This weekend I finished Martha Beck's memoir Leaving the Saints. Absorbing it was a big turning point for me. The book was about Beck's departure from the Mormon religion, after repressed memories of abuse began flooding back to her.
What struck me most, is the love she maintains for her family, even as she ultimately decides to take action that will cause her to be excommunicated from them.
This is what that niggling little shoulder sitter sometimes says to me, dripping with sarcasm, as I work on my memoir,
"If you've really forgiven, then why do you feel the need to write a book that will hurt them?"
One hand on the keyboard, I use the other to brush her away. I type on, driven by something much deeper, but she does plant that seed of doubt.
I sat down a decade ago to write this story and nothing would come out. I wasn't ready. This time, I couldn't stop. I rose before the sun each day, fingers trying to keep up with the words.
Now I can see why my parents ended up together. Teenagers at the time, each vulnerable and wounded. One a victim, the other a bully because he'd also been deeply hurt. Stepping back, I see how their story, and mine, unfolded and it's all okay. If not for the healthy disrespect for authority I gained in that environment, I doubt I'd have been the "defiant" mother Riley needed me to be. If I hadn't looked into the eyes of my beautiful newborn boy, I never would have realized my father was born just as beautiful, just as innocent.
I don't know the source, but I heard a quote recently, paraphrased, "Forgiveness is giving up wishing things had been different."
I have.
I tell my story for every disadvantaged child, hoping those who read it will think twice before writing off a kid, based on her social status or her parent's dysfunction. I write my story for every girl who came before me who couldn't tell hers, and every girl after, who might.
I write because the choice not to feels like death.
My parents may not like my book.
And I love them.
Two separate things.
Thank you Martha Beck.
Amen.
ne. 
