I was in an Uber headed to the airport when Rod Stewart’s raspy voice singing Tonight’s the Night filled the car with some of the most sexist, disturbing lyrics I’ve ever heard in my life. I came of age in the seventies. It sucked. Sex was everywhere and because of the lack of AIDS and a plethora of ways to not have a baby, it was offered the same way you might offer someone a glass of water. At least where I grew up. And then there was this.
Read MoreIn 1982 I was twenty-five, my eldest sister was alive and well, my best friend had been killed four years earlier. I was trying to get sober, obsessed with my weight and men and my parent’s approval. I wanted to write and act and not drink again. I would drink again. My roommate would wake from her coma and recover because she was determined to take her life back. I wish I better understood how hard that was for her. From my perspective ( forty years plus ), this girl is a mess, funny, angry, needy, confused. Constantly doubting herself in terms of men and I can’t remember who 98% of these men she mentions were! Apparently, I was good at meeting them, not so good at keeping them in my life probably because I was spinning too fast to be held down. And, trying to figure out my father. A dead-end for sure.
Read MoreThere were many untold stories in my family. Most of my story remained untold until I discovered the comfort of writing, all of it in a journal until I began to get published in my late twenties. There were descriptions of things I had kept secret, a rape, excessive drinking, my suffering as a child of an adored father who had black, drunken rages, my own alcoholism, the heartbreak of falling in love and then out, my own shame until I stopped drinking and believed someone who told me my writing had power.
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