I Let Extended Family Back Into My Life. They Were Ill-Prepared for My Career as a Writer.

My writing teacher and mentor Susan Shapiro, author of The Byline Bible: Get Published In 5 Weeks, often uses a quirky, eye-catching line in her bio: Susan Shapiro is the bestselling author of several books her family hates.

(My Writer Success Story Began With Getting Over Myself.)

Indeed, Shapiro practices what she preaches to her students. She writes vulnerable, raw, and relatable essays and memoirs about her life experiences ranging from love to addiction, but she is also abundantly clear about what such successful work requires of writers. One of the main pieces of advice she offers in her popular writing guide and online classes deals with family: “Remember, the first piece you write that your family hates means you’ve found your voice,” she says. “If you don’t want to offend anyone, try writing a cookbook.”

I am no stranger to writing essays that—I assume—my family hates. Although, I suspect that I care less than the average writer about this specific risk. I am a big believer in what is perhaps Anne Lamott’s most famous (and controversial) commentary about writing. In her book Bird By Bird, which functions as part memoir, part guide for writers, she asserts the following: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

I have taken both Shapiro’s and Lamott’s guidance to heart tenfold, particularly when I decided to write about the recent death of an abusive family member.

Tell Your Stories

At 43 years old, I have spent most of my life disconnected from extended family. As a child, I couldn’t make sense of the constant conflict that ultimately led to the adults estranging from each other for years on end. My experiences, and the pure vitriol I witnessed from such a young age, were so extreme that I opted out of having children of my own. To my mind, remaining childfree was the only surefire way to break the cycle of intergenerational dysfunction that had plagued my upbringing.

Recently, when a few relatives found me on social media and extended an invitation to connect, a small part of me wondered if I should interpret their contact as an olive branch of sorts. Had they regretted their three-decades-long absence from my life? Were they curious about the woman I became? Did they miss me? What were their memories of us?

My curiosity got the better of me and I decided to grant their requests for access but with boundaries firmly in place: We’d engage on social media, but nowhere else. I had no reason to believe that these people were psychologically safe for me to interact with on a deep level. I would need to assess the situation for myself, and given my experiences in therapy and knowledge of how intergenerational trauma works, I knew which patterns to look for. The moment their presence reminded me of those old childhood wounds, I’d have to walk away.

The outcome was all too predictable, and it didn’t take long to be faced with that decision.

Finding Your Voice

Within months of my tepid reconnection with these family members, my maternal grandmother passed away. We were all, for better or for worse, connected through this woman. We all carry significant trauma as a direct result of her brand of mothering. Not one family member has gotten out unscathed; my own therapy bills are proof of her legacy.

Discussions about abusive and toxic family systems are finally gaining traction in the public imagination. It benefits no one to keep these realities in the shadows, and I feel called to contribute to the discourse where I can. Several weeks after her death, my essay, “This Woman’s Controversial Obituary For Her Mom Caused Outrage — But We Need More Like It,” was published in the Huffington Post. It was my first piece with the outlet, and was a result of one of my “humiliation” essays, Susan Shapiro’s hallmark assignment with which she encourages her students to reveal their most embarrassing secret.

As it happens, my family legacy consists of adults turning on each other before eating their young—perhaps my most humiliating secret to date.

The essay highlights my skepticism about the obituary genre as a whole. I situate my commentary in the context of the death of my grandmother, a woman for whom nothing positive could possibly be written or spoken. I critique the long-held and outdated belief that the deceased deserve nothing but admiration, praise, and idolatry. I push back against the idea that to highlight their abuses is to speak ill of the dead. When the dead can no longer be held accountable for their life-altering destruction, it seems ghoulish to give them a vote in how they are remembered, whether privately or publicly.

Too many survivors of abuse and dysfunction are often forced to bear witness to how their deceased family members are deified by others simply for having died, and with blatant disregard for how these people lived. Their victims are not only expected to remain silent, but to actively partake in this glorification—often at significant cost to one’s mental health.

The cost of this silence is too high, and writers are uniquely positioned to enter the conversation in ways that might help an extraordinary amount of people.

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Writing as a Public Service

Through my essay, I was reminded of how some people are ill-prepared for what it means to have a writer in the family.

After my piece was published, several of my distant relatives made their feelings loud and clear. These are the same people who dropped out of my life decades ago. One called me names and resorted to intimidation tactics while the other reprimanded me as though I was a child, and not a professional writer with the right to her stories. Their darkness and dysfunction—those old patterns of abuse that I remembered all too well from childhood—were on full public display. I suppose their behavior accomplished the opposite of what they had in mind: Their toxic responses only validated the need for pieces like mine.

Remarkably, the feedback I received from strangers also validated the need to bring abuse out of the closet in our essays and stories. When I published this essay, I expected significant pushback from social media’s nauseating “family is everything” brigade, but received quite the opposite from most readers.

Since my piece went live, I’ve heard from survivors and mental health professionals alike who also recognize the need for raw stories about the realities of toxic family systems. But perhaps the most riveting note I received came from a hospice bereavement counselor whose life’s work centers on facilitating care for survivors of abusive family members. In her email to me, she’d written the following about her clients:

I am in such awe of their honesty and willingness to share about the person who died, no holds barred. You may be interested in reading the book “Liberating Losses, When Death Brings Relief.” It is a wonderful resource, and reminds us that we do not grieve everyone.

As for my family, I guess they hated my essay. Which means I found my voice. But I’ll take it one step further: I not only found my voice, I found my truth.