I grew up watching my dad tell her life story on stage, this is what it taught me about 'oversharing'

On writing about our lives and how it impacts others...

Hello! Quick update, the book I have been helping Charlotte Crosby with is out today. It’s a lot of fun! If you need a break from the world you can find it here. The book I wrote, a long time ago, but is still good (!) is still available to read, you can find it here. And the book I need to finish is finally getting dusted off, I can (and should) find it (and work on it) on Scrivener. Watch this space. Or better yet, upgrade, to help me write for myself more.

I have Thursdays now to write for myself, so I will aim to also publish a new letter on Thursdays, or Friday morning. Grief can be tricky to write about every week, so sometimes it might incorporate other themes.

This week, I guess, is a bit of both and is inspired by this brilliant post by

The Sophist

particularly the line “it was her daughters’ destiny to be the children of a writer so she would carry on writing about them.” It was my destiny to be the child of a writer and then, I guess, become one myself. This is what I’ve learned.

Writing about myself, writing about others…

I have watched my ‘mum’ die on stage. I have watched my dad say goodbye to her feminine self, discuss her hatred for her body, her anger etched across the face I consider home.

I have sobbed in an audience of strangers, all of who are crying at a piece of theatre, while I cry because what I am watching is my life, my family's story. I should explain: my dad is a playwright and, while it's not all she does, sometimes her work incorporates parts of her life. Inevitably that results in her work incorporating parts of my life, my sister's life.

This has been such a long standing part of my existence, I find it difficult to explain how I feel about it. It just is. But, it strikes me, that my perspective on how we choose to write about ourselves, what we share and what we don’t, is quite unique. As I have been the subject of someone else’s pen but I have also made others the subject of my own pen.

I am who I am because I am my father's daughter. Theatre, eccentricity, pulling truth from within and displaying it, for others to see, is a part of my fabric. I should also add, my mum was a journalist and a writer. The phrase: "the personal is political" was drummed into us as children. Our life's lessons should, and would be shared.

I sit here, in an aestheticians office, numbing cream on my lips. I will write about this, for the magazine I work for. I will know what to share (the tingling on my lips, how they swelled up, the colour they turned) and what not to share (the fact the numbing cream reminds me of cocaine). This will be easy. When, so much of what I write, isn’t. Though, that’s not strictly true. As writing about myself and what I have been through, I also find easy. It's how I figure myself out. I once read that Taylor Swift has never been to therapy, because her song writing does it for her. I feel that way. When I need to, I'll take to the page, letting the words spill out, letting the words find my answers. What’s difficult is not the writing itself, but the sharing. What I choose to leave out, cut out, and why. For who.

I entered into journalism during the era of the over share. The absolute best way to climb the ranks, get your name known at a time before personal branding, before social media, was to tell everyone, everything about yourself. You'd get a page in a woman's weekly, or one of the websites known for "personal essays" and spill, spill, spill. Even better if your experience matched something a celebrity was going through that week: when I worked at LOOK, if Jennifer Aniston did or said something, it was my job to find someone who had done that very same thing. Looking back, it was quite the coincidence that the same circle of writers all had had the exact experience of whoever and whatever was trending that week...

I didn't share anything. I didn't think my life was interesting enough and I wasn't smart enough to lie. Until I moved to Cosmo and casually mentioned that my dad was transgender to my editor at the time,

Farrah @Substack

. ‘That, that's what you write about.' I find this still, I'll be coaching a younger writer and they'll be pitching outwards, when the real story, the most interesting one, is inwards.*

I wrote about our relationship and it helped. I was invited on Woman's Hour and I still get messages today, from the children of transparents, asking me for advice. I want people to see how happy we are. Transphobes are known to say that the process of transitioning will damage the family, hurt children. What hurts children more is to live alongside someone who is trapped within a body that doesn’t fit. My dad’s transition taught me a valuable lesson: that the more I am myself, over who I am told to be, the happier I will be. That’s all true. But, was that article the whole truth? No. Of course not. It was 2,800 words. It also involved other people, their unspoken experiences… and one of them is dead.

There are also elements of our story I didn’t want to run away, beyond us. Anything negative I could see being jumped upon, twisted. Relationships are not simple, we are happy but we are not the happy-ever-after of the trans familial experience. And perhaps I portrayed us as that.

I was on Woman’s Hour with others who had had transitioning loved ones. One of them struggled, she found it very hard to accept the new figure in her life. I was asked afterwards: “did you not judge her? Why couldn’t she be more like you? You’ve found it so easy, why couldn’t she?” I felt I’d betrayed her, others like her, as I didn’t tell the whole truth. I was trying too hard to portray us as perfect.

Yes, I have accepted my dad and her transition wholly. I am so proud of her. But I do look at old photographs and miss the person staring back at me. I don’t know if I miss that person, or who I was back then, who our family was. My dad also fully transitioned after my mum died, had that experience not happened to me, would I have been crueller to dad, been more selfish? There’s a possibility. I was a spoiled teenager. I had, very recently, been shown that time can be cruel, that time snatches people away from us. It was very hard but it was very easy: accept who someone wants to be, as they could go any minute.

When I am coaching other writers, those writing their own story, I warn them that what they say now, stays forever. To consider who will read their words and the reaction to that. This is perhaps not good advice. I am, essentially, asking them to hold parts of themselves back. Their story will not be what it could be, when they think in this way. I am holding parts of myself back, writing this. I am aware I could be a stronger, more successful writer, if I revealed more, pushed myself into a braver place.

Particularly as, right about now, I am seeing a resurgence in the personal essay. Both here, on Substack, the juiciest bits behind paywall and also on TikTok, where I am constantly served girls, tipsy on Tequila Rose, letting me in on their wildest exploits. I know that many of the writers, from back in the day, regret how much they shared. They say this with book deals, incredibly successful careers. They say they’re not sure it was worth it. I don’t doubt that this is true, that there’s lessons to be learned. The girls of today could feel the same in a few years time. I will keep sharing my advice, to consider what you share, and ask yourself why. To choose to censor yourself for your own happiness. I also don’t believe that the personal essay should be the way to success. I hate how our truth is monetised but if it goes too far, too truthful, it’s sanitised. I also do think that the growth of the personal essay has damaged journalism skills and some people’s ability to talk about anything but themselves…

But I’ll stop there before I get too catty, and also because I want people to keep sharing. To not be afraid. As, I do also worry that the regret that comes from so-called oversharing is wrapped up in who we are told to be as women (or those in a minority): that we always look better with our mouths shut.

This is not to say that it is harmless, to share our own stories. That that’s entirely our prerogative. I know I’ve hurt people with my words, thinking it was just ‘my truth.’ It is not easy to watch my dad’s most painful moments play out on stage, feel the sharp sting of the overlap of my own pain. I am also aware that I don’t know what she has chosen to hold back. That’s the mystery of (truthful) memoir writing. Sometimes even the writer is not aware of the whole truth. But, by sharing what she does, I hear from people whose lives have been changed by her writing, by her honesty. I do not see myself as a casualty within that. I see myself as part of something huge. Something that will keep expanding, lessons handed on, long after she’s gone, long after I’ve gone. The personal is political.

Let me know what you think, share with others etc etc, but MORE IMPORTANTLY subscribe to my dad’s Substack

Jo Clifford

The Light Inside.

* saying that, please, please if you pitch me a story about your life please ensure that it’s interesting and unique. Struggling to meet someone good on Tinder isn’t. I’m sorry. I feel harsh. I just receive a lot of emails.