Alisyn Camerota: How Writing a Memoir Healed My Mother and Me
glamour.com, who have turned living-out-loud, confessional social-media posts into an art form.“Once I’m dead, you can say whatever you want,” she said.“You know, Mom, I’m entitled to tell my story,” I countered.“Of course,” she said. “The problem is it’s my story too.”She wasn’t wrong.
No one’s story exists in a vacuum. Even as adult children, our lives are inextricably linked to our parents, and as the stacked shelves at any bookstore prove, parent-child dynamics are great grist for the memoir mill.
But there was something besides quiet stoicism in , something more complex and pernicious, that I realize I was trying to unearth in writing my memoir.
Family secrets. As a child, I didn’t know that my mom grew up in a house full of them. I only knew I still felt them lurking.Those secrets were part of the reason I was mystified when at fifteen, in the middle of my sophomore year, my mom decided to move us three thousand miles away from our hometown to a place where we knew no one.“I don’t want to leave my friends,” I wailed, begging her to reconsider.Like many teenagers, my friends were my world.
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