By Susan Solomon Yem
Last Christmas, one of my sons purchased a story-telling subscription for me so I could write my personal history to ultimately be bound into a book and shared with the rest of the family. The weekly questions that popped up in my inbox each Monday morning were intriguing: If you could categorize your childhood as a color, what color would it be and why? What was your relationship with your parents like as a teenager? What’s a small decision you made that ended up having a big impact on your life?
I didn’t answer a single one. Eventually, I had to tell my son that I wasn’t going to complete the project. He was more disappointed than I’d anticipated. What I couldn’t tell him is that doing so would dredge up a lot of difficult memories.
Despite growing up with loving and supportive parents, I struggled with crippling shyness, low self-esteem, and rash-inducing anxiety. The thought of revisiting the challenges I’d endured decades earlier awakened long-buried emotions that I’d worked hard to overcome and did not want to unearth again.
Over the years I’ve selected the stories to tell my children based on what’s happening at any particular moment in their lives. I’ve typically abridged the contents and left out certain details that are painful to recall. For example: the challenges of caring for my mother, who suffered a traumatic brain injury that deeply impacted how she treated me. It’s not only painful for me to recall, but also unnecessary, as it might affect how they view their grandmother.
“I don’t advocate telling our children the stark truth all the time or letting them peer into our psyches at every moment,” says author Nicole Graev Lipson, whose memoir, Mothers And Other Fictional Characters, is an unvarnished look at her life from childhood to motherhood. “As a writer, I’ve had to figure out what healthy vulnerability is and what’s too much oversharing. But sharing our struggles can be very freeing for us and can model for them how to show vulnerability and uncertainty in their own lives as well.”
Most parents want to share their stories with their kids, and an industry has emerged to help them do so. “We want to be remembered,” says psychologist Francine Toder, Ph.D. who teaches guided autobiography to older adults. “We want to know that our lives have meaning and purpose and that our kids understand how we came to be who we are through all our trials and tribulations.”
Storyworth, the company my son chose, has printed more than a million memoirs since its founding in 2013. Other companies, like StoryTerrace, Real Life Stories, and Modern Memoirs, provide professional ghostwriters to record their clients’ experiences.
The National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW), an organization founded to help members find their voice and tell their stories, offers virtual workshops and coaching to support the process. But founder and president Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D, MFA, author of the award-winning memoir Don’t Call Me Mother, cautions that this is not a project to undertake if you’re not ready. “You’ll be exploring the labyrinth of your own self. You’ll come back out with some knowledge and then you’ll need to decide if you’re willing to share what you’ve learned, but you don’t have to unzip your entire life.”
“Adult children don’t need every detail; they need emotional clarity,” says psychologist Jeffrey Bernstein, Ph.D. “They’re interested in understanding what shaped you, what you value, and how you have made meaning out of hard moments.”
Dr. Bernstein suggests answering three questions to shape how you tell your story to your kids: Is this relevant? Is this respectful of my child’s emotional bandwidth? Is this connecting us?
Lipson used the acronym THINK, which she learned from her daughter’s second grade teacher, as a framework when writing her memoir.
T – Is it true?
H – Is it helpful?
i – lower case with no specific meaning
N – Is it necessary?
K – Is it kind?
“I share everything in my book with a deep, deep love and respect, especially for the people I write about – their complexity, their beauty, their wholeness,” says Lipson.
Dr. Toder says, “Most of our adult kids between the ages of 20 and 50 don’t have the capacity for our stories. They’re busy finding their own way in life, so ask them what they want to know. It may be something you hadn’t considered. And then ask them what’s TMI (too much information)!”
I struggle with how much to include when telling my story to my kids. I worry about how they’ll perceive some of my life decisions. Will I look foolish? Will I be a cautionary tale? Or will my example act as a guidepost for them?
I frequently write deeply personal stories. Some, like essays about the end of my marriage and the loss of two babies I miscarried, were gut-wrenching to relate, but I believe they’re important to share. I hear from women in similar situations all the time who tell me they appreciate my words, but these aren’t stories my children read.
Writing from a place of vulnerability for them feels different and a lot scarier. I think that’s because they’re the audience I live with, the people who can revisit my past, ask questions, and reflect on my words in a way strangers won’t.
It’s been two years since my son sent that first question to my inbox. It won’t be easy to answer the ones he’s posed, but I’m logging back in and giving it a try despite my fears. I’ve written two paragraphs so far.