Tap Dancing Solo
As the October 24 publishing launch for In Pursuit of Radio Mom: Searching For the Mother I Never Had nears, I’ve upped my efforts to spread the word about the memoir’s impending release. Fortunately, my enthusiasm for a task that I find totally intimidating was boosted recently by a trifecta of early, positive reviews in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly Book Life, and Midwest Book Review.
However, as someone who prefers to keep a low profile, the prospect of gearing up for a promotional campaign—one that includes contacting strangers—has about as much appeal as performing a tap dance solo on a brightly lit stage. Book signings? Podcast appearances? “Why can’t this book of mine just waltz into the spotlight on its own?” I lament each and every time stage fright shoves my anxiety onto an emotional ledge.
So I was relieved last week when, as part of a publicity outreach, all eight of the women I approached––each of whom belonged to a different book club here in the Midwest––were enthusiastic about reading an advance copy of Radio Mom. Their interest in a candid memoir about my life and the complicated relationship I shared with my mother, afforded me a way of demonstrating, both to myself and my publicist, that I could pitch what I’d written in a straightforward manner. I was proud that I was increasing my book’s audience without feeling like a telemarketer.
Had I not been so nervous, I might have expected that in our telephone and follow-up email conversations, I’d be asked a lot of questions about how I had drummed up enough gumption to write such a personal book. After all, none of these club leaders had yet had a chance to read what I’d worked so hard on and I needed to “hook” them in and pique their interest. Nevertheless, I hadn’t anticipated so much curiosity from them so quickly, with queries like “Why did you choose to write a memoir?” and “How long did it take?”
“Forever,” I’d joked to one book club organizer before clarifying that the timeline had spanned five years from start to stop, all the while confessing that I had never intended to write a book so intimate. “At least not consciously.” I laughed. Then, in a more serious tone, I reiterated the steps I had taken to create my soon-to-be-published baby.
I explained to her that my desire to write about my search for a mother’s embrace had come only after I’d abandoned a completed draft of a scholarly book about troubled mother-daughter relationships. It was aimed at my peer group of clinical psychologists as well as other mental health therapists. As such, it would be empirical and oriented around my clinical work, and have a protective appeal: I would be able to keep the reader at a distance and so ensure my personal exposure to be minimal.
“In my practice,” I went on, “I was the one who just listened. I didn’t reveal information about my own life or my relationship with my mother—no matter how empathetic I felt with what I was hearing.” What I didn’t say to her was that by using that sort of professional approach, I also didn’t have to acknowledge that the concept of emotional concealment had deeper roots for me. Hiding this way had been my pattern as a child and then as an adolescent, and I was ready to confess such in the book but maybe not say it face to face to a potential reader. Small wonder I chose to be a psychotherapist later in life.
Once the manuscript was completed, however, I realized how bored I was as I reread it—bored in the same way I knew I would be had I attempted a self-help book. Bored in the same way a reader might be. How easy it was in these exchanges with the woman who ran a book club to recollect the blah, blah, blah that had echoed in my mind as I flipped through the pages of what I had written!
I knew then that I’d failed to find the true voice of the book. I described to her that as I sat making notes about my possible next steps, I had doodled little spirals onto my yellow legal pad: dark whorls that resembled mini tornadoes ready to lift off the page. With this scribble, which implied dangerous turf, it seemed I was already anticipating the conflicts I might have to face if I chose to start over and begin to traverse a different route. Had I ever felt so challenged, so conflicted by a writing project?
“Eventually,” I’d explained to her, “I came to accept why a textbook approach wouldn’t work for me there: I knew I would be settling—choosing to ‘write safe,’ which felt disingenuous.” Only when I confronted this problem head-on did I crack the shell that had shielded me from acknowledging what kind of book I needed to write.
So, you might ask, as did every one of the bookworms I later contacted, was there anything easy about the writing process? Nada. Not even one little thing. It simply was among all the biggest challenges; however, it also meant I would have to come to terms with the discouragement I’d felt back then. I realized that I would indeed have to begin the book all over again. Right from the first page. Was I ready to take that gamble? To bet on an uncertain outcome? A deep breath. Then, “Yes.”
What I can say now, as well––with both certainty and pride––is that making peace with writing a memoir, did allow me to step out of the safety my professional clinical shadow provided. I chose to put myself squarely in my reader’s sights—and my own—and this allowed me to connect in a way that was vivid and real: to remember that I knew a great deal about the pain experienced by the women I hoped I would reach, and to recall that I’d spent the better part of my lifetime searching for my own answers—as well as for my own mother. How hard I had tried to pull her within reach, just as she herself had spent the better part of her lifetime trying to pull her own mother closer.
In choosing to write a memoir, I reminded myself, too, that I had already dedicated several decades to digging for a reality that fit with my emotions, wanting my relationships with the important people in my life to be authentic. If I pushed hard now, I told myself, then perhaps I could use my own voice in the writing of this particular book. Suddenly, I hoped to take that inner voice, with all its insecurities and complexities, and offer it to anyone who opened Radio Mom Like all memoirists, I, too, had struggled with the ways in which the people I loved would respond to my book. I worried most about how my daughter would react to my writing about my struggles (and sometimes failures) to be a mom different than my own. Would she trust me to tell my story, without taking over hers?
Similarly, I was anxious that my many siblings might feel I had betrayed our mother. Would they tell me that I’d got it “all wrong?” Certainly, there was the possibility—the likelihood even—that some reactions from my family would be volatile. “How dare you?” was the opening volley I envisioned, followed by a barrage of sharp words that mirrored the ones my mother had modeled for us all—those meant to put you “in your place.”
As I wrote, I discovered that I had to rake this ground about their reactions many times over. And with each pass, I steadied myself by remembering that as a memoirist, I was writing about recollections rooted deeply in my past, exploring the experiences that my mother and I had shared—and those we did not—as well as all the emotions that accompanied them. Finally, I knew, it was my story. No one else’s.
In Radio Mom, I tackled the shifts that came in my relationship with my mother over the course of her life, and why those changes occurred. And I wrote about healing; about memory and perception. All that I had learned from my practice, but it now had my life as the center point. This meant that, for all of my siblings, their own viewpoint about our mother might well be a valid one because all families are prisms. What can be seen is either illuminated or distorted according to one’s own personal experiences.
In the days since my tentative outreach to the book club emissaries, and now, as I press forward in my efforts to broadcast the arrival of Radio Mom, I’m struck once again by how important it was to have spent “forever” on the planning, drafting, and seemingly endless revision that marked my writing process. I’m aware, too, how fortunate I’ve been to have had a dream editor and mentor whose skills and support facilitated my being able to bring my vision of this memoir fully to life.
My first hope now is that the central takeaway from the book––that the mother-daughter bond is not only powerful and unique but that healthy relationships require, again and again, knowing when to lean in and when to let go resonates for the book club members. And I hold another hope as well: that Radio Mom will resonate with you, my blog readers, my intended audience for this story. As such, it is this prospect that guides me as I work to promote it, even while knowing my chances of ever becoming a marketing whiz are nil and I instead must rely on a talented publicist who is able to function in this role.
But can I fancy myself learning the necessary steps to participate with confidence in the publicity dance? See myself as capable of executing a proper step, shuffle, and ball change? Unlike my memoir, I’m a work still in progress, but this I can promise: I’m keen to give it a try.
