How do you write about your family’s baggage?

 

Your ancestors and mine included a lot of fine people, but let’s be honest: Our family trees also include at least a few dysfunctional people—parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Some carried out unhealthy practices and held offensive attitudes.

 

And now our generation has skeletons in the closet. Every family has baggage.

 

You know—the enabler.

 

Or the one who should have protected you but didn’t.

 

The bully, the controller, the know-it-all.

 

The petty one always looking for ways to take offense and blame you.

 

Your grandfather might have been a wife-beater.

 

Perhaps your father was quick to criticize and slow to praise.

 

Maybe your mother was egotistical and self-absorbed.

 

Your family tree might include a drunkard, a liar, murderer, adulterer, sex addict, drug addict, or a thief.

 

Even Jesus’ genealogical chart shows ill-famed characters: Rahab was a prostitute and King Manasseh deliberately defied God, carried out evil, and led God’s people astray.

 

Your family’s imperfect people have influenced you.

 

Some of the dysfunctional ones have played major roles in your life.

 

So, how should you, a memoirist, write about your people and their baggage?

 

First, examine your motive. That is all-important!

 

Hear this: Memoir is not about revenge.

 

Forbid yourself to use your memoir to shame people.

 

Refrain from humiliating anyone.

 

Refuse to get even.

 

Writing a memoir can bring much-needed healing

to you, the writer.

 

And writing can help break the cycle

of hand-me-down hang-ups

that crippled your family’s generations—

 

but focus on the right reason to write about your people.

 

“God’s Word clearly expresses

what a good and effective teacher the past can be.

The past will be a good teacher

if we will simply approach it as a good student,

from the perspective of what we can gain

and how God can use it for His glory.”

(Beth Moore, Breaking Free)

 

Do everything you must to be at peace with God:

• Recognize that like your parents and grandparents, you have made and will make mistakes in your marriage, in raising children, and in relating to grandchildren.
• Your malfunctions might be different from those of your parents or grandparents but, be assured, you have your own shortcomings and failures.
• Ask for God’s forgiveness.
• Accept His forgiveness.
• Allow God to wrap you in His grace and mercy.

 

Wrapped in God’s grace and mercy—that’s where you find peace with God.

 

Then pass it on: In writing your memoir,

you don’t need to act as if sins against you and others

were somehow okay.

They weren’t.

But I encourage you to extend to your ancestors

the same forgiveness, grace, and mercy God extended to you.

 

Read the following slowly, and then read it again. Take in its message:

 

“Thank God that

although you cannot change the past,

He can help you change what you’re doing with it!

And the changes He makes in you

in the present

can certainly change the future!”

(Beth Moore, Breaking Free)

 

Avoid writing for revenge

We suffer pain for various reasons—sometimes we bring it on ourselves, sometimes it’s no one’s fault, but other times it’s the fault of another person.

If we’re writing a memoir that includes pain caused by a person or organization, we need to be cautious about our motives. And honest about our motives.

As a memoirist, avoid writing for these reasons:

• to get revenge, settle the score, retaliate,
• to humiliate a person or organization,
• to get readers to pity you,
• to get readers to take sides with you, or
• to indulge in self-pity.

Examine your heart and if you find even traces of wanting to write for any of those reasons, stop!  That’s not what memoir is about.

I have two pieces of advice: (1) Go ahead and write everything, but write for your eyes only.  Write about the injustices, write about your mistreatment, hurt feelings, anger, scars, and tears. Write about destroyed dreams, confusion, hopelessness.

Write it all. Write it as a prayer. Write until you know God has heard you. Write it as a way of asking God to help you forgive and move on.

Because such resolution usually takes time, set aside your private writing for a week or a month or a year. Listen for God, let Him work in your heart and mind.

Your goal is to move from anger to forgiveness, from pain to compassion.

Read William Zinsser’s important words:

“The marvel of Frank McCourt’s childhood is that he survived it…. The second marvel is that he was able to triumph over it in [his memoir] Angela’s Ashes, beating back the past with grace and humor and with the power of language. Those same qualities are at the heart of all the good memoirs of the 1990s….”

Zinsser mentions three such memoirs, A Drinking Life, by Pete Hamill, The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr, and This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff.

He continues, “Anyone might think the domestic chaos and alcoholism and violence that enveloped those writers when they were young would have long since hardened the heart…. Yet they look back with compassion…. These books…were written with love. They elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness, arriving at a larger truth about families in various stages of brokenness. There’s no self-pity, no whining, no hunger for revenge; the authors are as honest about their young selves as they are about the sins of their elders. We are not victims, they want us to know…. We have endured to tell the story without judgment and to get on with our lives….”

Zinsser offers advice to today’s memoirists: “If you use memoir to look for your own humanity and the humanity of the people who crossed your life, however much pain they caused you, readers will connect with your journey. What they won’t connect with is whining. Dispose of that anger somewhere else. Get your intention clear before you start and tell your story with integrity.” (Writing About Your Life; emphasis mine)

When you can write that way—

when you can write with compassion 

and love and forgiveness, 

when you can write without self-pity or whining 

or revenge or being judgmental, 

 rewrite your rough draft. 

Strive to write like Frank McCourt: 

Write words full of grace, and maybe even a bit of humor.

This brings us to my other piece of advice: (2) Don’t let anyone read your manuscript until you have rewritten it.

Remember:

Your first draft was for you alone,

but later drafts are for your readers.

“Ursula K. Le Guin,

when dealing with painful subjects,

makes a distinction between ‘wallowing,’

which she says she writes but does not share publicly

and ‘bearing witness,’

which she does share.” 

(Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir; emphasis mine)

So rewrite. Rewrite with integrity. Delete the wallowing. Instead, bear witness. Write not as a wounded victim, but as one who has triumphed, as one who has forgiven, healed, and moved forward in a good way.

Related posts:

“To live the pain with hope”

Writing yourself to the other side of pain 

What is the point of writing about the hardships of life?

Writing yourself to the other side of pain, continued

From settling old scores to singing new songs

“The memoir-crazed 1990s.” Do you remember that era?

William Zinsser (one of my favorite writing mentors) reminds us that, “Until that decade memoir writers drew a veil over their most shameful experiences and thoughts; certain civilities were still agreed on by society. Then talk shows came into their own and shame went out the window.”

It was an era, he says, when “no remembered episode was too squalid, no family too dysfunctional, to be trotted out for the titillation of the masses.”

Memoirists, like talk shows, disclosed shocking information, indulged in self-pity, and sought revenge from those who wronged them.

“Writing was out and whining was in,” says Zinsser.

But, he points out, those types of memoirs didn’t stand the test of time.

“The memoirs we do remember from the 1990s are … Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, and Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life.” (from “How To Write A Memoir” in The American Scholar; emphasis  mine)  

 “If these books by McCourt, Hamill, Karr, and Wolff represent the new memoir at its best, it’s because they were written with love. They elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness, arriving at a larger truth about families in various stages of brokenness. There’s no self-pity, no whining, no hunger for revenge…We are not victims, they want us to know.” (Zinsser’s Inventing the Truth; emphasis mine)

Their stories’ message: “We come from a tribe of fallible people and we have survived without resentment to get on with our lives.”

He counsels memoirists: “Don’t use your memoir to air old grievances and to settle old scores; get rid of that anger somewhere else.” (from “How To Write A Memoir” in The American Scholar; emphasis mine) 

That somewhere else could be a journal or a fictionalized version of the story. Or it could be in a first draft. Dr. Linda Joy Myers says, "Write your first draft as a healing draft. Get out what you need to say. Make it bold and real. Then stand back and think about how you want to revise it for publication." (from Will My Family Get Angry About My Memoir?; emphasis mine)

The important thing is to vent, to deal with the problem, to find healing and forgiveness and closure. Just don’t seek revenge in memoir.

There’s another reason to avoid seeking revenge in memoirs. Cecil Murphey and Twila Belk said well it on Facebook a few days ago: “Whenever I condemn others, I am condemning myself. Whenever I judge others, I give God permission to judge me.”

Jesus said it this way, “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged.  For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. And why worry about the speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?… Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye.…” (Matthew 7:1-5, NLT)

I suspect that’s what Thomas à Kempis had in mind when he wrote, “We are too quick to resent and feel what we suffer from others, but fail to consider how much others suffer from us. Whoever considers his own defects fully and honestly will find no reason to judge others harshly.”

Yep, nobody’s perfect. Each of us has failures and shortcomings.

So, have we asked God’s forgiveness? And then have we forgiven ourselves? (Read more at How do you deal with this elephant in the room?)

In writing our memoirs, let’s extend to others the same forgiveness, grace, and mercy God has extended to us. (Read more at How do you write about your family’s baggage?)   

Zinsser, with grace, encourages us to strive for the best goal: to do all we need to do to “elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness.”

And isn’t that what “singing a new song” is all about? (Psalm 40:1-3, Psalm 96:1, Psalm 149:1, Isaiah 42:10)

And why should we sing a new song? Because God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)

And He says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18-19)

How can we not sing a new song in praise of the new things God has done in and for us? How can we not sing a new song after God has turned our harsh wilderness into a lush place?

Yes, sing a new song!

And isn’t that one of the most important elements of memoir? Memoir is about the old you and the new you, and how you got there, and what you learned along the way.

“The main character … —in a memoir it’s you!—is changed significantly by events, actions, decisions, and epiphanies,” writes Dr. Linda Joy Myers. “The growth and change of the main character is imperative in any story, and is the primary reason a memoir is written—to show the arc of character change from beginning to end.”

So, write about the old you, write about the new you, write about how you got there, and what you learned. 

Sing a new song. 

“Elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness.”

Related posts:

“Remembering only the pain, or only the joy, would be incomplete”

Does forgiving leave room for forgetting AND remembering?

Your memoir: sharing about sin and God’s forgiveness

The Four R’s of Memoir Writing, by Mary Gottschalk

How do you write about your family’s baggage?

Your family and mine include dysfunctional people. Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents—some carried out unhealthy practices and held offensive attitudes. 

And now our generation has skeletons in the closet. Every family has baggage.

You know—the enabler.

Or the one who should have protected you but didn’t.

The bully, the controller, the know-it-all.

The petty one always looking for ways to take offence and blame you.

Your grandfather might have been a wife-beater. 

Perhaps your father was quick to criticize and slow to praise. 

Maybe your mother was egotistical and self-absorbed. 

Your family tree might include a drunkard or abuser, a liar, murderer, adulterer, sex addict, drug addict, or thief.

Even Jesus’ genealogical chart shows ill-famed characters: Rahab was a prostitute and King Manasseh deliberately defied God, carried out evil, and led God’s people astray. 

Yes, your family, like every family, has lots of good people and a few flawed people, and those people have influenced you. 

Some of the dysfunctional ones have played major roles in your life. 

So how should you, a memoirist, write about your people and their baggage?

First, examine your motive. It is all-important! 

Hear this: Memoir is not about revenge.

Forbid yourself to use your memoir to shame people.

Refrain from humiliating anyone. 

Refuse to get even. 

Writing a memoir can bring much-needed healing to you, the writer, but focus on the right reason to write about your past. 

Writing can help break the cycle of hand-me-down hang-ups that crippled your family’s generations, but focus on the right reason to write about your past.

“God’s Word clearly expresses 

what a good and effective teacher the past can be. 

The past will be a good teacher 

if we will simply approach it as a good student, 

from the perspective of what we can gain 

and how God can use it for His glory.”

(Beth Moore, Breaking Free; emphasis mine)

Do everything you must to be at peace with God:

Recognize that like your parents and grandparents, you have made and will make mistakes in raising your children and relating to your grandchildren. 

Your malfunctions might be different from those of your parents or grandparents but, be assured, you have your own shortcomings and failures. 

Ask for God’s forgiveness. 

Accept His forgiveness. 

Allow God to wrap you in His grace and mercy. 

Wrapped in God’s grace and mercy—that’s where you find peace with God. 

That’s where you find God’s healing in your life. 

Then pass it on: In writing your memoir, extend to your ancestors the same forgiveness, grace, and mercy God extended to you.

Read the following slowly, and then read it again. Take in its message:

“Thank God that 

although you cannot change the past, 

He can help you change what you’re doing with it! 

And the changes He makes in you 

in the present 

can certainly change the future! 

Hallelujah! Our God reigns!” 

(Beth Moore, Breaking Free; emphasis mine)