Under construction
Wednesday update
"The me nobody knows/sees" was the message I first heard of Prince Harry's memoir-writing project. The announcement brought me to want to reach out to him with all the best support I could offer and I believed he would appreciate what I had to give with the mature wisdom I had gained by living my many decades ahead of him, troubled by similar dynamics in my much less than a monarchy but still power- controlled, gaslighting family.
But no more. These days I turn from articles about him -- and especially his wife who I turn from in disgust.
How has this come about, I wonder, grateful I have -- not yet anyway -- drawn this reaction to myself.
I understood not being Visible. I'd been hiding under the 1000 or so masks I'd been cloaking myself under since I was an eight year old and tragedy hit my family, my baby sister dying, my mother having a mental health breakdown from which she never returned so that, in effect I lost both my baby sister and my mother.
I kept the horrors a secret, the abuse, the crazy-making, the gaslighting of a small child by a huge extended family, many of them prominent and monied.
An inability to grieve adequately is what my psychology-trained mind fixed on as motives over the years, with compassion for these Eastern European immigrants, fleeing antisemitic persecution.
I sought to understand their limitations and their devotion to rising above it in America where the "streets were paved with gold,"
Abundant with compassion and forgiveness, I lived under the many layered veils of my fears and pain, the cost to me -- and -- my children and grandchildren.
Was it worth it? Or should I, like Prince Harry and Brittany Spears, have told my sad and awful tale?
During my Random House tenure, 1988 -- 1998, I would envision myself being interviewed about my three books on the Today Show or GMA.
"They'll pay attention now to what I have to say now about child abuse," I envisioned, applauding my expertise. My family is filled with experts, I consoled myself. They won't be able to ignore me now -- I thought.
In prigress
Tuesday night
So... I, all of a sudden, felt motivated to begin a sharing about my current adventure writing Camelot Dis
rupted. Maybe a kind of journal, posted here on my blog as I now head for the finish line of writing this book. It's been almost three!! long arduous years.
But then -- they were going to be rough. We knew that from the start. It was - October, 2020- the uncertain still early days of the pandemic and we couldn't do any of the other stuff we'd been doing like getting our Truth Or Dare Movement off the ground. We had hoped writing a book would help get us through.
Has it? We don't yet know. We aren't through writing the book or the pandemic.
Here goes -- First off, reading various comments on Ms Spears' memoir, The Woman In Me, brought me back to earlier reflections on Prince Harry's doing the same, writing a tell-the-whole world everything about how they hurt you. Harmed you as an innocent.
I felt great Compassion for Prince Harry. I knew what it's like for powerful people who -- perhaps even knowingly want to hurt you -- for their own personal agendas. The pure power of "speaking truth to power" -- the freedom! The liberation! There is almost nothing like it. The chains that bound you are broken.
But at what price? Over the long haul.
I had thought to write a memoir. But by nature it would need to include all that pain and harm and hurt -- and anger -- until Sue, my BFF, co-author, spirit sister, board member etc who had arranged the donation to New Horizons to purchase a ghostwriter on my behalf -' in the service of beginning the intended task of getting my collection of -- at least six UNPUBLISHED BOOKS, by now (due to my going blind for 8!!! years during my last editing round under my otiginal Random House contract -- for one book that ended up being three before we were done) almost jokingly suggested we write my new book as fiction instead of non--fiction as we had originally thought to do. Simply because it would be more fun.
This brings me back to my contemplation on these other tomes, given that I am actually writing a memoir, dressed up as fiction, fantasy fiction no less!
And it is more fun! And -- behind the scenes often an excruciating process. More on this later.
So -- "What are the pluses and minuses?" I ask myself. Fiction versus non-fiction? When it is one's own story we are writing? Yet no matter what -- in many ways it is our own story we are always telling, in one form or another. Isn't it?
My point here is to turn my musings on memoir vs fiction into a bit of a discussion with y'all. Doing it my way -- fiction -- I protect my abusers from being publicly chastised (they know who they are), get to tell my story to y'all as a a gift to you as teaching lessons I've learned in living without directly setting up my life with more clutter than it needs but will get back anyway for going so public.
More later