… similar to me and not similar to me…. wishes me well and cares.
isn’t it complex when you start crying hysterically when someone, anyone, says they wish you GOOD THINGS. And then you think, oh I don’t deserve it.. or some such silly thing and you cry because the sheer beauty of what they say hits you so hard you cry endlessly.
I’m in trouble. Don’t worry, I will get help. I’m trying to find a therapist that better fits me. Meds are being adjusted.
If you pray, pray for me? And if you don’t, please think good thoughts.
Thank you. thank you so much.
Lisa, I am praying. And Jeanine, if you are looking at the blog, please pray too, for Lisa. (Jeanine has a direct line to the man upstairs.) So Lisa, we are all sending good thoughts, or praying.
Get the new therapist, adjust the meds, but even more, HANG IN THERE.
Yours,
Linda
Lisa, I am praying for you! Hang in there and I hope you’ll keep using this space as a place to be heard…a place to heal.
Thank you, Linda, Courtney. i will always hang on, that’s one thing I know about me. It’s almost worse sometimes, in a way, knowing you would never kill yourself… because you then know, so acutely, that you will have to live through this torture the rest of your life.
I’m going to bed now. Thank you for praying for me. I feel guilty for taking up your blog, Linda, your book space with my own pain.
Bless you both for your kindness.
Lisa
Linda, There is so much shame that many of us harbor. I must think that although painful, part of a process of healing and recovery it to come out of the shadows. While it may create a new kind of discomfort there is little that is more debilitating than living behind secrets and walls. I still live behind many of these walls. WHen I approached my family about the possibility of writing a book, they largely shot down the theory stating that I could not do that to my family. Interestingly, I am really the only one implicated in my story. There reaction to my statement spoke to their shame of me not really of themselves. It felt like another jab to the psyche. I retreated. Linda, your courage in writing your book ,while I hope has been healing for you ,serves to help so many- so many of us holding on day by day, hour by hour.
Hi Christine,
How sad it is that the world tells us to harbor shame. As I have said here so many times, and yet it cannot be said enough, we must come out of the shadows. I have just finished a new blog post that I will be putting up in a little while that I think will speak to a lot of our mutual feelings. Let me know what you think of it.
Best,
Linda
Linda,
Thank you for writing your memoir and sharing such a sensitive issue with the world. If you will permit me, when I read the review in the NY TImes Book Review, I was stunned, mainly at the similarities in events in our lives. I too have two sons, one 31 now and the other took his life in 1999. I started the legacy, or rather developed those genes probably from my mother AND my father. My first attempt in 1985 was almost a replica of yours, minus the martini. The second involved the ocean and many Pamelor.
I have been blogging about my son’s death and his life on a wordpress site called Joshua for a while now. I would love to finish a book and help others, as you are, no doubt, with this marvelous book. Writing has not come easily to me and I have not even looked at the site for six months! I am a photographer and would much prefer a book with more images than words- it remains to be seen.
Thank you so much again for writing the story. I was mesmerized reading it, so glad that you are stable now (as I am with lithium!) and hope that this will last.
Dear Lisa,
Your comment really touched me because you write so openly about the death of your son. I am always worrying about my sons, and I just don’t have the answers. I pray that they have not taken on “the legacy” but I can’t tell yet. I am certain you continue to worry about your remaining son, even though he is 31, even if he looks and acts just fine. You can never tell when things will head south, or lightning strike once more. When I consider the suicide that ran through the generations in my family, and then the mental illness and a bit of suicide that ran through the family of my son’s father, I fear for them even more. It’s not just what I handed to them directly, but also what was handed to them through previous generations. We can only keep guard over them, be the “watchman,” as my mother called it and then hope to get them the help they need when they need it. If they will even accept that help–as they are now grown men.
I hope you are able to return to writing about your son’s life and death, as writing is so healing. Since opening this blog, I have discovered an immense amount of support flowing in from people who read the book and have handed it on to others as a way of spreading the word that depression is not a closed, secret subject. Perhaps someday you will have the enough emotional distance on this subject to make the pain manageable enough to write about it. If not, keep your family close–that is the most important thing to do.
Yours,
Linda
Lisa, I am so sorry to hear about your son. I admire your commitment to blogging in your son’s memory.
It’s a very scary feeling to know that your children have mental illness running through their genetic code on both sides.
There have been numerous suicides on my mother’s side of the family and at least one that I know of on my father’s side.
The descriptors have always been so “unspoken”…a hush, hush and throw it under the rug sort of thing.
My maternal grandmother suffered from postpartum depressions that ultimately, I feel, led to more serious forms of the illness. She popped nerve pills constantly. My aunt self medicates with alcohol and her daughter has been clinically diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has yet to find the right mix of meds to treat her illness. And then there is me…it has been suggested that I suffer from bipolar type 2, possibly cyclothymic disorder.
My husband’s grandmother was diagnosed with manic depressive (now referred to as bipolar disorder type 1) after having her third child. She was institutionalized in a state mental hospital for the better part of three years until they could get her meds adjusted just right. Lithium was a miracle drug for her…I’ve never met a more loving, amazing woman in my life. I would have never guessed that at one point in her life she had suffered from such extreme mood shifts. Hearing her accounts of ECT treatments in her time was heart wrenching. One of her daughters and her son have both been diagnosed (the daughter with type 2, the son type 1).
The list of suspected family members goes on…
What does this set my children up for? All I can do is be aware and pray that they won’t have to suffer like so many in our families have. This is in large part the fuel to my lifelong commitment and passion of helping those who suffer from mental illness.
Lisa, I too am so sorry to hear about your son. I am reminded that there is no word in our culture or language that define the loss of a child. We define losses of parents and spouses but not children. I think this exemplifies that words fall short in such times. Be well,
Christine
I had a web designer who did all the work for me. I didn’t download anything, as I would be terrible at it. I had to pay, but what don’t you pay for in this world?
I have absolutely no idea! Sorry….
Sit down with your computer, or a pen and paper, and just start writing. Write for as long as you can and then look at it again the next day. Try to make it clear and concise. Put in whatever you want, whatever you feel, however you want to. As long as the pen keeps moving or the computer keys are clicking you are making progress. just keep it up. That’s what every writer does. And read, a lot, whenever you can. More than blogs, I mean.
I don’t have any “article sources”. I was just writing off the top of my head about a personal excperience. Is this what you intended to ask?
You could certainly see your expertise in the work you write. The world hopes for even more passionate writers like you who are not afraid to say how they believe. Always follow your heart.
I enjoy your blog and still have bookmarked it. I’m going to check back to study in more details on my trip to India
Thank you.
yes. It is wordpress and buddy press.