Is it wrong to expose your parents’ flaws and family secrets? That is a question I and many others writers, especially memoirists, have struggled to answer.
Early in my writing career, when I wrote humor columns, I disclosed some of my mother’s and father’s funny quirks. They were both alive at the time, and Dad loved the attention. Mom, though, hated it so much that she once stopped speaking to me for six months. She let me know just how much she didn’t appreciate “being the butt of my little jokes.”
My mother recovered from her emotional wounds. Eventually. But today I’m writing about more serious topics.
My parents died six years apart, from terminal illnesses—Mom from pancreatic cancer, and Dad from Alzheimer’s Disease. Journeying with them through their final months of life deeply affected me. I needed to write about that to find meaning in my grief and loss.
I wondered, though, if stories about my parents’ illnesses and deaths were mine to tell. Was disclosing our final moments together an invasion of privacy? Our stories were entwined and inseparable.
Author Ann Lamott wrote, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
(My parents’ behaviors were questionable, decades before either one became ill.)
I agree with Lamott. But the deciding factor about whom to include and what to share in my essays and books has always been based on personal reflection. As a rule of thumb, I’ve tried not to write negative portrayals of living persons. When I wrote my novel, When Horses Had Wings, I turned my real life experiences into fiction to protect those who hadn’t yet kicked the bucket—including myself.
Sometimes telling a story honestly involves confessing family secrets. When, if ever, in nonfiction should you disclose unsavory truths about your parents?
Mitch Albom, author of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven, wrote, “Secrets. We think by keeping them, we’re controlling things, but all the while, they’re controlling us.”
“What doesn’t get reported gets repeated,” I’ve often said. The family secret I concealed for many years allowed a perpetrator to continue his abuse. It also held me captive to a crippling fantasy.
When you’re withholding significant story facts, you have to come to peace with who you’re protecting and why. Family appearances based on lies allow others to escape their consequences and delays their repentance and recovery. Confidants, then, end up carrying the shame and guilt that rightfully belong to the person they’re protecting.
Oh, but what about the Biblical commandment to honor your father and mother? you might ask. I struggled with that, too. Honor does not obligate you to hide the truth or protect the guilty. Honor means to respect the roles your parents played in your life, treat them fairly and with compassion, and forgive them for their transgressions. Forgiveness does not include pretending they are (or were) saints. You’re not obligated to hide faults, yours or anyone else’s. If you disagree, it’s likely because your parents influenced that belief. 🙂
Only you can decide how much to disclose about your parents to others. It requires some soul searching, but given enough thought you will arrive at the correct decision.
I hope my opinion on this topic has helped you in some small way. If so, please be sure to “like” this post, leave a comment, or share this with friends.
Diana Estill 