Estrangement, Dementia, and the Fractured Memoir

Lisa [00:00]:

Lara, Lara, Lara, it is so good to see you once again. Welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I am delighted to have you on.

Lara [00:04]: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk to you.

Lisa [00:10]:

Well, I have been a fan of your work for years. In fact, I have all three of your books, and I don’t know if I can hold them all up at the same time, but I’m going to try. So, we have Girlish, Mama, Mama, Only Mama, and your newest book, which is the one we’re going to be talking about today—The Truth of Unringing Phones—which, oh my gosh, it just spoke to my soul.

First, I just want to say thank you for writing this, and I look forward to diving in. But what would you like us to know about you as a writer and about this book?

Lara [00:47]:

This was a really interesting book because I wrote the majority of it during the pandemic. And at the start of the pandemic, I lost my words. I used to be able to write for several hours at a time. I’d generally write 2,000 words in a sitting, but I could barely string sentences together. However, I was mentoring a woman through the AWP Writer to Writer program, and I was asking her to write. It didn’t feel fair to ask her to write while I wasn’t writing myself.

So, this book was entirely different in the process of writing it, compared to anything else I had written. The fact that it found a publisher and resonates with readers is just amazing to me.

Lisa [1:37]:

 Well, it definitely resonates with me. And, by the way, my cat Foxy is here with us today, so we will say hello to Foxy. But yes, this book resonates. What you just said about early COVID—that happened to me too. I absolutely couldn’t write. I think there was something about the enormity of what was happening that stole breath, words, everything we had going on.

What I love is that you were holding yourself accountable because you had someone else you were mentoring, and you wanted to walk your talk—and you did. This book, to me, has this strong tension between yearning, wanting to lean in, and the need to pull back. I don’t know if “estrangement” is the right word for what happens because it’s not true estrangement, but it’s on that spectrum.

I also noticed that this book feels very different. You said it was different, but when I was reading it, it felt different. The other two books—Girlish and Mama, Mama, Only Mama—both feel very cohesive. They have a linear arc, like we’re going on a journey. But with this book, I was all over the place, which seems to mirror the emotional experience of having a parent like this. So, how did you know this was the right structure for this book?

Lara [03:16]:

When I was three years old, my father moved over 4,000 miles away—from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska. I didn’t have a linear story with him. What I had were phone calls a couple of times a year, visits a couple of times a year, and a lot of silence in between.

The amount you change between a summer when you’re four and a summer when you’re eight is huge. You’re like a totally different person. The years between 12 and 13—I remember when I was 12, I walked off the plane with my arms full of Cabbage Patch Kids, and at 13, I walked off in high tops, with too much eyeliner and teased hair.

There were so many gaps in our relationship that I knew a linear story wasn’t going to work. All I had in my relationship with my father were these fragments. That tension you talked about—it’s been present my whole life. I’ve been in counseling forever—I think I started when I was five or six. My mom was a big proponent of counseling, and counselors always told me, “You have to stop going to the well that’s dry and expecting water.”

I was so desperate for my father’s time, attention, and affection—mostly time. Yet, that yearning was destroying me. I think, in a lot of ways, children truly have unconditional love in a way adults struggle with. It’s not natural to try to turn that off for a parent, but loving him was destroying me, because he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—give me what I needed.

I think that’s true for so many of us, especially with parents and family members.

Lisa [05:19]:

Yeah, it really can be, especially in our modern age. I was watching this video clip where Gabor Maté was interviewing a woman who was feeling bad about her experiences growing up and with her parenting skills. She asked, “What did my ancestors go through? Was it like this for them?”

His answer was, “It wasn’t like this.” The world we live in now is so different. Sometimes, you have parents who are nurturing, helpful, and supportive. Other times, you don’t, and you have to make the difficult choice to have strong boundaries.

In this book, the struggle isn’t just the push-pull of this childhood experience, which you render very clearly. There’s also this inciting incident—Dad has Alzheimer’s disease. We have this parent going through illness. So many of us, especially daughters—firstborn daughters, but really any daughters—face this conflict about what it means to be a good daughter. Do you have to divorce yourself from your own experience and just give, give, give to aging, infirm parents, or is it okay to protect yourself and do what’s right for you?

Lara [06:54]: For me, every book I write is centered around a question. The central question for this book is: What do I owe a father who abandoned me? Now that he’s old and lonely—and, as you said, suffering from dementia and denying it, with his wife also in denial—I had to explore, “Is this real? Am I exaggerating?” That reflected so much of my relationship with him. I often asked myself, “Is this abuse? Am I being too sensitive?” The dementia question mirrored so many of my other questions about my father that it felt natural as a theme.

Lisa [07:50]:

Thank you for talking about your essential question. I’m always telling people a book should have an essential question. It’s great to hear you not only thought about it, but that you had it. And yes, that is definitely the exploration in this book. I felt the same push-pull. There were moments that felt like abuse, but where is the line?

The structure causes us to have as many questions as you likely did as the writer. There are a few excerpts I’ve marked that I feel give us a sense of your writing voice and the tension. Would you be willing to read those?

Lara [08:45]:

Absolutely, I’d love to. This is from the titular essay, The Truth About Unringing Phones:

                  “The problem is, the space that I made when I walked away is filled with the echoes of his voice calling for me, now that he is old and alone. The other children he chose over me—they don’t want him either, not that they ever did. It was always their mother who forced them on each other.

“As for me, I was never enough for him to choose. No matter who was smarter, prettier, or did better in school, perhaps my inescapable failure birthed my apathy. I was never very good at having goals beyond having a family of my own. I gave up trying to win at anything back in ninth grade, and it wasn’t until I became a mother that I allowed myself to dream again.

“But Facebook posts show him smiling with other people’s children, while my own sister wasn’t invited to Thanksgiving, even though her son had died just three months before. I flew across the country for the funeral, and my father spent the morning at his step-granddaughter’s third birthday. He was late to the service.

“Life is for the living,” he said. Weren’t my sister and I still alive? He meant to be there earlier. It was not his fault; it started to rain. I picture myself made of bronze, my cheek cold, my ears sealed shut. I wish and hope to be that taciturn and strong, but I’m made of flesh, and my heart still beats for him, though I tell myself over and over not to give in.

“And still, I know I will mail him gifts again this year. I will have to answer the phone on Christmas, New Year’s, and his birthday. I know his faded voice will yearn for me. Still, I will make excuses and hang up the phone as soon as eight minutes are done.”

Lisa [10:47]:

That is so beautiful. Now, we’re going to continue on page 79 with the final paragraph of this essay, which is titled An Illustrative Example.

Lara [10:57]:

“I didn’t understand that my love for my father was like balancing my small body on a teeter-totter against his larger weight. I was always floating, leaning back, squirming to make something work on my own, when all I needed was for him to put down one foot to keep us in balance.”

Lisa [11:10]:

And then we’re going to wrap up with this very short piece, Fragment of Yearning Hope.

Lara [11:21]:

I will just show people how small it is for a chapter. “I am afraid if I open my father wounds, I will bleed out. It is easier to tell the stories that scarred me than the ones that brought me joy. Happy reminiscences breed hope, and hope scrapes away my resolve, revealing my soft, vulnerable underbelly.”

“That has never worked well for me when it comes to my father.”

Lisa [11:52]:

It’s beautiful. And next to it, there is a map of Loon’s Landing. I love that you included a little graphic, which relates to things that are going to come next. So, there is a bit of circling in this—we go back and forth. Also, in this book, there are a lot of pieces that are around the sea and the boat, and, you know, the sailing. How did you figure out how to put all this together, given that it is disparate yet feels like it’s moving in a direction?

Lara [12:26]:

So, it’s always challenging to put together a collection of sort of small bits that are not linear. For me, I took this wonderful class during the pandemic with Courtney Maum, and she talked about color-coding your work. That is something I live by. I use a chapter list that is just, you know, the list of all the chapters I’m working with, and I go through and color-code them for time: okay, childhood versus adult, present versus near past versus distant past. Then I also color-coded them in terms of whether they were a fragment or a longer essay. I was able to look at that color-coded list and see, “Oh geez, I have four fragments in a row and then three long pieces in a row—that doesn’t flow right.” I was able to work on the balance that way.

The other thing I do is once I think I have it the way I want it, I put it on the floor in a pile. So, it’s chapter by chapter, all on my living room floor. Then I look at the last paragraph of one into the next paragraph, and I look at the holes. I also look at the balance of darkness to light.

Because if my father was all bad, it would have been easier to walk away. So, I had to make sure there were at least enough glimpses of light for the reader to understand why the conflict was so hard for me.

Lisa [14:08]:

First, I just want to say kudos to Courtney Maum for giving you that great information. I love that you went through this book and mapped everything out. You were able to see it. Did you put it on a wall?

Lara [14:18]:

No, I put it just on the floor, literally, and walked around it.

Lisa [14:22]:

That’s a great idea too! I always tell people, don’t do everything on the computer because there are so many things your brain can’t see, and you cannot analyze in the same way. Use the wall, use the floor, use whatever you’ve got, but spread it out and begin to see how these things are going together.

A question that’s coming to my mind around this is about the emotional aspect of this work. I just got a question yesterday about how to write about the lighter parts of a story when the experience has a lot of darkness, and the person causes direct harm. How do you wrap your mind around it? What did you do inside yourself to be able to write those parts without harming yourself?

Lara [15:16]:

It’s interesting that you asked for the excerpts you did, because one of them is directly about this.

It was harder for me to write those tender moments because I was so used to being defensive and holding myself apart from him. Allowing myself to feel those feelings of love—I would write it and then just run away. You know, I would put the chapter in my digital folder and not look at it again until I was ready to think of it as a project. But I needed some time and space.

I do think that editing is where I find my healing. The act of taking the story from something that happened to me into a creative work of art transforms me and transforms my relationship with the work. A first draft is very vulnerable, but by the time you get to the third or fourth draft, you are distancing yourself. You’re separating yourself from the wounded person on the page.

Lisa [16:29]:

Absolutely. That makes total sense. For myself, the first time someone asked me to add in lighter moments in something I was working on, which involved someone I have a complex relationship with—full of dark pieces—I wanted to give them a “middle finger sandwich,” like, “Here it is on a plate, because I’m not doing this work.”

The resistance came from this worry that if I did this, I’d discount my own experience. It was hard because I had to confront the wishes I had for things to be different, the grief I experienced around the pain. I had to see this person more clearly, flaws and all. It takes time and effort. I ran away a bunch. But I can say that the act of continuing to show up and revise—like you said—gave me agency. It allowed me to integrate it into myself and transform it, so it’s no longer in me. I’m fundamentally different, and so is that relationship, because I did that work.

Lara [17:58]:

100% agree. So many people have said to me my whole life, “Why do you even talk to him anymore? Why bother?” I felt diminished by that. On the one hand, they’re validating my trauma, but on the other hand, I’m not an idiot. There were reasons it was hard to let go. In every abusive relationship, whether with a partner, parent, or friend, there are reasons we stay.

It’s not honest to hide that from the reader. It’s hard to read a book that’s all negative because you know there’s more to the story. Otherwise, we wouldn’t stay, we wouldn’t remain in contact. My problem—and I think this is a lot of people’s problem—is finding those moments, because I’ve been so consumed with the hurt.

I’m 50, and a lot of these events occurred a long time ago. A lot of them blur together, which makes it hard to write a linear story. But feeling like I represented the relationship properly and fairly and feeling like I looked at those pieces of myself without defenses, made me proud—proud of myself and the work. It’s a kind of healing I had no idea would come from writing until I wrote my first book-length project.

When I wrote Girlish, I realized, yeah, I can close this chapter now. I’ve accepted all of it, not just the parts I’m willing to accept. Now, I’m done, and I can go on with my life without regret.

Lisa [20:07]:

That’s the alchemy of this work. It’s the reason I think everyone should write memoir, even if you don’t publish it. We don’t have to publish everything, but the work is powerful. It changes us. I love that you shared both sides because we live in such a polarized world where everything is binary—you know, stay or go, no in-between. When people behave abusively, we think estrangement will solve all our problems. I can tell you, it won’t.

I recently interviewed Dr. Ramani Durvasula, who does a lot of work on narcissistic abuse. We talked about this. She talks extensively in her book about how cutting ties with someone doesn’t change those feelings or your relationship. You might think about that person more. You may have to deal with other family members’ relationships, which might be equally, if not more, fraught because of estrangement.

So, cutting ties with someone is really complicated. I love that you honor that, both for yourself and the reader, because some will say, “I would just leave. I’d never talk to this person again,” and that’s fine. But there will be other readers who will say, “Oh my gosh, now I understand why it’s so hard.”

Lara [21:44]:

I think there’s a difference between estrangement and closure. Just because you’ve walked through the door doesn’t mean it’s not open. And, you know, with my father, there was never a time that I could say what I wanted to say and feel heard. Even though he was receptive to those conversations—he was in therapy, and he was in AA, and he was very big on counseling speak—he was also a very big gaslighter who lived in his own reality.

And so, nothing that he could say was going to make a difference. It had to be my own process and coming to terms with the relationship myself. And then, you know, when you have a parent that has dementia, it’s hard because at that point, you’re never going to get that resolution. Or at least I was not—someone else might—but for me, I… you know, I wrote about the last time I saw him.

Well, one of the last times I saw him, he didn’t remember me. Yeah, and he was still alive, but effectively, that relationship was dead. It was over, and I only had what I had always had, you know? And there’s mourning in that that I didn’t expect. You can walk away from someone and think that you’ve hardened your heart, think that you’ve moved on, but then there still is a new level of loss to say, “That’s all you ever had.” Like, yeah, that’s… you know.

But I think… yeah, part of why it was important for me to publish this and not just write it is because I think that so many of us have that experience with our parents. And so many of us need to know it’s okay to have complicated feelings. And it’s okay to change your mind and go back after you’ve said, “I’m never going speak to them again,” which is something that I did, you know? And it’s okay not to be the perfect daughter and to say, “I’m sorry, you haven’t earned that place in my life, and this is not a responsibility I need to take on.”

And I feel that society, particularly with daughters, pushes hard on that narrative of taking care of your parents, sort of no matter what. But it doesn’t serve us well, you know? But even as I say that, I still have guilt. Even as I say that, I still think, “Wow, did I…? Can I accept that?” And when you talk about resilience, you know, we’re never done with something.

We think we’re done, right? We think we’ve processed this situation, this relationship, this trauma, and we’re done and we’re moving on. But things come back up at different times for different reasons. And resilience is, you know, being willing to address it as many times as you have to. Yeah. And each time you do get stronger, and each time it is a little easier, I think.

Lisa [25:04]:

Absolutely. And I think when we have these really big issues in our lives, it’s… you can’t—there’s no way to just heal it all at once, right? We just kind of chip away. Then we, you know, integrate that, and we get stronger, and then we come back to it when we need to. And, you know, you had a very clear reason why you were publishing this book, which I think also speaks to your resilience, right? Resilience is a willingness to look at things and be open and honest with them in a way that allows you to heal. So that’s a way of bouncing back. But you have published two other books before this, so I’m going to say you’re a publishing veteran.

And I didn’t send you this question because I don’t always send everything. Something comes up right in the middle of our interview. And I meet a lot of writers who have really tough stories, and they feel compelled to write them and compelled to publish them. And there is a certain point in the process when there is this very secret wish that, “If I publish this, so-and-so will understand me,” or, “The world will see my pain,” or “The world is going to give…”

They can’t. And you have done this work enough. So, what can you say about the experience of publishing these books? And how has that helped you have a really clear vision around, “This is how it’s of service to others, and I’m not necessarily… I’m not expecting the world to give me something in return.”

Lara [26:48]:

What I hope to get—and I’ve been lucky to get—is people saying that my books have helped them.

Lisa [26:56]:

Yes.

Lara [26:57]:

For people to say, “I’ve never seen myself on the page until I read your book.” People say, you know, “You made me more okay with myself.” And that’s all. That is the reason I write. I learned so much about publishing, in terms of, you know, my first book was Girlish, and for a month or two before it came out, I was wracked with anxiety. I was dying. And for me, it was fear of what people would say—my family, the media, you know, what response I’d get. And having lived through that, the books that followed have been easier, although there’s certainly anxiety right before they all come out. But, you know, when you’ve gone through something and lived, you know that next time around, you can go through something and live.

There is this wonderful writer named Kao Kalia Yang, who is a memoirist, and she also writes for children. And she said, you know, you look back at your books almost like photographs of yourself at a younger period of time. That each book is a snapshot of who you were when you wrote the book.

And it’s okay to change and evolve. You know, you can look back, and now you would write that book differently, but it’s not about that. It’s not about one book being the perfect story

of everything. It’s about, “Did you capture how you felt at that time?”

And that allowed me to let go of fear of perfection. You know, people would say, “Oh, why didn’t you talk about this in your first book?” And I go, “Oh my gosh, why didn’t I talk about that?” Well, you know, I’m not done writing. I can fill those gaps later. And it helps, I think, when you’ve published a couple of books to know that those chances are still there, so that if you have regrets, those chances to change them will appear if you keep doing the work. I don’t know if that answers your question at all.

Lisa [29:06]:

No, it was a beautiful answer. I loved it. And I think Jill Ciment is trying to do that with her new memoir Consent, which is a reconsideration of a previous memoir that she wrote called Half a Life. There’s a New York Times article that came out about this book, and I’ll put it in the show notes so that people can read it. But yeah, we have a chance to do it again with new books. And that doesn’t mean that if we missed something, or we’ve changed, or we didn’t add such-and-such, that that book was a failure or wrong, or, you know, there’s anything that we need to fix. It’s just that we do change. We remember things differently. And as we heal, the story opens up, you know? And that’s, I think, the most important thing that can happen.

And there are so many things we could talk about with this book because it’s just a deep topic. And, well, you know I love you, Lara. I could talk to you forever. And that’s what I love about this podcast—there are so many people I can talk to. And you are definitely one of them. But I want to end with three lightning round questions about the writing process, and I ask them to everyone. So, what is the best piece of writing advice you have ever received? You just gave us one great one, but what else?

Lara [30:24]: You know, with this book, I kept thinking about Ernest Hemingway’s “Just write one perfect sentence.”

Lisa [30:30]: Ooh, I love that.

Lara [30:32]:

And that was my focus for every writing session. Even if all I got was one sentence, it was a success. All it takes is one sentence, and that’s all you’ve got to focus on. And then the next day, you do the next one, and eventually, you have a book.

Lisa [30:46]: Well, how have you been nurturing your resilience? Now that this book is out, and you’re in the launch period, so I know you’re doing different events and you’re out there—what’s helping you?

Lara [30:58]:

Honestly, doing events feeds me. Seeing people that are interested and that value my work really makes it worthwhile. It makes all the anxiety and all the trauma of the writing process feel like it was worth it. And it doesn’t matter about book sales. Here’s the copyedited version of that section:

It’s just people that show up, people that are engaged, people that are, you know, wanting to have those conversations.

Lisa [31:26]:

That is such a great answer. And I think it’s so important for people to think about because so many people can be focused on the numbers—like, did I have the book sales that are going to make me think, you know, do this thing, or win this award, or be in this paper?

But, you know, at the end of the day, it really is about the relationship between you and the reader. And that is sacred, and I love how you’re honoring it.

Lara [31:52]:

Thank you.

Lisa [31:54]:

Well, my final question is about how everybody can get their copy of The Truth About Unringing Phones and if they want to connect with you because you’re doing all kinds of neat things out in the world.

Lara [32:07]:

The Truth About Unringing Phones is available wherever books are sold—Bookshop, Amazon, my publisher’s website, which is unsolicitedpress.com. It is currently in a Kindle or digital version; the paperback and an audio version are in the works, but it might be a while. And for me, find me—I’m mostly on Instagram and Threads @laralillibridge, no space, or Twitter @only_mama. And we can put those in the show notes as well.

Lisa [32:41]:

Yes, they will absolutely be there. And please connect with Lara. She does so many great things out in the world. She’s such a thoughtful person, and you can ask her a question or share what you think about her book. But most importantly, please add a five-star review on Amazon and Goodreads because that is how we support authors.

Lara [33:07]:

Thank you for saying that. And honestly, even a mediocre review is better than no review, because it changes the algorithms and gets your book suggested to other people.

Lisa [33:19]:

Yes, those reviews mean so much to authors. I mean, it only takes two minutes because you don’t have to say anything really poetic or brilliant. Just say, “Loved this book. Found it inspiring because of X.” Two sentences—that’s all you’ve got to put, and it changes everything.

Lisa [33:39]: So true. Well, thank you so much for having me, Lisa.

Lara [33:43]:

This has been such a pleasure speaking with you.

Lisa [33:45]:

Well, and thank you for being here, and once again, thank you for writing your book.