Aliz,

You asked me months ago why the radio silence between your mother and me. This blog is my best effort to shed light on that. However, to be clear, it’s likely my stories could just as easily add to your confusion as add clarity, so follow-up questions are welcome if you think it’ll help.

Before I start, a caveat. You probably remember me mentioning the quote I posted above by Robert Evans: “there are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.” I find it a reassuring reminder as I share my stories here.

Human memory is notoriously unreliable. For starters, we often differ in how we encode, store and retrieve memories. Interestingly, how, when and, to whom we tell our stories afterward, also known as the “audience-tuning effect,” can also affect how we remember things. Most importantly, whether or not we experience negative emotions and how they involve the amygdala has an enormous effect too, meaning negative emotions can often make for more accurate memories, or paradoxically, can compel us to suppress events altogether. I think it’s helpful to keep all that in mind as you consider everyone’s stories.

By the way, you might notice that the memories, observations, and analyses collected here lean on the negative side. Although I do have many good family memories, they don’t always serve the objective of your original question, so in the interest of time, I’ll leave some of the cheerful stuff for another day.

Finally, I’m not including Jen in these stories for a couple of reasons. First, because hers was a different experience in many ways, and second, most of what I’m about to share occurred before she reached an age that would matter.

So now, all that said, let’s dig in!