Oct 14, 2025
It’s been a minute. Yes, I know. That’s the name of an NPR radio program and podcast. But it’s an apt description for where I’ve been.
This summer I was privileged to be part of a friend’s kidney transplant process and aftercare. Took a vacation to visit my brother and my recently relocated daughter who made a major move from California to North Carolina. My 17-year-old cat, Pablo died while I was gone. The cover of my book was finalized. I’m proofreading the publisher’s proofreader. I procrastinated for two weeks and finally posted on social media about the forthcoming release of my memoir. Yes, it’s been quite a long minute — and that was just August.
And, here it is, mid-October already. I’ve always thought of Fall as the start of a new year, a new beginning. It goes back to my student days. The feeling of new starts, new teacher(s), and new learnings. So, it seems fitting that I start my substack at this time and to share this journey about writing a memoir from writing to publication. Yes, I’ve done it. I’ve written a memoir that’s been accepted by a publisher and will come out in June 2026.
The book, “The Perfection Campaign A Daughter’s Search for Acceptance,” is a memoir that I’ve worked on for six years. It’s about shame and the damage it can create in one’s life and how I broke free through many messy relationships and starting my own family. I’m hoping it will have universal appeal beyond my coming out story with my telling of my upper-crust uptight parents who insist that their children make them proud and not embarrassed, a parent who over identifies with her own aspirations as opposed to her child’s, and the desire to search for one’s identity “out there” in a really messy way before finding it.
It is hard to brag about one’s own book because it’s socially awkward and because my parents told me not to brag. I never saw them brag although they had much to brag about.
Writing a book is not as easy as creative writing was for me throughout my k-12 school years. Making up stories was fun. Writing a memoir about the more vulnerable aspects of my life was not as easy. I often had to viscerally relive those aspects of my life. So why do it? A good question.
For many years I had wanted to write a book about my father. He was worth writing about I thought. He was a man I looked up to and admired. He was my superman and many citizens of my hometown, Evanston, Illinois, thought so too. He had a full time job as a corporate attorney and in his off hours threw himself into many civic and political activities. And I had evidence. It wasn’t just me sthat thought highly of him. I have all these news articles I collected over the years about his accomplishments.
I thought I would write about him. That idea gelled after my 45th high school reunion when a friend told me about a friend of hers who had written a book about her politically prominent mother. That inspired me. I began in earnest. I re-read the 50-plus articles I had about him. I bought colorful file folder and separated them into subjects. Topics about Evanston politics. Speeches he had written and articles about the Republican party in the 1950s-1970s. I went back to Evanston twice to interview some of his contemporaries. I was on a roll I thought.
Time, however, was not on my side. His contemporaries were in their 80s and 90s and their memories were not great. Many thought he was a good man and had done a lot for Evanston, but a couple of anecdotes and platitudes do not a book make. And, how does one make a book based on newspaper articles and anecdotes? Maybe others could but I could not. I labored over and tried to write that original idea for 5 years.
Then, inspiration struck. I’ll write something about me and dad would somehow play into that. My memoir journey began.
Let me know about someone you admired and why. I’d love to hear from you and thanks for joining me on this ride.