Moving On: How Trauma Has Shaped My Decision to Not Write Another Memoir

The last couple of weeks have felt a little mid-life-crisis-y for me, and of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't want to talk about it and share every aspect of it.

I've been talking to my husband a lot. He's my best friend in every way possible. I like to call him my "best favorite human". It's a little bit of an inside joke based on the memes we always share back and forth throughout the day when we're not together. Talking to him is so easy. We always ramble at each other, and I know we both love it. It's another one of those differences in our new life, vs. the old lives we had before we knew one another. And it is through talking to him over the last couple weeks, and honestly having multiple breakdowns, that he's enabled me to discover what the hell is wrong with me.

I don't truly believe it's a midlife crisis. What I do think is that it's me finally taking a deep breath, looking back at EVERYTHING I've been through to be right where I am today, with this beautiful life I have, and realizing just how much life took from me before I ever had a chance to try to be "normal". I'll be turning 40 next year, and although I'm not at all scared (I'm actually excited) to be in my 40s, it's still a big enough number for me to look back and realize that the first half of my life was absolute trash, and I deserved better.

I should never have had to fight as hard as I have to be loved, valued, or shown compassion and empathy.

But that has been the life I've led.

As I've tried to make time to sit and write another memoir, I've realized a few things:

I'm putting pressure on myself to make something out of the garbage life I was shoved into.

I DO NOT want to live in my trauma anymore.

Everyone should have treated me better!

I am not a bad person.

Nothing I went through was because I made bad choices.

My life, my personality, and my traits are all reactionary evolutions of how I was treated, abandoned, neglected, manipulated, gaslit, and abused.

And this next one is big:

It's not my responsibility to fix the mess they created.

The people I'm referring to are my original family. My mom and dad. My aunts and uncles. Mainly those first two though. They screwed me up irreparably and at almost 40 I'm still trying to make sense of it all, and "fix" what they broke.

My first memoir was almost an accident. Writing was how I released my pain, and how I talked about it because I had no one other than the pages of my journals to listen to me.

By accident, I knew people who could help me edit and publish it.

When it was ready for the world, I had shaped such a message that I became a missionary for the opioid epidemic and an advocate for awareness and change.

Then I had social media and friends who appreciated how "Raw" and "Real" I was about my story, and I think I loved shocking people with what I had been through because no one knew me that way or understood what I had been through. Suddenly everyone in my circle's eyes were open to the shitshow of my life and I was finally getting the support I needed because I was being very open about it all.

It was all a very positive experience. It made me feel like I had a purpose, and that purpose was to make sure this didn't happen to anyone else or help change the narrative for other people going through what I had been through. I wanted to give others a voice, like what I was finding in myself. I wanted to give people a safe space to talk about it, and find others to relate to because I know how terribly lonely grief and trauma are.

Then the pandemic happened and everything came to a crashing end, for all of us.

Everything I was doing stopped, and I didn't know how to keep going with the momentum I'd had prior to the shutdown that happened in March 2020.

I had written a second book, that would never officially be published, nor have the support or audience my first book had. My dreams started dying, my purpose was gone, and I felt empty. These were very familiar feelings to me, and I hated them.

I've asked myself countless times, what would have happened with my books if the pandemic had never happened? Would I have kept up the momentum, or given up and moved on organically?

What the pandemic showed me, or at least what I see now, is that it was just another thing that was so drastically out of my control, and all I could do was react. The pandemic wasn't my fault, just like the actions of my dead family weren't my fault, but I had to survive it all and find a way to keep going.

Honestly, it was getting exhausting.

I am still exhausted.

Regardless of everything that happened after the pandemic started, my divorce is mainly what I'm referring to here, all of that still happened. I wrote books, until the pandemic ripped the rug out from under me, and I stopped. I stopped because I had to be a fulltime mom again, and help my children navigate all the scary uncertainty in their lives and give them some kind of structure. We all did. That was the name of the game in 2020 and 2021.

Once my life started becoming more normal again, with a new love, a new stable home, and now a new career, I began wondering if I could do it again. Could I write another memoir and start over, and get back what I lost?

The answer to that is yes. I absolutely could, and I was well on my way to it, but here's what I've noticed and why I won't be doing that after all:

I am living inside my trauma. Trauma that was thrust upon me without my consent in various forms, and I resent all of it. I have found myself getting angry again, scared again, lost again, lonely again, and in so much pain I can't bear it.

That is called PTSD or C-PTSD (the C stands for complex).

I have worked so hard the last few years to understand my PTSD, a very real diagnosis with very real impacts on me and everyone around me, and learn to cope and lead a more normal life that I can emotionally sustain, and the truth is, it's really difficult to do that when I'm so far in the trenches (so to speak) while trying to write another book and regain what I thought I had.

What I am in now, after two long weeks of big emotions, and long conversations with my best favorite human (my husband), is acceptance.

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference" - Reinhold Niebuhr

A very apt quote for what I'm experiencing right now.

I can not change the choices my family made.

I had a moment to help the world find change, and I was courageous about sharing my story with a wide audience and impacting quite a few people, more than I had anticipated, with my story.

I shared compassion and showcased what it took to have empathy for people we don't understand.

I am very proud of what I accomplished.

I wrote a memoir. I had it published. I did book events, signings, and speaking events. I reached out to teens and worked with them to understand that they're not alone. I impacted a lot of different ages and backgrounds.

I did well.

What my husband helped me discover is that my first book had its moment, and I had mine. It served its purpose in my life and helped me heal in a way I never would have without writing it and sharing it.

Anything beyond that, I've also discovered, is forcing me back into trauma I don't want to relive. I've done enough reliving and retelling of that story, and I'm super duper ready now to live the next half of my life accepting what I couldn't change, and living the life I've always deserved.

I deserve a chance to move on from that pain.

I am going to allow myself to move on from that pain.

I can not change the choices my family made, and it will likely always haunt me, but I get to choose now how I spend the next half of my life and it's not going to be trying to rewrite the narrative of what they did with theirs.

Through all of this I have gained something very special, and that is the sense that I am finally in control of the life I'm living. I get a say.

I get to be different for my children and not what my parents were for me.

I get to love this husband of mine fiercely in the way he deserves to be loved, and in the way I want to show him love.

I get to choose my hobbies, not because I'm lost, confused, or broken, but because I have time to do something that brings me joy and gives me a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.

If I write, it's because I want to write, not because I have to share this horrible lifetime of trauma because no one will listen. Actually, a lot of people listened, and now I get to realize and hold onto the fact that I have so many people in my life who care about me and my family and spend time traveling to visit them.

I get another chance at a life I always deserved, but never had.

Whatever I do from this point on, it's going to be with a grateful heart.

What I won't do anymore, is sit in the trauma and continue to hurt myself. I don't have enough time left for that, and I hope this message is inspiring to at least one person.

It's not easy. Not at all. I still probably need more therapy, and will likely seek that out when I decide I have time for it, but it's not impossible.

Ok, I've said what I needed to say.

I'm not going to write another memoir, at least not until I've had more time to understand what I've gone through and have a therapist on standby to get me through it. Both are going to be necessary if I ever do this again.

What I will do, is think of something else that will help scratch this itch I have to create. I have many ideas. I can say that A. Diamond Books is not going anywhere. What I write will just fit into a different genre, but I'm not sure what genre that is yet. My love of books isn't dead, and I will always be thankful to my mother for instilling that in me. Books are so magical and wonderful, and I will always advocate for a world full of books, and a book in each child's hands.

We are lucky to live in a world where stories matter.

Books are empowering, and one of the most beautiful treasures I think this world has.

It's definitely not something I'm going to give up.

It's time for something different. That's all.