Leah BensonTruth-telling Versus Respectful Boundaries: How Do You Walk The Line?
July 26th 2008 09:45
I have really been struggling with the writing of new posts, having no experience writing blogs before the creation of autismsoup.com. Since my son was born, most of my writing has been done through personal letters, emails and my journal. In this realm, I have been completely free to write anything: any feeling, any anecdote, any experience. But now, with the creation of my blog, I am once again confronted with an issue that haunts all non-fiction writers: truth-telling versus respectful boundaries.
truth: sincerity in action, character, and utterance, the body of real things, events, and facts
boundary: something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent (Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary)
I am struggling to fine the balance between self-censorship and being respectful of my friends and family. Nothing that I’ve experienced around Max’s autism was experienced in a vacuum. My divorced involved two people, so what part of that story is mine to share? Where is the line between my story and honoring the privacy of my ex, who is also Max’s father? I have always prided myself for being willing to write honestly, for unwrapping the decorations used by so many writers and admitting my obvious humanity (self-disclosure). I sure as hell don’t want to write cookie-cutter stories about less-than-truthful emotions. I have read memoirs and blogs that were transparent in their half-truths and found them completely chicken-shit, lacking the blood and guts that sustain more evocative story-telling. But herein lies the problem: all writing, even non-fiction (memoirs, autobiographies, blogs, and so on) is nothing more than one person telling a story to another person. Nothing I write, or even remember for that matter, is Truth. It is simply my truth.
As Max’s mother, my experience with Max’s autism has been unique from everyone else who loves him, including that of his father’s. It’s not that I love Max more, or even differently… I’m confident that no one could love Max more than his daddy. But only I gave physical birth to Max and only I provided all of his sustenance and development for seven-and-a-half months. No one else was filled with the fear that somehow, with something either done or not done, Max had developed autism because of them. No one else obsessed about every forgotten pre-natal vitamin, every nap neglected. Even now, there are times when I am knocked to my knees with shame for not doing things differently, somehow creating a different outcome. But a different outcome = a different Max. And that is something I can’t imagine, or even hope for.
Max and his cousin, Izzy
All that said, Autismsoup.com is my blog and my blog alone. I cannot speak for Max’s dad, for his grandparents that love him infinitely, for his six cousins who generously tolerate all of his differences, for his aunts and uncles, his new “brother”, his second mommies, his amazing personal care assistants… I can only speak for myself, as his mother. Anything I share in these posts is based on my experience, memory and emotional terrain.
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