Why I chose to tell my story as a memoir instead of fiction
Although I offer the back story of how I came to write this memoir in the Afterword of the book, I'll answer your question as honestly and clearly as I can. I'll start by offering my belief in the importance of knowing oneself, acknowledging one’s strengths and talents, and recognizing ones's weaknesses and deficits.
I realized at some point that fictionalizing my story was not in the cards for me. My ah-ha moment came with the feeling that telling my own story in the form of a memoir might allow others to feel less isolated. Whether they had grown up with a parent, sibling, or child suffering from mental or physical illness, my hope was that they would better grasp the consequences of their situation by identifying with mine.
I also knew a couple of other things to be true for me:
To write about the same subject for a psychological journal would have been far easier. It would have been a combination of research and anecdotal stories from my family and from all the families I’ve treated. But I felt compelled to write a memoir instead and to share my story by showing how each of us survived -- despite the pain and the trauma – and leave readers with my first-hand experience of knowing about love, loss, and loyalty, along with the darker sides of life that shaped who I am but do not define me as a victim.
Going through life feeling totally victimized is not a way to live. It doesn't allow for real joy to be experienced. There isn't a positive way to be productive without moving through and beyond traumas. I say that without any intention of minimizing the effects of trauma, but with the knowledge that unless professional help is sought, or some means of healing are found, those of us who were, more or less, robbed of a childhood and parentified at too early an age, or others who lost their innocence to terrible forms of abuse . . . will never be able to climb out from under the despair that was imposed upon us.
So, while being a psychotherapist/addictions counselor for the past 30+ years and having written critical papers throughout my college and graduate school years, I’d never created stories from whole cloth. That’s an art form that takes knowledge and talent that I’d have to live many more years to develop. Knowing that from the start, I knew that I would never be writing a novel. I’ve been an avid reader since as far back as I can remember, and I loved reading biographies every bit as much as novels. In fact, for many years, I considered books to be my dearest and closest friends. But I’d never taken a creative writing course and I knew that for me to tell my family’s actual story, I needed to do so in the form of a memoir. To place it in a fictional setting would not have been authentic and would not have been the most effective way to tell my story.
