Telling Family Secrets 

Telling Family Secrets 

Have you ever peeked into the intimate lives of your parents?  

In May of 2006, three years after my father died, my mom insisted that I take home boxes full of letters, personal diaries, journals, newspaper articles, and books written by and/or about my parents, who were Mennonite medical missionaries in Paraguay, South America. 

“You’re my writer, Marlena,” she said. “Someday I want you to write the story of our lives.”

Although I had no intention of doing so, I obligingly took the boxes. For years, they filled an entire wall of shelves in our writing studio. Untouched. I was a writer, yes, but clearly not that kind of writer. 

The boxes haunted me, especially after my mother’s death in 2010. It was as though something kept calling me to open them. To read. To learn. To understand. My father and I had a tempestuous relationship when I was young. Without ever talking about our mutual anger, my sinful behavior, or his early abuse, we found our way toward peaceful reconciliation decades before he died. Would those boxes expose and reopen the wounds of what had remained unspoken?

I pulled the boxes off the shelves and organized the material into chronological piles. The published information deepened my appreciation for my parents’ many remarkable contributions. But as I tearfully pored over the yellowed and tattered letters and personal diaries, I knew it was my own humiliating story I needed to tell before I dared to reveal the private lives of my parents.  

My sister was furious when she heard what I was doing. “Just don’t write anything about me in that book of yours. I think about the mistakes I’ve made in my life that brought such pain to my children… I just hope they don’t dredge them up for public consumption someday. Rather, may they do as I have done, forgive and forget.”

Forgive and forget, and above all, don’t air our family’s dirty laundry. That had always been the unspoken rule in our good Mennonite family.

I understood why it was especially important to keep our family’s dirty laundry a secret. Our parents were fundamentalist, God-fearing Christians whose primary purpose in life was to do the Lord’s work. Among their many other significant accomplishments, they founded and ran a leprosy hospital in Paraguay that eventually became a model for the treatment of leprosy around the world. In short, my father was a hero in the eyes of the medical world as well as the Mennonite church. That kind of hero surely was above reproach, never made mistakes, never soiled his laundry! 

My own developmental journey, however, demanded that I break the rules of family secrecy to get in touch with enough emotional honesty to begin my healing process. I began by journaling for myself, sharing what I wrote only with trusted friends. Early readers encouraged me to publish parts of my story in hopes that it might inspire others to open themselves to their own healing. In 2020, I found a publisher and released my memoir, Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary’s Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness. 

***

I had told my story. But my mother’s words stayed with me. “Someday I want you to write the story of our lives.”

In those boxes were details about the life and work of an extraordinary and complicated man, Dr. John R. Schmidt, my father. My parents kept personal diaries almost their entire lives, from their childhood in the early 1920s, to just a few years before they died. Many entries were boring and repetitive (“Woke up. Baked bread. Went to church.”). Some were angry outbursts. Others were intimate confidences. While the details recorded in the public documents told a familiar story for those who knew my strong-willed and driven father, the personal diaries revealed an inner life, at times tender and loving, and at times filled with torment and confusion. Much of this information was not at all what the world associated with the powerful public persona of Dr. Schmidt.

In sorting through the materials, I uncovered significant insights into my father’s life that even I never knew. They helped me understand the man more fully, which I expected. But they also triggered joy, sadness, discomfort, anger, and other emotions I didn’t anticipate. It surprises me how forcefully the past can invade the present.

Do you wonder if I should have ever read the intimate details of my parents’ lives?

People have long struggled with the question about whether to read private documents after the death of the writer. I’m privileged to have received permission to read my parents’ personal accounts. In fact, I was charged to do so. And yet, I still sometimes felt like a Peeping Tom, peering into intimacies I had no right to see.

The honor of seeing and sharing my parents’ public and very private lives in our latest book CALLED has been a gift laced with unease as well as compassion and love. In the end, I’m just grateful to have had the opportunity to tell their story.

—

Marlena Fiol, PhD, is a globally recognized author, scholar, and speaker. She is a spiritual seeker whose work explores the depths of who we are and what’s possible in our lives. Her significant body of publications on the topic, coupled with her own raw identity-changing experiences, makes her uniquely qualified to write about personal transformational change. She holds a PhD in Strategic Management from the University of Illinois and has taught on the faculties of New York University and the University of Colorado. Marlena is the author of Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary’s Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness and, together with Ed O’Connor, Separately Together and Reclaiming Your Future. Their latest novel CALLED is now available for pre-order. Learn more at marlenafiol.com.

CALLED, Marlena Fiol 

A handsome physician. A devout Mennonite nurse. And an Argentinian activist. Welcome to CALLED…

Against the backdrop of World War II, Nazi uprisings, political unrest in Argentina and Paraguay, and the scourge of leprosy left untreated, Dr. John and Clara Schmidt are called to a life of service in their fight against poverty, stigma, and social injustice.

But at what cost?

Based on true events that span six decades, CALLED is an uplifting and inspirational story of fearless adventure and heroism that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit persevering in the face of fear and rebellious subversion.

Some have a story. They had a mission.

CALLED is an expansive saga that brings to life the extraordinary contributions of two medical pioneers in the wilds of Paraguay. In their fierce determination to save floundering communities across the country, and to battle the stigma and shame of leprosy, John and Clara faced intractable opposition from many fronts: a medical community that rejected their unorthodox and revolutionary practices, governments that threatened imprisonment, and neighboring villagers who vowed to kill them.

Their story provides a living example of fully embracing John’s favorite scripture, “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8.

Readers who enjoyed His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope will love CALLED.

BUY HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: How To and Tips