Caregiver Stories Archives

Mother-Daughter Caregiving | In Honor of Mothers’ Day

May 12, 2017 by Marylee MacDonald

Please enjoy this guest post by two writers who’ve addressed the issue of mother-daughter caregiving through fiction and memoir: Diana Y. Paul, Ph.D. and Virginia A. Simpson, Ph.D

Parents are expected to take care of their children, but they usually do not anticipate a future where their children will take care of them. Nor are adult children prepared to take care of their parents. Due to the record longevity of our parents, more and more of us are expected to participate in caregiving. So, anticipate a longer-term, intimate relationship between adult child and aging parent.

Things Unsaid Diana Y Paul caregiving for parents — Diana Y. Paul’s novel, THINGS UNSAID, plunges readers into the landscape of a daughter coping with buried grievances and parental decline.

We all need to prepare for this eventuality. After years of managing for themselves, parents usually and naturally do not welcome being told what to do. Most of us are—or will face—this role-reversal, and we can’t do it alone.

Fictional Caregiving In Things Unsaid

The challenges of being stuck in the middle and taking care of two families—the so-called “sandwich generation”—are immense and often debilitating. Partly because the family dynamics of one’s youth influences caregiving, caring for one’s parents is much more difficult than caring for one’s kids. Financial and emotional stressors also arise, intensifying the inherent conflict and difficulty of caring both for oneself and for one’s parents.

The theme in our two authorial debuts Things Unsaid (a novel) and The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life (a memoir) touches upon the all-too-typical dysfunctional family, its dynamics, and what happens in the end: the last chance to make things right. Both books are portraits of the way unresolved issues from childhood and ongoing conflicts complicate the mother-daughter relationship when the daughter becomes the caretaker. Even today, because of tradition, daughters are the ones primarily relegated to the caregiving responsibilities for their parents.

For those with less than loving parent-child relationships, the caregiver’s tasks which require relatively little direct contact with a parent also involve minimal emotional exchange, friction or disappointment.

Assistance with shopping, housework, medication management, and living arrangements are described in Things Unsaid, but the attachment bond between daughter and mother is fragile. Old memories continue, for the most part, beneath the surface. The main character, Jules Foster, is responsible yet emotionally safe. “That’s what a good daughter is supposed to do–love her mother even if her mother doesn’t love her back.” (Things Unsaid)

A Caregiving Memoir: Daughters Caring for Mothers

THE SPACE BETWEEN caregiving for mother memoir — Written by bereavement care specialist Virginia A. Simpson, THE SPACE BETWEEN is a memoir about the prickly spaces between a daughter’s obligations to herself and to her aging mother.

In The Space Between the author is the caregiver: “…as a daughter, I would never abandon my mother, no matter what.” And the book’s narrator is diligent in her practical eldercare for a mother who is often unaware of the attention and emotional costs on her daughter. In both books, we see forms of unconscious, psychological damage inflicted by mothers on their underappreciated daughters.

Daughters may be less motivated to invest emotional energy in a relationship that has been unsupportive or painful and whose end may be unremarkable or even a relief. Or, daughters may see this as their last opportunity to heal the relationship.

However, when the power-dynamics shift, long forgotten grievances can play out. In Things Unsaid, we see secrets, lies, and betrayal, most notably, on the part of the aging mother. In The Space Between, we see a nonfictional equivalent—including an almost identical scene when a ring promised to one child is bestowed on another.

Sibling Rivalry

In Things Unsaid, we see how three adult siblings disagree about what to do with their parents. At the same time, the parents are manipulative, pitting one sibling against the others. In The Space Between we see the favoritism towards the half-brother and how the caregiver suffers.

So what is the well-meaning daughter to do? The daughter’s need for her mother’s love and attention isn’t diminished by the mother’s abandonment or dismissal. In Things Unsaid we see little emotional connection overall, and in The Space Between we see a strong, but not always healthy, emotional connection.

Yet in both stories there is a fierce sense of obligation. In Things Unsaid, even at the end, this is never enough nor is it satisfying, while in The Space Between, the daughter finds the reconciliation and love she’d been hoping for her whole life.

The Possibility of Healing

In both books we see the possibility of healing at the end of the mother’s life. Although not always redemptive or forgiving, there is a moving forward towards the future, made possible by the daughter’s letting go of the past. The grown child and her mother have severed the unhealthy dynamic of an earlier time.

While neither of us is advocating any a particular philosophy of caregiving, we feel family education programs that examine interpersonal dynamics before caregiving becomes a necessity could hold the key. These programs offer families an opportunity to discuss caregiving expectations and address discrepancies across generations before they evolve into conflict and regret.

Research that explores connections between emotional and behavioral family patterns will be vital for understanding the difficulties of eldercare.

The stories and themes addressed in The Space Between and Things Unsaid are in all of us. By showing the challenges and victories with brutal honesty, both of our books shine an important light on how we can meet the challenges of role reversal with our sanity and spirit intact.

Authors’ bios:

Diana Y. Paul has a degree in both psychology and philosophy from Northwestern University and a Ph.D in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her debut novel, Things Unsaid, won the Beverly Hills Book Award 2016 for New Adult Fiction, the Readers Favorite 2016 Silver Award for Best Fiction, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and listed as #2 on Brit.co’s “14 Books about Families Crazier than Yours”. A former Stanford professor, she is the author of three books on Buddhism. She lives in Carmel, CA with her husband and calico cat, Mao. Diana is currently working on a second novel, A Perfect Match, and when not writing, creates mixed media art. Visit her author website at: http://www.dianaypaul.com

Virginia A. Simpson, Ph.D., FT is a Bereavement Care Specialist and Executive Counseling Director for hundreds of funeral homes throughout the United States and Canada. She is the Founder of The Mourning Star Center for grieving children and their families, which she ran from 1995 to 2005, and author of the award-winning memoir The Space Between (She Writes Press, April 2016) about her journey caring for her ailing mother. She holds a Fellowship in Thanatology from the Association for Death Education & Counseling (ADEC) and has been honored for her work by the cities of Indian Wells, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, and Rancho Mirages. Visit her author website at: www.virginiaasimpson.com

Photographs And Letters: Mining the Past

December 17, 2015 by Marylee MacDonald

The impulse to write a memoir, family genealogy, or work of fiction often begins when we open a family album. There’s the guilt factor, a sense that we owe our forebears a shot at having their stories told before those stories are swallowed by the well of history. When it comes right down to it, who’s going to want all those photographs of our grandparents and great-grandparents? What will our children, raised in the Instagram age, make of the stiff postures and posed portraits, the sepia tones and formal attire? And yet we know these images are important. We know in our hearts that the lives buried in these studio portraits or box-camera black-and-whites contain not just faces the we recognize as our own, but also the stories and wisdom of the loved ones who made us who we are.

Photo Source

With the help of two of my sons, I spent a day during the Thanksgiving vacation going through the bags and bags of unsorted photographs. A reader also contacted me and said she was going through photos and old letters, attempting to do some writing about them, but that the writing was proving harder than she’d imagined. Here are my thoughts on ways those old photographs can be mined for their riches.

Who Is Your Audience?

The first question to ask is this: For whom am I writing? If your answer is “to leave a legacy for my family,” your goal may be easier. Family members are intrinsically interested in stories about the family tree. Well, maybe the young ones aren’t, but they will be nearer the end of life. At that point many folks are curious about the roots and branches of the family tree, and that’s why sites like Ancestry.com have so many sleuths mining their files. Genealogy, old photos, and old letters capture the world as we knew it in our childhoods, and if we wish it to, this fragile documentation can serve as a springboard for our imaginations. Our family history can blossom into a memoir, local history, or work of fiction.

Apart from immediate family, your goal might be to reach a wider audience, to write a book worthy of occupying a library shelf. If you can refine your thoughts about audience further, you can focus your writing so that it will have an impact on readers outside your immediate circle. Is the book you’re envisioning about pioneers in North Dakota? If so, your book might stand alongside other books featured in the Read North Dakota library programs. Not all of these found a wide readership, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the subject grabs you and that you’re going to try your best to do it justice.

Can You Narrow Your Story To A Single Focus?

This is about the years when… or, This is about the time our family had to move out to Uncle Albert’s farm because Dad lost his grocery store… or, This is about the time a little girl set her dress on fire with a Fourth of July sparkler, an event that affected my grandfather, her doctor, for the rest of his life and that affected me because he thought I was so much like her.

Do you have a potential book about the Irish who raised greyhounds and raced them? (Listen up, Leslie W. I’m calling you out on this one. Write that book!) Maybe you’re plagued with self-doubt and playing one of those mind games all writers play. “Oh, who’d read that! It’s hardly worth my time. I should be writing something that will sell.”

Such thoughts might have been in the mind of Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, a memoir about her childhood in Rhodesia. Shona Patel, author of Teatime for the Firefly might also have stared at the pile of photographs that eventually formed the PowerPoint presentation she uses when talking about her successful debut novel.

My point is that if you envision writing just for your family, then your work won’t require the kind of structure that will be required of you if you want to reach a wider audience. If you’re hoping to touch the heart strings of that audience, then a story about growing up on a tea plantation in Assam or a story about a childhood in Rhodesia will be immensely interesting if the work itself has narrative focus.

What Is Narrative Focus?

It’s a term I just made up. Oops! Not true. I just went to Google and saw that a few other people have also used the idea of “narrative focus.” The term isn’t as important as the idea that all stories must be stories. They must have a point, not just trail off like the proverbial “shaggy dog” story.

It’s all well and good to use old photographs and letters, but if you’re wanting to reach readers who don’t know or care about your family, then you must try to extract meaning from this flotsam of lives, images, and experience. Otherwise, you may write your heart out, but you will wind up with the equivalent of a protracted diary. In a diary the meaning of recorded events is rarely clear. Not till you look back a decade hence will you understand the underlying themes and assumptions that guided your decisions.

Photo Source

Getting back to North Dakota pioneers, if you’re sorting through a pile of old photographs, you might look for themes that would touch on the universal. Pioneers might have an impulse to escape the known world and seek adventure. Your great grandfather might have been the youngest child with no prospects of a better life, except to join the land rush or the Gold Rush. Your grandmother might have had a better chance of meeting a husband if she agreed to be a mail order bride.

Whatever the lesson from those times gone by, you can extract meaning the very same way you would if flipping back through the pages of your teenage diary. “Gosh, I was boy crazy,” or “Heavens, my sister was right. I gave her a very hard time.”

If you intend to write a history of your family or a history of yourself, try to sense in your gut when a story begins to take hold of your feelings. Who is that baby in the dress? Why, it’s your grandfather? Tough. Indomitable. In a dress!

Look for contrasts. Look for the unexpected. Look for any situation you can dramatize. By that, I mean “a scene with dialogue that contains conflict.” Conflict will give your writing narrative focus. Someone will win and someone will lose. The reader’s eye will focus on that conflict to see who will come out a winner.

Photographs As Writing Prompts

A few years back author Robert Olen Butler used old postcards to jumpstart a book. I had the honor of editing one of his stories for the literary magazine StoryQuarterly. I’ve never seen a story come in so “clean,” meaning so free of grammatical mistakes and punctuation errors. However, to be totally honest, the excerpt we published read more like a vignette than an actual story. The characters grabbed me. The postcards were wonderful. But, something was missing. The story lacked narrative focus. It read more like a diary entry or a character study.

Butler’s wonderful short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, did have narrative focus. In each story the reader could discern the events that had caused the character to become a refugee. In each story a character won or lost. Perhaps the book found its audience because we Americans hungered to know more about the people whose lives had been altered by war. It’s possible that book would not have been so popular or relevant if it had appeared in 2014, prior to the waves of refugees that began flooding out of Africa, Syria, and Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, we can’t know what will make a book popular, nor can we know how long it will take to write a book. Go ahead and use those photos. Stare hard at them, and try to discern why you feel such urgency that you must tell the story behind them now. Has the way of life depicted in those images vanished or almost vanished? Are you the last person alive who remembers the details? The more you can think through these questions or discover the answers as you write, the stronger your story will be. A question agents will ask is this: “Why are we reading this now?”

The Frame Story

Before I leave this subject, I just want to give a nod to Wallace Stegner, author of one of my favorite novels, Angle of Repose. Stegner mined his grandmother’s letters to give authenticity to the life of a women and her husband living on the frontier.

But he did more than that. He invented a frame story with a modern protagonist who had an unbending nature. Lyman Ward urgently needed to learn lessons from the past so that he could find his way back to happiness. I can’t do better than the blurb for the book, so here goes:

Wallace Stegner’s Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents’ remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America’s western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he’s willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.

Without the frame story, Angle of Repose would have fallen into the genre known today as historical fiction. But with the frame story surrounding the story from the past, readers have a reason to care. Make readers care, and you have a book that will have a life outside your immediate circle.

A term bandied about in writing workshops is that “something is at stake.” What’s at stake in Angle of Repose is Lyman Ward’s redemption. It’s Dickens’ story, “A Christmas Carol,” but with a modern twist.

When using the term “narrative focus,” I could have simply said, “A story needs a plot.” However, most of us, when culling through photos or looking back through journals, don’t immediately think, “What is the plot of this stretch of life?” The questions we might ask have more to do with what meaning of certain events or the scars they left. Our questions might have to do with how a landscape shaped the people who lived there, or how hard times made them people who endured.

Our great human endeavor is our ceaseless attempt to know “what it means”–this life with all its twists and turns, loves and disappointments. It is what drives us to tell the little stories we call gossip. It’s what causes us to sit around the table at Thanksgiving and summon up the moment when…Well, you get the idea. The endlessly fascinating story of our ongoing lives is what makes us so avid to conjure up the past.

Love As A Lasting Treasure: A Granddaughter’s Tribute

October 21, 2015 by Sandra Matteucci

by Sandra Matteucci

Matteucci girls before the move — The four girls in the author’s family before the move to Florida

Friends in our front yard and neighbors beneath their carports waved goodbye as my parents loaded the final bags into our cars, packed to the brim. In response to an abrupt, out-of-state job transfer, my parents had jolted into action, uprooting four young daughters and a slender Siamese cat. My sisters and I alternately sat or scampered over the seats of our 1970’s paneled station wagon, blissfully unaware of what awaited us at the end of the road trip. I vividly recall that momentous, exciting journey to a new house, though I was barely four years old at the time.

Struggling to absorb the impact of the sudden move, a single phone call sent an even bigger shock-wave through our new home. My grandmother was coming to live with us. While welcome news, the circumstances overshadowed any joy. Her diagnosis of ALS, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, meant that even our best attempts to uplift her spirits could not alter the fact that her body was failing. My mom reacted to the news with her Scandinavian-style work ethic, systematically repainting all of the rooms sporting “groovy” 1970s’ colors to her preferred whites or neutrals just before my grandmother arrived.

By the time everything was unpacked, the cruel illness had already begun stealing her abilities and trapping her wonderful person within. Naturally, my mother and grandmother could not contain their grief – while my innocent self struggled to internalize what was occurring around me. The distressing sound of my grandmother weeping became part of our daily lives, and if the illness stripped her abilities, it heightened her emotions. As the months passed and the disease galloped along, it seemed that I had been transported and trapped within a House of Sadness. As the third of four daughters and no longer a baby, I resisted my newly required independence and began lashing out angrily – for attention, for love, for life to go back to normal.

The Poncho, A Treasured Gift

My grandmother labored to complete a “poncho” for me – with hands that could no longer reliably crochet or knit on command. She battled her illness in defiance simply to finish it. My younger sister’s poncho in pink was complete, and I stared in disappointment at the light blue one intended for me. My frustration came to a head, and I erupted. I loudly protested, stomped my feet, complained about the “ugly” color, and insisted I would never wear it. Though I did not understand her illness, I knew how badly I was behaving; I expected to be lectured and I awaited the sharp criticism that did not follow. Instead, my grandmother smiled in a knowing way and did not correct me. I remember carrying on, puzzled by the peaceful expression, one which certainly did not belie someone coming to terms with her fate, loving a granddaughter she would never see grow up. I remember where she was sitting, the light from the window on her serene face, the way her hands held onto the poncho. If only her contented expression could have contained the wisdom to know I would one day treasure the gift I rejected.

Shifting Responsibilities

Each stage of the illness required new accommodations – and much physical effort – of my fairly petite mother. My sisters, by then ages 10 and 12, took over my routines for a while. They dressed me, brushed my waist-length hair, and assembled me, along with my younger sister. Whereas I used to call “mom”, I began calling my sisters’ names instead. Rather than playing with each other, my sisters began obediently watching us, their younger siblings…all of us captive to the sad events unfolding. When my grandmother became unable to call out to anyone, my parents placed a large bell by her bed. When I heard the bell ringing, I knew grandma needed to be rolled to the other side, adjusted, or moved during the night. By day, my mother rarely took her out of the house, instead hiring an older babysitter, one who could handle all of us. My grandmother’s growing paralysis became an unavoidable truth, with the evidence all around us. I knew, even at such a young age, that she would never get better.

My reserved father returned home each workday to six needy females – baby to aged. Though unprepared for this role, he claimed it. From holding me on his lap while he watched the evening news, to assisting my grandmother when she needed him, he provided an example of quiet strength and duty, no matter what the hour, or what the obligation, as did my mother. My baby sister and I began mimicking their behavior, running to bring my grandmother whatever she needed, taking on some responsibilities ourselves.

On a particularly difficult day, I fought with everyone and felt completely abandoned. When my father walked in the door, I overheard my mother telling him about my misconduct. The day had been filled with back-to-back scolding, so I braced myself for his much deserved disappointment. In this instance, though, he did not say a single word. He took me securely in his arms, hugged me and quietly stroked my hair. It seemed like forever passed, and still, he said nothing, occasionally patting my back ever so softly. I remember crying out of shame, shame at how I had been acting. I promised myself I would be better, I wanted to “deserve” the love he was showing me, seemingly uncommonly kind given the circumstances.

Though everything my grandmother did required unusual effort, in her quiet, faltering voice and from her wheelchair, she managed to give me one last and precious gift. S

Matteucci family — When Sandra Matteucci’s grandmother contracted ALS, she moved in and Sandra’s mother became her caregiver.

he taught me how to read. The original books about Donald Duck and Pluto, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, split at the seams, were the same books she had used to teach my uncle how to read. In those quiet times together, I gained not only the skills to initiate my lifelong love of reading, but the essence of my grandmother, someone who slipped into my life even as she clung desperately to what was left of her own. The tint of her deep gray-blue eyes made such a permanent impression on me that I recognized it nearly 30 years later when looking into the eyes of my own daughter. My grandmother, herself, was unforgettable, not just my experience of her illness.

During this challenging time, I learned the meaning of love. At my very worst moments, I remember the patience and generosity of my family – providing me love when I felt I deserved it the least. That my dying grandmother’s final physical feats involved reaching out to her granddaughters, trying to provide for us and trying to teach us, embodied love, too. I would one day experience other kinds of love – the joyful sharing ice cream love, the best friend forever love, the special heartfelt gifts, dreamy infatuation and the exciting “swept off your feet” type of love. But I am glad I experienced this sort of love first – the unwavering commitment, acceptance, and, yes, difficult sacrifice to meet loved ones’ needs, regardless of the demands or the fatigue.

When my grandmother died, my younger sister and I did not attend the funeral; it was thousands of miles away, and my parents brought only my older sisters. I did not know then that a final expression of love would etch itself in my memory at the close of this trial. Having the family away and a sitter in their place seemed strange.Suddenly, with so few people around, I reacted to my boredom by investigating our home as never before. After several days of exploring, I locked myself in a bathroom and sorted through my mother’s belongings – something I would never do had she been home. I began toying with a shiny red bottle, and I watched helplessly as it plunged from the countertop, shattering, spilling its contents all over the pale blue tile floor: red nail polish – everywhere.

Love and Forgiveness

four girls — The author, in a yellow dress, stands in front.

I heard some commotion and was startled to realize the rest of the family had arrived back home. My mother wandered upstairs, searching to find me, and there I was, guilty, with glaring nail polish and glass splattered all over her bathroom. She glanced at it and then wrapped her arms around me and hugged me in a startlingly rare, unhurried way. I watched in wonder as she proceeded, without as much as a sigh or a reprimand, dutifully removing every trace of the mess. She seemed almost relieved to have this chore to complete, as if she were wiping away all the sadness that had spilled everywhere for so long. In that now very familiar way, I knew I was loved.

12 Tips for Writing About Real People

July 22, 2015 by Marylee MacDonald

Real people have inspired many a memoir and work of fiction. However, what if you hurt your loved ones’ feelings? What if they sue you or un-invite you to Thanksgiving dinner? The writer of the vampire books, Anne Rice, advises, “Go where the pain is. Go where the pleasure is.” Both can be found in families, but, also, joy, love, and memories. Our senior years often allow us the leisure to look back on our lives and think about how our families of origin, and possibly our natural families, influenced our lives, for good or ill. Many of us want to leave a record for our descendants. When I’ve taught memoir writing classes, even in small group settings, aspiring writers express great fear that they will be ostracized for putting their “truth” down on the page. How can we wade into these murky waters without risking retribution?

The Danger Zone

Louisa May Alcott is said to have advised aspiring writers to “write what you know.” We would not be able to read Little Women if she had not written what she knew.

real people — Louisa May Alcott advised writers to “write what you know.” What could you possibly know better than the people in your life?

Author Laura Ingalls Wilder drew on her family’s experiences for Little House on the Prairie.

Hemingway borrowed from his real life in Big Two-Hearted River and The Sun Also Rises. Before the current trend toward writing memoirs, Tobias Wolff wrote the autobiographical novels This Boy’s Life and Old School.

Not to put myself in the same league as the above-mentioned writers, but ditto for my novel, Montpelier Tomorrow. Most writers draw on real life events when they write fiction.

Real Life Issues Provide Plenty of Grist for a Book

If you haven’t listened to the interview I did for the “Author’s Show,” please find it in the right hand column. In the interview, I hint at the real-life issues that drove me to tell the story of a woman who didn’t want to become her son-in-law’s caregiver, but who ultimately did because she could see what her daughter was up against.

What I didn’t mention was the alchemy that happens during the creation of a work of art, the way a writer must change “what really happened” into a series of events that lead to a crisis. Nor did I have time to mention a walk-on character named Esmeralda, a teen-in-trouble who popped into my mind after I saw Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

In my novel a bouncy blonde called “Big Bird,” aka “Big B,” and a neighbor named Lowell who grew heirloom tomatoes sprang from my imagination. The line between fact and fiction eventually blurred, a phenomenon I’ve heard other writers talk about.

When an author writes her way to the last page of her book, she knows her characters better than she knows the members of her family (even if the characters began as family). That’s because, as authors, we can render the characters’ interior monologues to heighten inner conflict. We can put words in people’s mouths. If an author is doing her job, the reader will not be able to tell the made-up characters from the real ones. What often happens is that the imagined characters are more fully realized than the “real” people who inspired the book.

Our families don’t have any idea what we do, how we do it, or why. If you’re a caregiver–especially when you’re finished with your duties and can finally reflect on them–you may feel compelled to write about what you’ve been through.

So, how can you avoid problems? Here are some general guidelines to follow.

Let’s Start With The Do’s

1. Do change names and physical features. No one likes to see a reflection of himself or herself in the mirror of your book. Go to Facebook or sit in a coffee shop. Listen to the way people talk. Write down detailed descriptions. Imagine totally different people with different appearances and different personality quirks.

2. Understand that the people you’re writing about have stories they could tell about you, if only they had time to write. The principle of “fairness” comes in here. Be fair to your characters. All of them. Use dialogue and scene to show that yours is not the only “reality.” Other people in the story can clearly have their own agendas, drives, and desires. It doesn’t hurt to let the main character “get it wrong” once in a while–or, even, a lot of the time. All of us have a blind spot. Even a hero like Achilles had a fatal flaw, his Achilles’ tendon.

3. Tell the real people involved what you’re doing. Own your project and share the difficulties. Describe what it takes to make a character come vividly alive. Read a scene aloud and give them a flavor for the writing. Whether you’re writing a memoir or fiction, if you’re basing your “peeps” on family and friends, give them a chance to review the book.

4. Use humor to take the sting out. Is there any writer funnier than David Sedaris? Listen to This American Life and you’ll see that he doesn’t shy away from topics that you might X off the list.

5. Here’s a tip I learned from Arizona author, Betty Webb. Betty not only writes about real people. She writes about situations that might agitate those people. She writes about murder, genital mutilation, politicians, and polygamists. Betty Webb, in an interview I did with her for Laurel Zuckerman’s Webblog, said that she goes as far as changing the sex of her “peeps.”

6. If you hear strong objections from your loved ones, then don’t call it a memoir. Call it fiction and change the names, physical appearances, and places where the action occurs. Add a disclaimer in the front of the book. “This book is purely fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.”

7. Many writers think a pseudonym will protect them. If that’s you, you will have to decide if this book will be your one and only, or if you’re going to establish an author identity. Will you try for a New York publisher or will you self-publish? Will you have a phony author photo? What happens to your publicity efforts if you’re going to write under a fake name? All this is to say that a pseudonym introduces another set of problems.

8. Perhaps you can assuage your family’s concerns if you tell them that most books put up on Amazon don’t even sell a hundred copies. Even if you’ve written a memoir, it’s very unlikely anyone you know is going to bother to read it. Even family members who cringe at the thought of you writing about them will almost never take the trouble to hire a lawyer. But, just in case…

Now For The Don’ts

The “don’ts” are the things that scare you, aren’t they? Whether you’re writing a memoir or fiction, at bottom, you’re worried about getting ostracized from the family, or worse, sued. Let’s do a reality check. How often do people get sued? Not very often. Most people don’t want their dirty linen exposed. They hope the problem–your book–will just go away. That said, here are some red flags.

1. Don’t write to get revenge. That tone will leak out in your writing.

2. Don’t write to “make a point.” If your main reason for writing is to get on a soapbox and proclaim what’s right or wrong about the world, then run for public office.

As to my novel, Montpelier Tomorrow, interviewers and reviewers have sometimes commented that the book is an indictment of the American health care system. Actually, indicting the American health care system wasn’t ever on my radar. I was just trying to render the lived reality of two women being crushed by the physical and psychological demands of ALS. I guess it’s okay if people want to think I was trying to make a point, but, in fact, in my mind, the thing that was actually crushing these women was Fate.

3. Don’t lie and don’t exaggerate for the sake of creating “more drama.” Emotionally false representations are more likely to get people agitated. If you can, tone it down.

4. Don’t violate people’s privacy or defame them. Inform yourself about the legal terms and the protections that are available to you.

5. My grandma always used to say, “Don’t hide your light under a bushel.” The reason you are worried about how your family will react is that you know they’re used to seeing you in a certain light: as mom, grandma, wife, sister, or brother. But besides that, you own your truth. I think it’s right to claim your own story. Assert that you are a writer, even if you have never published a single thing. You are a writer because you are writing, and that’s what writers do. And, guess what? Most writers base their characters on real people.

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