On having fears and doing it anyway

What releasing a memoir makes one person fear :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED july 4th 2022

I have a few fears about my first memoir coming out on Friday.

One of them is that I am afraid to hurt people (although I really tried to make sure everyone who is in the book, who was safe for me to talk to and interact with, got the chance to veto their parts.) Writing non fiction, memoir specifically, is not for the faint of heart. In fact, a huge of part of the healing process of my life was facilitated by writing this book and having conversations with people and repairing and getting the story as objectively right as possible- understanding sides or perspectives I would have never had access to, if I had not put on my journalism hat on and asked questions. An early reader commented on how much emotional labor I put into writing this - I felt seen there. Still, the fear remains, what if my experience and my feelings about an experience, hurts someone else? And I somehow missed that? Or it wasn’t safe for me to have a conversation with that person? I did my best to protect everyone’s identity and change identifying details, that I’m sure even some people in the book couldn’t recognize themselves if they tried. And still, I am so used to my feelings being policed as acceptable or not, that I fear I will get in trouble for having them.

I am also afraid of retaliation. From my father. Really. Let’s just call it what it is. I’ve given him the redemption he deserves in the book. I’ve gotten feedback that you walk away feeling love for him, which is ultimately what I genuinely feel. But after growing up being raised by him, and having the truth be the worse thing you could ever say, it runs deep that I shouldn’t do this. That I will be punished. That I will suffer if I tell my truth. That saying my truth is a betrayal.

I am also afraid of people, at large, exploiting my generosity or misunderstanding my generosity in storytelling. I think about all the art that I have consumed that has made me live my life well. If the artists had not gone to the core of their life and shared from there, I would be stuck in my own life. If Sarah Wilson had not written about her abortion and the adult thing to do in the book “This One and Precious Life”, I would not have sat at my computer on my birthday last year (in 2021) and came out as autistic publicly. Which means my clients who needed the information of neurodivergence probably would have kept suffering for longer. Now they are diagnosed and know how to meet their needs properly. Making art matters. We don’t even really realize the impact of our art and all the ways it will help the world when we are making it. Our only job is to make it without the fear of being judged for what feels right to make. I am sure Sarah Wilson never sat there thinking, Wow this story is going to help someone come out as autistic online! But it did. And then that had beautiful, truly stunning, ripple effects too. This is why I am generous in my storytelling. It is not so people can know things about me and think they know everything about me, or make judgements about me or feel like they can talk to me in a familiar way without any boundaries like giving me advice for my life when I never asked for it. At the end of the day, I am a generally private person. Which sounds insane given I write personal essays for a living. But it’s true. This is only 36 stories. I have many many more stories in me. You don’t know my daily life. I don’t want you to know it, in all its private moments, TBH. I wrote this for art. I am scared people don’t/ won’t get that.

This is less of a fear, but more of an impending cringe factor, I really hope not many people say, “You’re so brave!” to me. It makes me feel like it made Lena Dunham feel when people would say, “You’re so brave!” to her when she would wear a bikini. They were saying it because they thought she should be ashamed (because her body type was not societally considered smoking HOT) but she wasn’t. No one was saying to Victoria Secret Models at the time, God you’re so brave.

I don’t feel ashamed about my past, about my feelings, about who I was, & who I have become. But what makes me feel ashamed is when people imply I should with confusing comments like, You’re So Brave.

I want people to say, “Thank you for saying the thing.” instead, if they feel the urge to say You’re So Brave.

I am also feeling vulnerable. That people I don’t know, on timelines I will never be able to control starting on Friday, will have relationships with me and my life and the elements of it that I will largely be unaware of. And I have to lean into the fact that I cannot control that and I am still SAFE.

One of my favorite memoirs, “There I Am”, By Ruthie Lindsey… is so well written, that even 2 years after I’ve read it, I think about it still. I feel like I have been to Louisiana myself and I swear I could have been right there on the other side of the waiting room in the hospital the night her dad had the heart attack, and I went into her house to sit on her bedside when she had so much pain she couldn’t get up and all she did was watch TV. And I danced with her in that hotel hallway the night she came back to herself.

Yet, she has never told me any of this directly.

And I have such a rich relationship with her and to her. I know people will have that with me. In a lot of ways, they already do from my first book. And it’s not like any of these stories I’ve written in this memoir have concepts I’ve never talked about in my career as a public speaker, or in interviews, or in classes or programs, or just on instagram. Nothing about these stories is new per say, meaning, I am sure somewhere somehow you could get the information. But it’s different to say I went through benzo withdrawal, and then writing the felt experience of what that was like. The felt experience stays with us, whereas the concepts of events don’t usually. This writing is the deepest work of my life; I am letting people into events that won’t belong to just me anymore. I hope people cherish them the way I cherish Ruthie’s.

It’s letting yourself be seen and trusting people will be able to actually see you because they are mature and smart and kind. And also knowing not everyone will be, and that you’ll still be okay.

So I have all these fears and these vulnerabilities and I am going to care for myself within them. I will sit through the guilt or the feeling like I am doing something wrong when it does pop up, or when someone makes me feel like I should have shame or when I remember my own and it feels engulfing again, and I will sit through the fears and I will orient myself back to safety whenever I need.

I really can’t wait to share this with you.

At the time I am writing this, we’ve made into the top 100 charts on amazon for memoirs of people with disabilities and it’s climbing in the LGBTQ category too (these are huge categories with so many books - thank you for ordering.) If you would like to pre order the kindle ebook to support, I’d love that! You can download the kindle app on your phone if you don’t have a kindle - thanks for telling me that people of instagram. The kindle book will come out on Friday officially and so will the paperback available for purchase.

HERE’S WHERE YOU CAN PRE-ORDER THE EBOOK.

(I’m getting a ton of questions about this: sadly, the paperback is not available for pre-order. You’ll get to buy it on Friday either on Amazon or on my site.)

Lots of July, swimming and eating rice salad love ur way. xx