Writing Group Feedback: How to Maintain Moral Integrity

By Barbie Beaton

In memoir, the narrator’s journey often starts in a forest of confusion as she navigates moral conflicts toward her truest, most whole self. My story is no exception.

My memoir is about surviving the wrongs of my ’80s upbringing—poverty, neglect, violence, erasure—but the younger me of the story exhibits questionable behavior at times, providing a dubious container for my narrator’s moral conflict. I risked readers who sided against me.

Recently, I learned just how ...