by Sidney S. Stark
Recently my friend Sam made a horrendous mistake. Sam (short for Samantha) is a writer I met at the Southampton Writers’ Conference in 2009. She was in my memoir workshop and we became buddies almost instantaneously. Sam wrote the funniest work of any of the ten participants in that class. As you’ve probably never read any of her writing you’ll simply have to take my word for it, but I don’t think there’d be one dissenting vote among all those writers familiar with Sam’s humorous style; especially when she gets on a roll. If her confidence is up she just rides the wave and wonderful, crazy, loose stuff comes pouring out.
So what was her atrocious mistake? She gave a piece she’d written recently to a close family member to read. That was really dumb. Those of us who’ve suffered from the same understandable but catastrophic desire to have the people closest to us share in the thing we love doing most could have warned her if she’d asked. It was disastrously gullible of her not to know that the reaction she’d likely get from her relative would be the last thing she expected or wanted. But her naïveté was understandable.
You see, Sam had already shared her piece with friends who’d then asked her to air it at a larger gathering of dinner party acquaintances. It was unanimously appreciated and the elation that approval caused carried Sam all the way to her decision to share it with a close family member. When I say close, I’m referring more to shared DNA than to an emotional attachment, although they’re not mutually exclusive. In Sam’s case the shock of the outright disapproval and rejection she got was somewhat akin to a slap in the face. Still reeling from the emotional blow Sam contacted me, sent me the offending essay, and together we dissected the process that had led to the undermining of her confidence and shaken her to the foundations of her creative soul.
The first thing I did before I attempted any rehabilitation was to point out Sam’s egregious error and warn her she must never, ever commit that mistake again. ‘Never let your family read or critique your work’ should be a mantra you hum under your breath at all times and pin to the bulletin board over your computer. I admitted I’d fallen pray to the same temptation myself once or twice; I had to bring my wounded spirit to a writing professional for solace when I’d gotten the same kick in the teeth Sam had. The ‘stay away from family’ hymn was impressed on me by that writing teacher and I’ve stuck pretty close to the score ever since.
Why does ‘the family’ present such a problem? Sam and I discussed this at length as she slowly found a way to get back to a better place in her head and pull herself up enough to free some of her wonderful writing again. Eventually she sent me something she’d done in an attempt to exorcise the daemons and the title she’d chosen for the process that had been used on her was ‘Filter Familia’. She felt rather good about that phrase and of course feeling good was already at least three quarters of the battle. But I told her I wasn’t at all sure that really was the right label.
A filter implies that something gets through and I’m not at all sure the family can allow that to happen. It seems to me ‘Family Detention’ would be a more accurate description of the process. Why can’t you share these most precious private creations that say everything about who you are with your family? Sam seemed at a loss to understand the dilemma. In a final email I told her what I think I’ve come to understand the hard way. I’m afraid the threat to family and many close friends that you will show yourself to be someone they don’t know is too great. They have a vested interest in keeping you as they want you to be rather than who you actually are.
It’s a very rare relationship that allows the freedom to be our real selves and appreciates us just that way. Close relationships involve the other person’s identity too because they overlap ours, and of course that only intensifies when there’s a shared gene pool and historical memory. Psychologist and relationship researcher at Stony Brook University Dr. Arthur Aron calls that blending ‘self-expansion’ and so it stands to reason that if I’m not actually who you thought I was then your identity may be threatened too. The more secure a person is and the better they know themselves the less likely they are to be susceptible, but let’s face it, how many of us can say we’re surrounded by secure people? Family members in particular seem to show more anxiety about their roles and relationships to others in the same family unit. It’s complicated stuff to understand, so I tend to agree with my writing teacher and think it’s just safer to steer clear of the whole issue when it comes to sharing self-revelatory writing.
Sam’s relation called her writing self-indulgent. Of course it’s self-indulgent, Sam. Isn’t that the whole point of writing memoir? Aren’t we supposed to be explaining ourselves in a deeply reflective and non-judgemental way? You should thank your relative for seeing the purpose so clearly rather than allowing her to upset your creativity by applying such a narrow, negative definition of indulgence.
So, from now on, Sam, please share early drafts of your creations with those of us writers who share your passion and love you for yourself and your effort . The only thing your family of writers finds threatening about you is your contagious humor and the facility you have with turning pathos to farce. And the threat to us (if there is one) is only that you’ll get to the publisher long before any of the rest of us. Don’t let the critics get you down or you’ll take us all with you. Mark Twain reflected that there probably isn’t any humor in heaven since there’s no pain to ameliorate so we need your reminders right here to keep us alive! Thanks, Sam, for your unfailing self-indulgence.
Question@You- Do you agree that family members often judge us more harshly than others? If so, why do you think that’s so?