Exposing Myself

Hard to believe that Rooting Around will celebrate its first trip around the sun in September.

Yes, I’ve been cranking out words for decades at this point, but during that time I’ve taken lengthy breaks here and there, sometimes for as long as two years, including early 2001 when I veered off course to launch a full-time eBay business, including a stint where I specialized in selling vintage funeral equipment.

But that’s another story.

I had toyed with the idea of launching a Substack for a year before I actually took the plunge, because the thought of having to meet a weekly — albeit self-inflicted — deadline made me squirm.

What if I didn’t want to write something that week?

Well, the truth is I haven’t always wanted to, which I’ve freely admitted. At those times, I’ve posted lightly-edited pieces from my memoir-in-progress, and the response surprised me since they ended up pulling in more comments and eyeballs than the how-to-do-research pieces that I had planned from the beginning.

I took the hint and started to post more of these pieces. Each time before I hit the POST button, I felt a little frisson of anxiety rise up.

YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT THIS STUFF.

YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL.

Lightning didn’t fall out of the sky and strike me. So I told a little more. And I kept breathing.

This week marked new territory. At this point, I consider that those who read Rooting Around know what they’re getting into. Anyone can wander around the archives, from A Special Day to The Last Christmas and become a little familiar with my story. And if it’s too much for them, they are free to swerve somewhere else.

This week, my first YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL essay was published in a popular national outlet: Next Avenue, a highly-respected site that covers news and lifestyle topics for an over-50 audience. How Researching Four WWII Heroines Helped Me Understand My Mother posted on Monday. The first lines:

My mother didn't want to be a mother.

But my father wanted kids — badly — and back in the 1960s, most women did what their husbands wanted them to do.

Today, some might say that in some circles not much has changed, but that's another story.

In any case, if you grow up hearing "I never wanted kids, that was your father" at least once a week, you learn to deal with it by either tuning out or fighting back. My sister was the fighter while I withdrew, growing a thick skin and turning my gaze outward, away from my family.

I could have published this essay here, but I thought it deserved a larger audience. Plus, it helped get the word out about Propaganda Girls four months after it was published, a time when every book could use a little boost. When I saw the post online for the first time, I had a curious reaction:

I felt myself distance myself from it, the same way I did in the early days of Rooting Around when I posted even the tiniest detail from my life. Keep in mind that it was once verboten for writers and journalists to inject themselves into a story, memoir and personal essays aside. Social media, of course, has forever altered that.

I’ve spent most of my life with a thick wall around me, to protect against emotions coming in or going out, often simultaneously. Over time, looking at my own secrets and then sharing them with others have created some cracks in that wall.

I’ve blocked so much out that it’s not that I think I’ve imagined my lousy childhood when I do think about it, but more that Oh, maybe it wasn’t so bad.

After all, it’s childhood. It’s all we know until we are exposed to others where the mothers and family members do things differently. In my case, it was Oh look, the other mothers actually talk to their husbands and kids. The families actually do things together.

What a concept.

I think what sparked my distance this week was seeing that photo in a national context. The Next Avenue editor captioned it: “Lisa Rogak's mother holding her as a baby with clenched fists and crossed legs.”

Here was proof that I wasn’t imagining it, a trap I’ve sometimes fallen into. This was how I grew up, with a mother with permanently clenched fists and crossed legs, so willfully cut off from the others who share the same four walls.

"I never wanted kids, that was your father," was her standard throwaway line, and undoubtedly the primary reason for my ever-thickening skin. There are others that I haven’t yet begun to address, here or to myself.

Due to countless moves and more than a few basement floods, the stash of family photos is pretty sparse indeed. But I am so glad I have that photo of my mother holding me when I was six weeks old, because it’s proof that my mother didn’t want me.

A few months ago when I looked — really looked — at that photo and the message it sent, I finally allowed the sentence — My mother didn’t want me — to permeate my gray matter.

Looking that sentence in the face — and seeing that photo posted online for a national audience — allowed me to really see her for the first time, as proof of how cause and effect — and extreme unhappiness — can shape a person and how that is effortlessly handed down to those who share her space.

So much clicked into place. And it finally allowed me to admit one small truth to a national audience.

P.S. Thank you to those new subscribers who read my essay.

This Week’s Takeaway: What hard truth have you been avoiding? What would it take for you to actually look it in the eye — for even a moment? And how do you sense it would change you? Try to answer these questions now, or more likely, just file it away for the future. Even if this hard truth flashes across your brain for just a moment, no doubt your unconscious will begin to chew on it, creating time and space in the future where you can finally look at it head-on.