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P.S. The closer I get to seeing the big horror show picture of my mother and my childhood, the more I see that my father must have been the counterweight to her madness.
What a counterweight he must have been that we made it out of there alive, and as ‘well off’ as we all are!
Without him, I am pretty assured that left alone on that homestead (or anywhere) she would have eventually found a way to kill me, if not all of us, including herself.
++++++++++++++
Stop the Storm 
Genre-Nonfiction Biography(if your writing the story about your mother) or Nonfiction Autobiography (if your writing the story about yourself)
Really don’t know about the legal issues with name changes. This may help:
http://writenonfictioninnovember.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/creative-nonfiction-how-to-stay-out-of-trouble/
Good luck Linda–I’m rooting for you……
Thank you! Seems strange to me it would be biography if everything is in her words – words she wrote while alive, obviously — just is confusing to me!
This must be another step in the journey I hit today – really has stirred up a lot of garbage! I just talked extensively to my sister to get my equilibrium back a little. On some level some part of me is going, “Shame on you, Linda! How could you even think about publishing ‘MY’ (like the voice is my mother’s) letters!” blah blah blah – knowing she would NEVER have included the info I am going to!
Also, realizing like ‘hit me in the face’ that Mother’s words have the power to hurt living people — the mean things she says — and trying to find out how I feel about that, while considering particularly Dorothy Pollard’s feelings (who wrote “Eight Stars of Gold” – our neighbor) and another neighbor back there in particular.
These people were a part of the history – can I write a history if I have to change the names? How do I handle this equitably? – leaving out that I ‘owe’ my mother anything
Realizing I am looking at three books in one:
(1) an account of homesteading, going ‘back to the land’ etc for people generally interested in that story
(2) an actual history of the people and events of the Eagle River Valley – a piece of Alaska’s latter homesteading history – of historical value
(3) and most importantly to me, I am publishing what I see as a pretty comprehensive ‘case history-study’ of a severely abusive Borderline
I suppose lastly, it is also (4) a family history
AND — this is NOT considering a book with ANY of my personal story, analysis or interpretation, conjecture or postulation!
How do I be true to all these multiple purposes for this book and not hurt anybody else?
I will pursue the link you provided, and thank you for it! I must come to some resolution about the ‘legalities’ as I finish this first edit and begin the second one! Will keep you posted, and thanks for the ‘rooting’!
Your mom and grandma had conflict when they lived near each other. It seems like your grandma may have even confronted your mom regarding her treatment of you. What happened next? Your mother took you and the family away. Perhaps your grandma feared complete estrangement if she did not play along–all this behavior most likely on a subconscious level. Your mom had amazing control of all significant people in her life. If she was not able to control them, there was NO relationship at all. Look at your paternal grandparents and her brother. They obviously did not play the game the way your mother would have liked so they were banned. Unfortunately, the most important people in your life gave your mother too much control-to your detriment.
I believe your mother sensed her loss of control over you when you were 18 and commuted to work with your dad. Your father was getting to know you in a way he never did before–as a person–a nice person. This would go against your role as the evil one in the family. Your mother could no longer feed your father false information because he could clearly see that you were just a regular kid behaving in a regular way. What happened next? You were banned forever!
It would be interesting to know about the relationship with your parents after you left home. It seems the only story mentioned on your blog was the homecoming with your infant daughter which did not turn out well. Perhaps, another time, another book! 🙂
And when he nearly strangled her to death shortly after I left home…..
On different topic, while I’m thinking of this
Have you any idea, opinion of what genre the book of my mother’s writings would be?
Also, wondering about the homesteading history chronicle — and whether or not I have to change all the people’s real names – any ideas?
I think you’re right. Although I don’t give him much credit in the “parent” department, his mere presence and her unending desire to please him kept her grounded in at least the reality of knowing some degree of right from wrong (murder is wrong!). This is what always confuses me about your mother. I believe she knew what she did to you was wrong. She never wrote about you to her mother except very superficially. She never indicated to her mother that she thought you were the “devil’s child”. She never indicated to her mom that you were different from the other kids or treated differently. She knew her mother would react negatively to say the least.
Your father was completely cut off from his own feelings and co-dependent thus enabling horrific behavior towards you by your mother. She did not hide her behavior from him because she did not have to hide it. He turned his head and choose not to “see”. Your father’s crime was allowing severe child abuse to happen without intervention. His crime was as bad as your mother’s crime even though he never touched you. He was equally as sick as your mom, if not more. He had the ability and the intelligence to know this behavior was wrong. He choose not to see.
I have ‘bowled my way’ through first edit from 1958 until October 1963 at this point. There are letters from Aug and Sept of this year between my parents again as mother went to Santa Fe for 2 months and he stayed in Alaska. Having closely followed the insanity of the years from 1958 until this trip, it ‘blew me away’ to see how my father sort of literally SLID into form directly in accordance to what mother was demanding at that time — as if he, himself, had no more ability to REMEMBER what had come before than she did!
And reading over again some of my grandmother’s letters – to say the least, she was very strange! She seemed to do the same thing, shift her shape to fit mother’s demands in the same way. Neither she nor dad DARED to cross her it seems or to make her ‘angry’. WHY?
There will come a point where I will simply be able to state about my father one thing: This was madness.
There is no reason-able-ness where madness lies. It does not matter how left-brain brilliant the man was. I believe there was a point where his reason failed him when it came to my mother, her abuse of me and her abuse of him.