Heather Summerhayes Cariou managed to take a deep tragedy, the loss of her sister to cystic fibrosis, and turn it into a journey of healing and personal growth through the writing of a memoir, Sixyfive Roses, a play on the name of the disease that’s difficult for kids to pronounce. CF is an inherited disorder that literally chokes the life from its young victims, although great strides have been made in research to make the median age of survival now more than 35 years. Pam Summerhayes, diagnosed at age 4, died at the age of 26.
While Heather wanted to write a memoir of Pam in tribute to her sister’s strength and bravery, she discovered she had to tell the story in her own words, and in the writing Pam voice spoke. While Sixtyfive Roses has no happy ending, it is an inspirational story that has attracted readers with its tenderness and courage and its message that “we can choose our joy in each moment, no matter what.” The Summerhayes family helped found the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and a percentage of the proceeds from the Sixtyfive Roses book goes towards that organization as well as to the CF Foundation of the U.S.
Heather Cariou is a recent guest on Women’s Memoirs, a blog by authors Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett who co-wrote Rosie’s Daughters, a collective memoir of stories of the can-do women of the generation following “Rosie the Riveter.” Heather’s May 19 guest post is well worth reading for those contemplating writing a memoir. In just one post she gives informative and encouraging advice that encompasses the highlights of all memoir writing books combined.
Heather will be interviewed by Butler and Bonnet via phone conference line this Friday, May 22, 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern). Check the Women’s Memoirs website for the phone number and access code so you can listen in.
So you’re writing a memoir and you don’t want to lie and say everything was rosy, but you don’t want your family to send you hate mail. Whatcha gonna write? The big question is who you gonna write for?
The best memoirs are those where the author has come to some kind of understanding or healing from troubles. When the bad stuff is raw, then the revenge memoirs raise their serpent heads and who gains from those? Only the voyeurs. Everyone involved in the story, including the writer, is left feeling angry, and the innocent reader hoping for a good story with an inspirational ending is left blindsided. So it’s best to take a step back and consider…
If you’re writing solely for yourself, then you can whine and howl as much as you want. And guess what – only you are going to enjoy that. It may help you heal. Hide that manuscript under your bed until you can get some perspective. If you want to leave your memories to your family – kids, grandkids, sisters, brothers – write for them, which means tone things down, be tactful, try to understand what made your “perpetrators” behave badly. Some people are very sensitive and “exaggerate,” as Augustin Burroughs (Running With Scissors) has been accused of. He’s writing for a big audience so he could use some sensationalism to sell his books. You, lets hope you’re not in it for the big money and are mature enough to be polite.
There are always two sides to a story and readers will get a more 3D picture of your real-life characters if you can get inside their heads to decipher their behaviors or imagine what it was that caused them to be “that way.” If you write with at least some degree of understanding, then you should be able to stand proudly (and bravely) by your work in the face of your mother. Or your father, or your siblings. And, of course, it depends on how sensitive your family members are. (See Lori Gottlieb’s essay Mothers, Brace Yourself in the May 7, 2009, issue of The New York Times.)
Maybe the moral of this story is to be careful how you treat your kids because they could grow up and bite you with a revenge memoir. Here’s a light-hearted look at a dad’s fear. Me, I think I’m only guilty of shouting, “Clean your room!” too much.
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