I was a bit late to the game.
Yesterday a friend asked me if I’d heard about the controversy with Alice Munro. I hadn’t. What she told me broke my heart. Then angered me. Then called me to act.
This post will not address the issues of cancel culture or the relationship between the artist as person and his or her work. This post will, unfortunately touch on some very difficult issues regarding childhood sexual abuse, so if this is a subject you’d rather avoid, please do not read.
Nobel prize winning author Munro died this past May. Particular to this story, is the fact that she was upheld by the feminist literary establishment as an icon—she had strong female characters and delved deep into family dysfunction, secrets and shame and the damage of complicity.
And yet, in her real life, Munro acted out a very different reality. Her nine-year-old daughter, Andrea, was raped by her second husband. And when confronted with the truth, Munro defended her husband and stayed with him until his death. Though Andrea cut off contact with her mother long before her death, it was only after her mother’s death that Andrea went public with the truth. She said that she wanted any future biographies of her mother to reflect her complicity.
My first reaction when my friend shared this with me was shock! As a mother, I cannot imagine how a mother could do this! And, as a survivor, I felt sadness for Andrea—who was abandoned and unprotected by the only person who could protect her. And then, Andrea kept these secrets until her mother’s death. Anyone who knows anything about trauma knows that part of healing involves truth-telling. And conversely, silence and secrets produce shame. And then the nasty spiral begins—silence then shame then more silence and more shame.
We cannot be silent.
If we have suffered any kind of abuse, we need to find loving people who can help us hold this pain. We are not meant to do it alone. We need to come out the shadows, share our stories, hear other’s stories, speak the truth, call out the perpetrators, seek justice, and heal. Which is a journey, with ups and downs. But, it starts by ending the silence.
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