A friend of mine—Karen—is the first to read my novel, I’ve asked her to help me make it better. She recently finished Chapter 11 of Bent But Not Broken and left this comment for me.
“I love this story—like everything I’ve read so far—it fills in the gaps I’ve wondered about. And while I love all of this so far, I wish you had gone deeper into some of these stories. I go back to the times I taught The Glass Castle, and she would go really deep into some events of her life and leave others out. I’m wondering if you might do that here? There are parts I want to know more about, but I’m not wanting this to be a 600-page tome…IDK…just putting it out there!”
I sat with that for a while, trying to answer her question. Then I realized, the quick answer is: I wrote this book for my girls. To help them understand their mom. The real answer? I wrote what I could remember. And I remembered what I could survive.
Because she’s right. There are moments in the book that I step into briefly and then back away from them. Not because they aren’t important. But because sometimes I just… couldn’t go any deeper.
There are holes in my memory—some are soft and quiet, others are sharp, jagged blanks left by trauma. People tell me this is common, that the brain has ways of protecting us. And honestly, that makes sense. There are entire stretches of my life that feel like someone else’s shadow. That no matter how hard I look, how much I try to stretch back to that day, it’s just gone.
And then there are other moments—ones that might not feel significant to the reader—but they mattered enough to make it in because I remember them. And when you’ve lost as many memories as I have, the ones that survive feel sacred. They’re part of the patchwork I’m piecing together to make sense of where I’ve been and who I am.
But there’s more to it, too. I wasn’t just protecting myself. I was also protecting you—the reader. This book is raw. It’s heavy. It’s not something most people will read in one sitting. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to pause. To breathe. To laugh at something silly or warm before coming back. I had to do that while writing, too.
Karen’s question—about going deeper—has stayed with me. Maybe in future posts, or even a companion project, I’ll step back into some of those scenes and give them more space. Maybe I’ll write what I wasn’t ready to write the first time around.
Because this book? It’s not about retelling every detail. It’s about telling the truth.
And sometimes, the truth is simply: I survived. Here’s how.
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