Vulnerable post: I have a tough decision to make about my book. It's not ready to publish at this time. Gulp. I have had two very experienced and expert editors tell me the same thing. This is disheartening, to say the least. To summarize their words, I'm a good, strong writer, and the story is riveting, timely, and very worth telling. The problem is that it's told as if by a reporter. They cannot feel me, the narrator, the person who experienced it. One of the editors told me it was as if I was disassociated from my feelings as a child. That made me cry because the truth is, I was. Maybe I still am.
My life was so confusing. It was the best of times and the worst of times. There was trauma bonding and enmeshment. There was fun, love, and laughter. There was violence, neglect, and the crossing of healthy sexual boundaries. There was adventure and excitement punctuated by events that can only be described as devastating to my developing psyche.
To this day, I struggle to connect with my emotions. I struggle to sympathize with myself when I suffer loss, illness, or loneliness. And I have had to learn to be more compassionate toward others. Get over it, pull yourself up, overcome, or else!
I don't want to condemn anyone in my family. My mother had a beautiful dream and a great hope for a new kind of world. She had suffered in her childhood and was the victim of sexual abuse and mental illness. My sweet, caring stepfather was my rock. He did his best to protect us. Mom had left every man, including the fathers of her (then five) children, because she didn't want to be controlled by anyone, didn't want anyone telling her how to raise her brood, so she didn't make it easy on him (he was also 24 to her 34 when they met) when he stood up to her. My sister, who maybe could have helped, was also too severely damaged to do so.
So here I am with a choice. Do I release the book now, get it off my plate and move on, even though it reads like reportage by a disinterested journalist just telling it like it is? Or do I spend the rest of this year working with an editor to add my voice?
In the first scenario, I write other things and put time into the movement I'm passionate about right now (promoting a people-centered food system). In the second scenario, I stand a real chance of having a national bestseller while impacting people with the beauty of my family's mission and dream for a better world and being an example of how to survive and even thrive after adversity (but having to relearn how to feel).
Update: Since this post on Facebook, I have decided to work with Gina Frangelo of Circe Consulting to do a developmental edit. She'll be done by June 15, and I should be able to get started shortly after that. Stay tuned. By the way, I had 70+ people post encouragements and recommendations which helped me make my decision.
The photo is of the moment I greeted my parents when they picked me up from the orphanage after their 19-month imprisonment.
