Up the Ante on Exposing Yourself

The retreat leader, a New York Times bestselling author, had scribbled those six daunting words in blue ink and all caps across the back of page seven. I already felt plenty exposed. Not only had I laid bare the first ten pages of my fledgling memoir, I was revealing my work to eight strangers who, like me, had found their way to an idyllic Montana town for Laura Munson’s Haven Writing Retreat.

Each of us had answered Laura’s call to “take a stand” for our writing. I felt bold and empowered at first, but as I left my shoes by the door and stepped into the main lodge of the Walking Lightly Ranch, I felt naked and vulnerable. What if I were exposed as a fraud? Revealed as one who merely pretended to be a writer, but who wasn’t one… not really.

I’d been blogging for a while, but before the Haven retreat I made excuses and apologies for what I wrote. Even though I’d worked professionally for years as a journalist and a public relations consultant, I had yet to claim my personal authority as a writer. In the PR world, my job was to show employers and clients in the best possible light, intentionally avoiding the not-so-good side of things and spinning negatives into positives.

As a reporter who’d gone to journalism school on the coattails of Woodward and Bernstein, I was in the habit of digging for information, interviewing sources and asking questions. I was all about the truth, more than willing to expose others—but certainly not myself. Now, the tables were turned.

Like Laura Munson, authors like Anne Lamott, Augusten Burroughs, Jeannette Walls and Mary Karr wrote memoirs that inspired me. Often raw, sometimes funny, and always candid, these were writers who’d upped the ante on exposing themselves. Could I do the same?

My mom once told me she envied my friendship with my two best friends.

“I’ve never had friends like that,” she said. “How did the three of you get so close?”

“We got naked together,” I told her, figuratively. “We shared secrets and confessed all—even some not-so-nice things about ourselves.”

Much of what my girlfriends and I shared was unfit for a Hallmark card, but our friendship was imbued with honesty and trust. If I wanted that same authenticity for my writing, wouldn’t I have to bare my soul? Whether in a personal essay or in my memoir, if I were honest, wouldn’t readers be more apt to trust me?

I’ve kept a journal for years. Writing is the way I figure things out, the great clarifier. The page is where my head and my heart most easily intersect, the place where I process life’s events and my response to them. Writing is both challenging and cathartic. It’s also very personal. When I began to write my memoir, I had to ask myself if I could dare to divulge events and feelings I’d always kept to myself. Could I reveal things I wasn’t proud of? Was I willing to remove the veneer? Did I have the guts to up the ante?

My teenage daughter had developed a severe anxiety disorder. My mother had a debilitating fall and I found myself in the midst of the “sandwich generation”—those of us caring for aging parents while still raising our children. It wasn’t enough to simply write about doctors and treatments and the way our household was turned upside down when my mom moved in.

“Reach out and take the reader by the hand so she knows she’s not alone,” Laura encouraged.

She’d done just that in This Is Not the Story You Think It Is (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, 2010), a very personal memoir about her own marital crisis. I followed Laura’s lead and took her advice.

I revisited the old childhood wounds that had formed the woman and the mother I’d become. I felt compelled to get real about my fear, hopelessness, resentment and anger. Coming clean felt like dirty business at first. Scary, lonely dirty business.

It was like going to confession. Bless me Father, for I have sinned… I slapped my teenage daughter… I self-medicated with food… my mother’s dementia embarrassed me… I fantasized constantly of running away.

When I upped the ante on exposing myself, what happened next surprised me. As I extended my hand to the reader, my heart followed along on the pulse of my words. There was a payoff for my vulnerability. I felt brave and authentic for having told my truths. And although I’d intended to let others know they weren’t alone, somehow I knew that I wasn’t either.

—

Mary is a former news reporter and editor who is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. Her blog, A Work in Progress, includes pieces on family, friendship and everyday life.

Mary has just completed a “sandwich generation” memoir about living between two slices of bread—raising a son and daughter and caring for an ailing mother—while trying to maintain her sanity, sense of humor and some semblance of grace.

She recently moved from the Midwest to Southern California and lives in the Topanga Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles with her husband and yellow rescue dog.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing