Sometimes life throws curve balls that you don’t expect. Today, I found out from my son that my nephew read my book. I was quite surprised and taken aback by this. There are events in the book which I would think my sister would protect people from, not the least of which is my brother, Tony.
When I sent the link to my book to my sister, I wasn’t even sure she would read it, given the subtitle. Not pleasant things she wants to think about after all, denial being one of the family strong suits. Even if my sister did read the book, I figured she would probably just mumble something to her family about it and leave it be.
Apparently not. Likely my sister did not know to do that, which probably traces back to her inability to be authentic, and/or her lack of understanding as to what that means or an understanding of the consequences of her actions.
My nephew, and by extrapolation, my sister, took issue with some of the things in the book. How would he know? He wasn’t there. But he is his mother’s son, although my nephew did note that the book was “beautifully written”.
At first, that’s all I took away from what my son told me, a beautifully written book. Afterwards though, it started to eat at me. The discounting of my experience started a chain reaction of something I always struggle with. Self-doubt. Are my memories so way off? What if I don’t remember things right? Is my sister just rewriting history, or am I somehow totally off-base?
I have no doubt my memories of my childhood are slanted to what I felt I was experiencing. I’m sure in ways, my sister remembers things much better. She was a lot older after all. When one is 7, and the other is 18, there are bound to be differences in memories.
So maybe I was all wrong? I felt the book was written from a place of deep truth, but maybe I’ve misremembered everything?
Finally, it dawned on me. My sister is doing exactly what I predicted she would do, exactly what I wrote in the book. Saying my memories aren’t true. Oh, I thought, we really aren’t in a place any different than we were before. We are just exactly where I thought we would be.
Still, I am struggling. Self-doubt can be paralyzing. “I believed what I was told, and not what my own eyes saw.” That was in a meditation book I read once. It struck a deep chord in me, and I’ve often held on to this. I have fought against discounting all my life, but I guess in the back of my mind, there has always been a little voice that says, “Maybe I am wrong, and everyone else is right.”
Being discounted leaves you wondering what is really true, and that, for me, is literally crazy-making. Also, having my secrets bared to someone like my nephew feels like an invasion of privacy, although I should probably have prepared myself for something like that.
Even so, I stand in the storm, trying to retrieve the bits of myself from it.
When I first linked my book out on Amazon, due to my inexperience, it had a stock photo of a palm tree on the e-book cover of it. Later, I had a customized cover, but that palm tree is still a symbol to me. The palm tree is standing tall and alone and straight on a rocky shore, withstanding the storms, withstanding the inhospitable earth it grows in.
I will be like that palm tree. I will stand buffeted by these winds and find nourishment from friends around me, as I have done many times in my life. I will stand straight and tall, I will hold on to my truth, and I will remember that I have the strength to withstand another storm.
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