🧵 Thursday Thread | Family Matters

The Ethics, Challenges & Rewards of Writing About Family

You have a story you’re burning to tell, but it is not yours alone. Other characters include family members or former family members—and whether they betrayed you, supported you, or were bystanders—they will be deeply affected by your portrayal of them on the page.

Some writing teachers say, “It’s your story, and you get to tell it.” Or, “If he didn’t want you to write about what he did, he shouldn’t have done it.” Others insist that the privacy of the people in your life is an ethical priority that must be honored.

A few years back, I did an event through The Writers Center on this topic with seven-time author Laura Davis (The Courage to Heal and The Burning Light of Two Stars). Laura and I shared our decades of experience writing about family. Both of us had outed abusers on the page, navigated subsequent estrangements and reconciliations, and written long-running columns about our children (while sometimes paying a price).

Both of our perspectives on writing about family have changed over time, and yours might, too, if you write about family.

In the conversation with Laura, which you can watch/listen to in the YouTube video above if you are particularly interested in this topic, we covered:

• The therapeutic value (and challenges) of writing about family secrets, history, and trauma
• The difference between personal writing and work we publish
• How to create a safe container for writing about family, free from concerns about publication
• How to walk the fine line between publishing things that may negatively affect family members while serving the greater world
• Why it’s essential to face our fears and consider the worst possible outcomes
• Why the strongest reactions—negative and positive!—sometimes come from the people you’d least expect
• If, when, and how to inform family members about writing that involves them

For today’s thread, I’m curious about your thoughts on writing about family (or other people close to you). For example:

Do you ascribe to a certain code of ethics?

Have you thought about it?

Have you suffered any blowback?

Do you have any regrets?

Do you have any fears?

Do you have any questions?

This is a perennially hot topic and I thought about it quite a bit last night as

Billie Oh

and I read our piece, “Bent: Daughterhood Recalled Through Skin and Bone” during an event to celebrate the upcoming Writing in the Dark | The CAMP. So, I’m eager to hear your thoughts.

I’ll be tuning in from Mayo Clinic, where Jon and I are spending most of the day for another series of tests (thanks for all the love you’re sending; it is so so appreciated).

Love,

Jeannine

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