I Put Myself Back in the Narrative

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

Dr. Karyl McBride says truth-tellers are like giraffes who can see above the lies. (Photo by Daniel Argenal on Unsplash)

Since I was a little girl, I’ve remembered things my parents wished to forget. These things stood out to me because they gave me cognitive dissonance between what my father taught and how he lived. I was sometimes confused and other times downright depressed.

An example is being told to memorize the Bible verse that “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,” and then being asked to lie and tell bill collectors that my father wasn’t home. I was only five or six, but the contrast between those two requests confused me.

As I grew older and remembered more things my father was ashamed of, his response was to shame me. He would say, “Stop living in the past,” or “Can’t you ever learn to forgive and forget?” My mother backed him up by saying, “Boy, nothing gets past her elephant memory.”

As I grew older still, they would say, “Oh, you know how Cheri always embellishes things,” or “Too bad she has to exaggerate.” I noticed they never actually called me a liar because the truth is I wasn’t a liar. If they had called me a liar in my childhood, they would have to face the fact that they were liars because, at the time, we were too close to those events for them to get away with lying. There were often other witnesses in the form of my siblings or grandparents.

As the decades passed, my parents tried to peg me as being mentally ill and trying to ruin my father’s reputation. My dad lied to my husband once, telling him “that she makes up lies about her childhood.” Thank goodness my husband knew my character and didn’t believe him. It also helped that in the next breath, he said, “Now she’s gonna ask what we’re talking about, so let’s think of something. I know; tell her we were talking about the ballgame.” He hung up when I told him he didn’t have to do that because he was on speakerphone.

As you can imagine, I’ve been dealing with gaslighting and lies from my father, along with an enabling backup from my mother, for my entire life. I won’t lie. At times I have felt shame for remembering. I have been sad that they insist that I make things up. My memories, while not all good, are precious to me. They remind me of times, places, and people that I cherish. It would be painful to omit them because then I’d have to forget things that happened with my Nana, Grandma, and Grandpa, who were each very important characters in my development.

Ever since I was nine and read my first Little House book, I wanted to be a writer like Laura Ingalls Wilder and tell my story. (Never mind that grown-up me has now learned how Laura’s daughter, Rose edited the truth in her mother’s stories by reading the book Prairie Fires.)

I was only nine, but I was mesmerized by the idea of chronicling my life. I wanted to tell the world what it was like to live in a primitive cabin on Whidbey Island. I wanted to tell the world what it was like to take my weekly shower at the state park, which made it seem like we were always camping. And at the time, my mother said, “Seem like? We are always camping!” She said it with irony and annoyance because this was not her plan.

It took me years to write my first memoir because of the shame heaped on me by my parents and then my siblings.

I wrote on my blog once about a cat my dad threw against the wall when we were moving and how we never got to find the cat and make sure she was okay or take her with us. My sisters, who at the time were both angry about leaving that cat, declared publicly on facebook decades later that I was lying. They know the cat was thrown against a wall. They know we never saw that cat again. So why would they try to ruin my reputation with everyone we know? To protect my father.

My parents didn’t want my dad to look like a bad guy. And to be fair, my dad is kind to cats today. He even makes a hot water bottle for an old stray to sleep on that comes to their porch in the winter. It’s not that I am bitter about the sad story of my missing cats so long ago, I bore the pain of that loss ages ago, but it has made me who I am today. It is the reason I support people who rescue cats.

So what is a writer to do when your entire family labels you as a liar? Yes, my parents have progressed to calling me a liar. They wrote a letter to the judge in my brother’s divorce case a decade ago to say that I am a liar, religious fanatic, mentally ill, and that I make stuff up. They did this because they had the rest of the family state that my sister-in-law was a bad mother, while I gave an honest witness that she was a good mother. I find it ironic and laugh and say, “I sure can’t make this stuff up!”

Since I was a little girl telling the truth has not been something my parents valued about me. They will do everything they can to undermine my stories or books. They have enlisted the rest of the family to say I am a liar. Even some of my nephews and niece won’t speak to me. These kids are too young to know the truth, and I have done nothing but send them birthday presents and bake cookies for them. When most of your family has deserted you, it does give you the freedom to speak your mind.

But I’ll tell you what gave me permission to break the family rules. My Grandma fell and hurt her hip, and my parents put her in a home and took over her house. In that house, my Grandma had over fifty years of diaries. They mostly narrated the weather and how her cats and flowers were doing. She marked every birthday and if she called us. Somewhere in those diaries, Grandma wrote the truth about my dad. It must’ve been something he didn’t want her to say to the rest of us. She had repeatedly told us that her diaries were open for us to read if we wanted. While my Grandma was still alive, my father took away her voice by burning all of her diaries in a big bonfire.

At the time, my siblings and I agreed that this was wrong. I don’t know where they stand now. I would hope there is still some honesty left in this family somewhere, perhaps my favorite nephews will be truth-tellers. Telling the truth is not about getting revenge or even setting the record straight, it’s about being authentic. To tell the truth, we must first tell ourselves the truth, but some people are so ashamed of what they’ve done that they’ve stopped acknowledging it.

I’m a Hamilton fan, and I love the song at the end when it’s all summed up.

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

My sweet Grandma had no control over what people said about her. If I had her diaries, I might be able to say even more, but I can verify that she was honest. She was very spiritual and didn’t believe in lying. Sadly, my father had to find fault with his mother-in-law by saying she was mentally ill for liking the color purple or loving her cats and flowers. She wasn’t perfect. She had way too many cats to take care of in her old age, but that was her only crime. She didn’t lie or cheat or steal or wish anyone harm. She forgave even those who might lie about her or hurt her.

The fact that my dad put Grandma in a home so he could take her house and then burned all her stories in one big bonfire will never escape my thoughts. He can’t gaslight this away. In the past, I had trouble standing up for myself, but I have to stand up for Grandma, and I know she loved me and would support my memoirs.

If my dad were in charge of me, he would treat me the same as Grandma—or possibly worse because I have the deep truth of events to share, and he doesn’t agree. His treatment of Grandma gave me the courage to write myself back into the narrative. Like Eliza in Hamilton, I can’t spend the rest of my life crying over my losses, I will write, I will tell my story, and I will bless others along the way.

And when you're gone, who remembers your name?
Who keeps your flame?
Who tells your story?

The day I published my first memoir, I texted my husband to tell him I had pushed the button. His text back is my favorite text of all time. He answered—

“No one will ever take your voice away now!”

Then my eyes filled with tears to realize that I had hit publish and no one could burn all the copies.

How about you? Are there people who don’t want you to tell your story?

Then you must, by all means, tell it!