To write truthfully sometimes we have to write things we may not want others to know but are important to be true to who we are as a writer.

When I think about this it kind nails me to the wall. My past isn’t pretty. And it’s not from anything bad I’ve done personally, but instead what has been done to me as a child. I think of my mom and every thing she went through as a child. My Granny and Grandpa partly raised me as a child. However, how they were with me was completely different from with my mom.

To the outside world, life with Granny and Grandpa were the quintessential parents. The amount of people alone at Granny’s funeral back in March 1994, told of how many people they touched and how many loved them. But the reality of being one of their children was nothing the appearances showed. I don’t know everything other than nothing looked as it appeared to everyone on the outside.

So my mom with all that she went through with her childhood did the best she could when raising me, my brother and my sister. Was there abuse you might ask? I’m not going to say there wasn’t. But at the same time my mom also realized when I was young she needed to change and she got the help she needed. So to write about my childhood is something that I know is important to get down, but at the same time I would never in a million years want something I wrote to hurt my mom. I love her very much and will always want to make sure that I don’t hurt her if at all possible. I think sometimes I try to be very careful what I write because in no way would I want to hurt her or a single person in my family for that matter. But at the end of the day I have to remember to be true to who I am as a writer as well.