My father was a writer, and completely absent from my life. My mother was incredible, the kind of woman who was entirely nonplussed when I banged on pots and pans and sang at the top of my four year old lungs. In turn, I was a so-so mother, not abusive or truly neglectful, but a woman who discovered after childbirth that I was not really cut out for the 24 hour emotional vampires that are our children. Not their fault, but I need an enormous amount of alone time, far more than most "normal" people. And while I am only a writer in my head, I could easily be accused of being a bad mother, and if I'd had more gumption, and actually pursued an actual literary career, I would have been exactly that kind of mother. I think that most people do the best they can given the circumstances, and I think women like Flanagan are terrified of being judged and found lacking, so they make it a point to judge others first. Or maybe that's complete nonsense and she's just a raging harpy. Either way, I loved Joan Didion and she could have been the world's best mother who never left her child's side and still had a daughter who was mentally unstable and turned to alcohol to self-medicate. Great mothers still produce unhappy, unhealthy, children and the children of terrible mothers sometimes still manage to sort themselves out.
A lot about Flanagan, I'd say. And thank you for reading and engaging. I love seeing comments and talking with other writers about these ideas, which matter so much to all of us, but rarely get enough airtime.
My father was a writer, and completely absent from my life. My mother was incredible, the kind of woman who was entirely nonplussed when I banged on pots and pans and sang at the top of my four year old lungs. In turn, I was a so-so mother, not abusive or truly neglectful, but a woman who discovered after childbirth that I was not really cut out for the 24 hour emotional vampires that are our children. Not their fault, but I need an enormous amount of alone time, far more than most "normal" people. And while I am only a writer in my head, I could easily be accused of being a bad mother, and if I'd had more gumption, and actually pursued an actual literary career, I would have been exactly that kind of mother. I think that most people do the best they can given the circumstances, and I think women like Flanagan are terrified of being judged and found lacking, so they make it a point to judge others first. Or maybe that's complete nonsense and she's just a raging harpy. Either way, I loved Joan Didion and she could have been the world's best mother who never left her child's side and still had a daughter who was mentally unstable and turned to alcohol to self-medicate. Great mothers still produce unhappy, unhealthy, children and the children of terrible mothers sometimes still manage to sort themselves out.
A lot about Flanagan, I'd say. And thank you for reading and engaging. I love seeing comments and talking with other writers about these ideas, which matter so much to all of us, but rarely get enough airtime.