Wrestling With Inner And Outer Voices

[from Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington, p131-132:]

Some writers, wrestling with the inner and outer voices that urge them to stay silent, become defiant:  we have a right to our truths, they say to themselves or to anyone who wants to debate the question with them.  And indeed they do.  However, writers who have plenty to say about their rights to free speech are sometimes less anxious to think about the responsibilities that go along with those rights.  ....
---We must each come to our own decisions about the writer's responsibility to those whose lives are entwined with our own, and whose stories inevitably overlap with ours.  You might be writing about a failed relationship.  Perhaps your memoir involves your closeted gay brother, your teenage daughter's first period, or a close friend's mental breakdown.  Each of us must balance the reasons for writing a story or for using real names, against that might be done to someone else.  Sometimes the choice is not difficult to make:  you believe that your story will be crucial to many readers, and that any harm to others will be slight.  But often it is harder to know what matters most:  someone's livelihood or your need to tell the story; the importance of your story to many readers or one person's fear of public humiliation.

[This passage popped out at me when i was glancing through the book; it reminds me of the learning process that writing has usually involved for me — if i want to explore, analyze, and perhaps therapeutically work through parts of my life, memoir writing is the way to go.  But it's work, no question about it; keep at it.

May the road rise to meet you.  ...]