Always light

On sharing

I posted something in my Instagram stories last week about one of my children being poorly. I had felt uneasy posting it, because I only drip-feed information about my family on social media. I don’t share recognisable photos of the girls and I try to only write about them in relation to my own experience of mothering them. Their lives are not my story to tell.

When I wrote Twelve Moons, I was fearful of a backlash from people who might take offence at my decision to write a story about my family. I had difficult conversations with my agent and my editor, with friends and family, and of course with my children, about what writing the book meant in terms of the collision between creativity and privacy. Ultimately the desire to share the story of a hidden woman and the reality of mothering and caring alone was stronger than the fear of judgement.

I also worked hard to protect everyone in the story. I wrote my children into characters with qualities that reflected themes within the book. In the first draft, I wrote in the third person, as if I was some kind of everywoman. I later shifted the narrative into first person, but the sense that I was writing about aspects of life experienced by so many women remained on the page. Messages from readers tell me that my instincts were correct, but it’s important to remember that a memoir is only a snapshot of a life. When I am asked about the process of writing my book I often say that choosing which parts to leave out was as hard as finding the right words. There are aspects of my life that I do not write about, though I am not deceptive, only selective. Social media can make us believe that we know people we have never met, but even writers like me, who are described as ‘honest’, are curating the image we present to the outside world.

This is especially true for mothers, who are pinned firmly under the glare of societal judgement. I find that I dance between raging about broken systems and wanting to appear likeable. One moment I rant about unfair scrutiny, the next I record a video about my work and hope the light is flattering. There is a self-censorship accompanying my online life that echoes my experience of real life, the one away from the screen.