Writing a memoir, one walks a line between light and shadow.
What to reveal, how to reveal it, what it means. The past whispers hints and you try to interpret, but as you go, you find layers that you hadn’t considered. And as the shadows become illuminated it takes time to understand and process it through your body.
A memoir isn’t just a recitation of people, places, events. It’s describing your transformation and who you were before, during, and after that event, thing, or situation that happened to you and which you’re writing about.
And as you go about writing such a thing, a memoir or personal narrative, it’s a process of transformation for the writer, too.
Writing about the thing that transformed you, actually transforms you. It’s a two-for-one.
I know because I’ve lived it, and am living it now.
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Looking for inspiration these past few weeks for Library Confidential, I went back to some of my old social media posts regarding my job. I found quite a few gold nuggets.
I’ve written before how using social media has helped me as a writer - to document things as they occurred, and now as source material when I need it.
I’ll be turning these into scenes for the book.
(Because I originally posted these captions with pictures, I’ve edited a bit for clarity)
5/28/2015 - Facebook.
Library Diary: Most days at work, I have fun, especially interacting with the kids and helping them find stuff. Today, though, I had an interaction with a kid and his dad that brought me to tears. Bad, angry tears. Why are people such jerks to their own kids? As his dad was ranting about reading "real" books (vs. comic books) and how the kid wasn't allowed to read about the topics he asked me for (gold mining, WW2 history, slavery) the child and I locked eyes for many long seconds. What I saw in his eyes broke my heart. Since he left without any books to read, I hope he at least read my mind as we stood there: Survive, child. Survive this fool of a dad you have and come back to the library. Fight for it. I'll be here for you
11/2/2018 - Instagram
Library diary: Near the end of my shift on the main floor yesterday, I had a profound interaction with a patron. I’ve been a librarian for a long time, I am friendly, helpful and confident, but I have the “weirdo shield” up a lot to maintain boundaries. But yesterday - this little African-American lady looking for a DVD had me fucking nailed. She asked about my hair. Told her it was growing out from an illness. Then - She spoke to me the secrets of my heart, with love and concern like a mother would. She saw me, the essence of me. Knew things she couldn’t have known. l listened in shock and awe as we had a conversation about spirit, energy, love. I’m still a little buzzed from it. Have you ever realized that you might be speaking to a messenger, an angel, or a prophet of some kind? My spine tingled. I told her she was a gift, thanked her for her words and love and she grasped my fingers and said, “oh no, you’re MY gift today, babygirl”. (That’s what I call my own daughter.) Love walks among us, my friends. Be it, be love, be someone’s gift today. Happy Friday!
9/18/2019 - Instagram
Library Diary. Keeping things in the proper perspective. I met a woman today who was asking about reading classes. For her kids or grandkids? No. She was 59 years old and had dropped out of school in the 8th grade because she had never learned to read. Can’t pass the drivers test, so she drives without a license. Needs help at the doctor's office to fill out forms. Can’t read to her grandkids. And now, finally, she is asking for help. Dear God, I wanted to cry as she was telling me. How does this happen? An embarrassment of riches we have, and people still fall through the cracks. I’ve been struggling with the demands of a 45 hour work week + family + no good sleep + book launch + an overall wonky day. Walking through this world is easy for me, though. I can read. Shouldn’t reading be a fundamental, basic human right? I sure think so. Oh yes, I also apparently met George Carlin’s older brother while working the main desk. You never know who is coming through the front door. Just another Wednesday at TPL.
6/20/2019 - Instagram
Library Diary: Thursday 5:45pm and home to my sweeties. Thank God I made it through the week! The irony of being a children’s librarian during the summer is that I spend all day with other people’s kids, while mine are at home with grandma. 😩 they’re fine, but I miss them. I’ve bonded with a little girl at work whose mom is in jail. She comes to the library with her grandma and little brother. They have a few challenges in their family. She gave me a surprise hug at the desk last week, and then one again today. I’m careful about how I touch kids, but how does one refuse a hug from a sweet little girl who misses her mama? Well, I won’t. If kids need mom love, I’m here to help, encourage them, advocate for them. Her hug today made me cry. Needy kids make me cry. And I race home to my own kids who need their mama, too. I’m here now, I’m home, finally. My favorite place, my favorite people. I’m grateful. For every damn bit of love that comes my way. So many blessings. Thursday, I’m overwhelmed. Thank you.
Reading some of these makes me get weepy all over again.
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My grandmother Bea, my father’s mother, passed away at the age of 96 a few weeks ago at the end of June. She was my last grandparent. She outlived my dad by almost ten years.
She was married to my grandfather for 62 years when he passed a few months before my Dad in 2012. Grandpa was a WW2 veteran. The Greatest Generation is all but gone from this Earth, and it makes me sad that I didn’t know them, their lives and their stories, better.
I was their first grandchild and only granddaughter.
As I wrote in my first book, I have fond childhood memories with my grandma out at the farm. I loved being out in the country. There were always animals to play with, cows to talk to, something to go explore, berries to pick. If we weren’t tromping around the farm doing chores, she was always baking or doing something in the kitchen.
In her obituary, the farm was referred to as her happy place, and it was. The obituary also mentioned how much she loved being a grandmother. She read to me every night I stayed with her and always made sure I had stuff to play with.
But when I was eight years old, my grandparents moved away and I pretty much never saw them again. I don’t even remember saying goodbye - only getting news that they were gone.
I saw them again once, for about an hour, when I was sixteen. I remember feeling betrayed, almost choked with anger when my grandmother touched my face and told me how beautiful I was.
Why have you ignored me for all these years? Why haven’t you been in my life? Aren’t you sad about it?
But of course I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to emote and be vulnerable with these people. I just swallowed it back and went on with my life.
All I can say is, this kind of shit toughens you up a bit.
I’d get occasional updates about them from my dad when I was older, but I rarely interacted with that side of the family.
Once I settled down and bought a house, I started sending Christmas cards to them to be polite, and I made sure they had a few pictures of their great-grandchildren as they were born and growing.
But honestly, I was never sure of what my obligation was to a set of grandparents who had ghosted me.
We were complete strangers. The first time I’d ever talked on the phone with my grandmother was ten years ago when I had to call to let her know that her only son, her first baby, my father, passed away. I actually had to ask her for money because I couldn’t cover all of the mortuary costs and my dad had died drunk and flat broke in a trailer park.
As I’ve been pondering these things and facing my own shortcomings as a human being, I wonder how it’s influenced me - that feeling of abandonment, of being alone. Of not asking for help, of having to toughen up and be self-regulating from such an early age.
Alone is my default setting. I am not as social as I should be. I don’t check in on people like I probably should. I keep to myself and wish people well and live my life.
I think of people all the time and in my mind somehow we’ve had whole conversations and I’m all caught up and energetically good in that way - only to find out that my introverted nature makes people think I don’t care. BUT I DO.
I am usually in my own little world, oblivious. Surviving. Dreaming. Cooking dinner and being as present as possible for my immediate family even though I’m a writer and I’m only half there sometimes. I acknowledge that I have limited capacity at times.
I regret not knowing my grandmother better. I regret not having the time or budget to go see her at some point, but my kids were small, she lived in BFE northern Michigan, and I only had so much vacation time.
Whatever the reasons, I realize that she was as withdrawn from me as I have been with some people in my own life and maybe it really isn’t for lack of love. Maybe she thought of me all the time. Maybe she regretted it all and just didn’t know how to make it right. Maybe she didn’t have the capacity, either.
And so the realization I had this week - the transformation in my thinking and in my heart - is that I’m going to stop wondering about it all and just bestow upon her that simple forgiveness and grace she deserves.
Because honestly, I need it for myself, as well.
It wasn’t for lack of love.
She passed peacefully, surrounded by her family, and I’m sure we will make it right when we meet again.
Hopefully, out on the farm. It was my happy place, too.
Godspeed, Bea.
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Most of you who have been here for a bit know I’m writing a screenplay, trying to adapt my first book, Adventures of a Metalhead Librarian.
Eventually I’d like to snag an agent, and maybe a book deal for Library Confidential. And I have an epic fiction project that I need to figure out how to bring forth - and it might do better as a movie or a series. I have SO MUCH TO LEARN.
So, instead of struggling and trying to learn the entertainment industry stuff cold and alone and disconnected, I’m putting some skin in the game and have signed up to take classes and workshops, and I’m getting some mentoring and coaching.
I’m also developing my own workshop, especially for memoir writers. It’s going to be a busy couple of months, learning how to do all of this. I have to build more web pages and make videos and manage Zoom stuff. Way outside of my comfort zone, but that’s the whole point.
You can’t do it unless you do it. Action is required. And you can’t do it alone.
I’ve always hated bugging people. I dislike asking for help and I’ve always been able to figure things out pretty well on my own. I am so used to struggling that it just feels normal.
Except, I don’t want to continue in this fashion. I appreciate where I’ve been but I want to get off the struggle bus and go in a different direction.
I mean, if one ever wants to get better and level up, it requires you to break old patterns of thought. It’s a release of the old you to make room for the newer you.
And how can I be a helper, or teach others, if I am uncoachable? Right? Right?
So I’m getting some help. Accepting that at 50 years old, I don’t know jack shit and that I have a lot to learn. With the hope and expectation that I can ease the struggle a bit. At least the mental struggle. I still have to do the work and that is fine by me, as long as I have an idea of the direction I need to go and how to manage it all.
Maybe I’ll make some writing friends. Maybe I’ll figure out how to position myself, develop my ideas into more projects, and get to work with some awesomely creative and wonderful people.
Maybe I’ll help a few people with their own writing projects. Maybe I’ll connect with the exact right people and I will find a community of book nerds, comedians, rockers and writers and the path will be less isolating and treacherous.
I don’t have to do this alone and accepting it is already a huge transformation in my thinking.
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But the hard work of writing a book - of doing that mind-mapping and structure and other deep, deep work - that is absolutely the stuff I have to do alone, in the privacy of my own brain.
I can throw out rough draft scenes and chapters now and then for the purpose of this Substack experiment, but to do that deep meaty and sexy work - it really does require some space and solitude.
Part of wanting to take good care with it all is the current cultural climate we are living in.
There are some hard and nitty-gritty truths that I need to communicate about my experiences and worldview. I am realizing that I need to take the time to do so in the fully coherent narrative context of a book rather than a blog. Some topics and ideas deserve the long-form treatment.
Even though I was “just” a librarian, I do have a Library and Information Science degree, and I attended grad school during an absolutely transformative time in our digital culture.
I started school a week after 9/11 happened, and watched the debates over the US Patriot Act. I attended classes and lectures by some of the most renowned thinkers and scholars in information systems, journalism, digital surveillance and law, and it CHANGED me.
It was probably a bit overkill for a degree that I used to go sing to babies, but the information science part of it has influenced me strongly ever since. I’ll be digging into all of this quite a bit more as I work this book out of my system.
I don’t want to offer too much commentary here, except to say that after years of struggling to define how I feel about our deteriorating Information Culture, especially in the context of our current political climate, Caitlin Johnstone NAILS it with this piece. This is the kind of stuff we debated in grad school, and it’s hard for me to comprehend that it has turned out exactly as we discussed, predicted, and feared.
Another one that got me: Collection Development Drama breaks out at the American Library Association conference involving everyone’s favorite librarian, Nancy Pearl.
And this has been making the rounds: Censorship and Book Bans: Librarians are under attack from both sides these days. (There might be a paywall for the NYT, I apologize).
Suffice it to say, I’m glad I’m not working in a public library anymore.
I guess I’m trying to explain exactly how I got from there, to here.
It has indeed been quite the transformation.
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Thank you for reading, friends.
Comments? Questions? Leave it here or reach out to me:
See you in a few weeks.