I've Started Writing

[ILG]

Originally Posted by AreYouReady?

ILG, I wrote a book about my life and experiences 11 years ago. I experienced what you did...a release of emotion and healing of emotions.

I self-published and people started buying my book. Everybody told me it was well-written and interesting.

Until...my sister read it. She never said a word of criticism to me about what I wrote. She never sat down to discuss my experiences and why I felt the way I did about certain things...especially the Catholic Church. It actually would have been helpful had she been upfront and honest with any concerns she had about the issues I wrote about in my book. Instead, she made her own conclusions and went behind my back trying to interpret the book on her erroneous interpretations, trashing me and she did not want the people she told to talk to me about it. But...they did. She has been very upset that I left the RCC, but only got upset 20 years after I left it. I never thought that a member of my family would be so conniving and misconstruing.

I've tried to be sensitive about what I wrote, totally leaving out some of the very experiences that would do much harm to my living, but dysfunctional family. I was very mild about UPC also. But, in my mind, I was trying to focus and conveying my thoughts on Jesus Christ and that no matter what comes our way in life, Christ can essentially take lemons and made lemon aid. That Christ was our healer, our hope and our friend. It was my hopes that someone who may have experienced similar episodes in their life would read this and turn their life, problems and hopes towards Christ and let Him do the healing.
This point was totally lost on my sister.

I think that your book may help those who are in abusive churches and are thinking of leaving. It was a very traumatic experience to leave both the RCC and the UPC. But it was necessary. Just because we leave an organized church system doesn't mean we stop learning or leave God. I could have used an honest-hearted, deeply sensitive point of view of someone else's experience at that time.

I agree with your wisdom in using a pen name for your book. I have shelved my book for now. I may add to it later. I do not wish for my mother to suffer from my revelations of the things that happened to me when I was young.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I was very careful with my family in that I told them I wanted them to read it first and if there was ANYTHING that they didn't like that I wrote about in the book that I wanted to know and I would work with them to edit it to make it okay. My biggest thing is I want this to be a book of healing and not of pain. They were all okay with the book. I think it was eye opening to all of them to read things from my point of view.

I thought using a pen name would take care of anonymity for me but after writing it, I realized that some of the events that happened are so off the wall and weird that I am not sure anonymity is even possible. The things that happened are not run of the mill UPC events. There are three parts to the book. The first two parts could have been written by anyone, but part three, things get just plain weird. If I could have only the people it would help read it I would do that, but I think it may bring up some terrible pain for others and in so doing, for me as well.

My daughter is using it right now to write her own book (for chronological order and such). She is telling the story in allegorical form for her own healing. Maybe the story will be told in that way. If I ever do publish this, I have to be sure that the healing it brings is greater than then pain it could bring. I am not confident of that at this point. So far, it has been good but I don't want to tip the scales in the other direction.