Inside the Mind of Judy Sandler: The Provocative Truths Behind ‘What Kind of Mother’
JS: Who is to say who owns a story? Memory, memoir, and writing raise complicated questions about what actually happened. There was not a specific moment of change for my son in his acceptance of my publication of this book, instead I would say it was a gradual enlightenment; both his and mine. I think I came to realize that to my child, no matter how old, I am always his mother. And that is a loaded job. I think my son came to understand that his mom is a person (who experiences shame, guilt, and regret), and although he was the one who lived through the trauma of mental illness, his mother lived through her story of his mental illness. It took a lot of compromise, talk, years of showing him what I was writing and publishing. What other writers can learn from my experience is to be sensitive to the fact that how you remember a scene is not how someone else remembers it, and by allowing family members or friends to read the work before it is published.
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