SARA SHERBILL IS A WRITER with a focus on mental health, motherhood, and domestic violence. Her new book is There Was Night and There Was Morning, a Memoir of Trauma and Redemption, just out from Union Square & Co. Her work has appeared in Slate, Tablet, The Forward, The Jerusalem Post, Kveller, and elsewhere. Since 2009, she has worked as an independent book editor, having begun her publishing career at Knopf. Listen in and read along as she and I discuss the role of a daily writing practice when facing trauma.
Marion: Welcome, Sara.
Sara: Thank you so much, Marion.
Marion: You’re so welcome. You grew up as a child of a prominent Chicago rabbi. As you watched and listened, he guided his congregants through their lives. He sat with them in hospital rooms and living rooms, sometimes your own living room, listening to their fears, letting them know they were not alone.
However, at home, he was violent, abusive, and raging. He physically assaulted his children and his wife, and while it took 40 years for your mother to divorce him, she did. Though late in both his life and yours, you discovered that he had turned his abusive attention on vulnerable young women in his congregation.
Late in the book, after that shocking revelation, your husband suggests you need to write all this down. “You should write all of this down,” he says. “If you don’t, it’s going to kill you.” And honestly, the reader who has been on a sleigh ride of a read this whole time feels in every single cell of her body that he might be right, that it might kill you if you don’t write this down.
What do you think? Do you think so too?
Sara: I do. I do. Look, you can talk about different kinds of death, right? There’s physical death, there’s spiritual death, there’s a kind of, you know, depression, which in a way is, you know, like a little mini death. I feel for me that writing throughout my life, but especially with this book, it has been life-saving, truly.
To me, writing is medicinal and writing is therapy. And without it, it’s really hard for me to imagine how I could have processed really anything that I’ve been through.
Marion: Yes. Process. We’re going to talk about how you processed these truths. And first, I guess it would be best to just say right out loud, there would be a million reasons not to write this book.
Sara: Oh, there are a million. I mean, there’s the alternative.
Marion: I’m not laughing. I’m laughing. It’s a rueful laugh. So excuse that.
Sara: Oh, no, please. Dark humor is what we traffic in. I know. Me too. My family, oh, we have a musical we could write with the dark humor.
Marion: But the first, in terms of the million reasons, first, there are the alternate versions, specifically those people from whom your father received appropriate, helpful, healing, rabbinical care, who praised him in his funeral, who wrote in to tell you of their devotion to him. Then there’s the reality of the secrets you’re keeping. There’s this complex assignment and one that would weigh so heavily on some of us that we would not be able to tell the truth. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed on the page the sheer weight of the role of family secrets so beautifully portrayed. And you keep these secrets until you can no longer do so. So if you can, please put into words for the writers listening what your intent was in writing this book.
Sara: My intent. So that’s a really good question. So, I should start off just by giving you a little background, which is when I first started writing this book, I had no intent. I actually wrote the first half of the book when I was 20 years old. I was in college. And I wrote the first half of the book for a writing course I was taking with Mary Gordon. And she’s a brilliant professor. And she said, turn in 40 pages. And I didn’t plan on it, but I sat down at my roommate’s laptop and this story of my childhood just kind of came pouring out of me.
It was very organic. It was almost involuntary, I would say. So, at that point, I really didn’t have any intent, per se. It was more just a cathartic release. And then I put it aside. I put the manuscript aside for many, many, many, many years. I revisited it in my early 40s.
And I talk about this process in the book itself. Basically, I was galvanized when I found out that my father had in fact been abusing other people, particularly young women who had been in his congregation. It’s really hard to describe what a shock that was to me.
I have a line in the book where I say that I had always thought my father was sane enough and discreet enough to know that it was one thing to hurt your own family, something else to hurt strangers. So, I had had many, many years to kind of come to grips with the fact that my father had abused us, me, my mom, my siblings. But when I found out that he had been abusing young women from his congregation, it really caused a revolution inside of me. And I felt, you asked about intent, I suddenly felt, you know what? I must write about this. People are actually getting hurt because of my silence.
Marion: Yeah. You mentioned your siblings and all of us who write know that every single family member has their very own version of the same tale. So, when I tell stories of our family, if my sister is there, she listens. And then when I finish, she always says, “That never happened.”
Sara: Yeah, right.
Marion: And she’s right. That’s not the way it happened to her. That’s the way it happened to me. So talk to me about the role of your family in your writing process.
Sara: Well I’m glad you brought it up because it’s such a fertile topic and it’s kind of endlessly fascinating to me. So I’m one of five, I’m the eldest of five. And, as you say, you know, there is no capital T truth, right? We all process our lives through our own lens and our own experience. And you know, all of my siblings are, you know, we’re all obviously unique individual people in our own way. And so, we’ve processed differently what’s happened to us. At the same time, I would say that this is a place in my life where I feel particularly blessed.
Because although all of us are different people, we seem to remember things, maybe not in exactly the same way, but for the most part, our memories overlap. So, there may be, you know, some details that are different. But for the most part, we, you know, it wasn’t like you describe, you know, you said something and your sister said, “Well, that didn’t happen.”
I feel very blessed. I haven’t really had that experience. It was more like, you know, I would share something, let’s say with my sister and she would say, “Actually, I remember it a little bit differently.” But there was never a sense of, you know, I don’t recognize what you’re talking about.
You know, like when I sent my siblings early versions of the manuscript, they were just nodding, crying and saying, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Marion: Oh, I’m so glad for you. I’m so, I’m so deeply glad that you had that reception. And that’s fascinating that you sent them early versions of the manuscript. What were you looking for from them? Were you looking for them to heighten it, edit it, disagree, agree, add to it?
What were you hoping to get when you sent them those early versions?
Sara: Permission.
Marion: Oh.
Sara: Permission. And I’ll tell you why, because it isn’t just my story, right? It’s all of our stories. And that’s been one of the hardest things to parse out in my writing is what part of this is my story and what part of this is our story? And more to the point, what parts of this story do I have the right to tell and what parts of the story aren’t really mine to tell? And if you read the book, you’ll know that one of the main characters in the book is my baby brother. I call him Noam in the book. I gave all my siblings kind of pseudonyms. They go by their middle names in the book. Noam isn’t his real name. But he is one of the main characters in the book, my baby brother, in particular.
And he had a particularly challenging journey. He dealt with the trauma of our family situation by falling into addiction. And he had a very, very long journey with heroin addiction and other things, homelessness. And that was a real question for me.
How do I write about my brother’s story, which in a way you could say isn’t really mine to write about?
And so I got to a place where I was like, you know what, I’m going to write about my relationship with my brother and how a lot of his choices ended up impacting me and kind of coinciding with my life. But at the same time, I’m not claiming to be the definitive teller of his story.
So, it’s a delicate balance.
Marion: Yes. And it’s the right question. Whose story is this? And the discernment that you applied there is so evident in the pages that you told it in terms of your responses, your feelings, your version. And I think that you navigated it expertly.
Sara: Thank you.
Marion: It’s hard as hell.
Sara: Yes, it is.
Marion: And I teach memoir. I deal with writers. I’m so lucky. I work with writers every day. And every day I feel this one question. Should I wait until I have it all figured out? They ask me, or should I start where I am? And so going forward, first, I’m going to hand them your book to read.
It does not figure it all out. It does not erase the abuse or repair all the damage done. But there is redemption. So, can you talk about redemption? And this phrase, I rewrote this question 65,000 times because I wanted you to talk about how redemption is enough. And it sounds crazy, but people are looking like, “I want to fix it.” I want it to be okay. No redemption. But how do you make redemption enough? And how did you get there that redemption was sufficient?
Sara: Right. So, this was a big question when I was writing it. So as you know, the title of the book is, There Was Night and There Was Morning. That’s a passage from Genesis. And then the subtitle of the book, as you know, is A Memoir of Trauma and Redemption. So, the trauma part, you know, in a way was the easy part because the trauma is very obvious. I have plenty of tales of abuse to share.
So that part in a way was almost easier to write because it was more straightforward. And then the question of redemption, that was more complicated to navigate because what is the redemption?
Like you said, I can’t erase my past. I can’t erase my present. I can’t undo my father’s actions. I can’t undo the impact it’s had on my family. So, what is the redemptive part? And I could talk about it from a lot of different angles, but I think for me, one of the main pieces of the redemption is kind of moving from a place of shame, and I would say embarrassment and shame, and many years I spent feeling, I can’t believe this is my story.
This is such a shameful, terrible thing that I’m carrying around. I hope nobody finds out about it, you know, really drowning in a lot of shame and self-loathing.
And then kind of moving through that and moving through this process of saying, this is not my story to saying, actually, this is my story. And not only is it my story, I’m going to talk about it. I’m going to write about it. I’m going to publish a book about it and I’m going to shout it from the rooftops.
Marion: Oh, it gives me tears. Oh, perfect.
Sara: So that process for me has been very healing. Does it erase all my problems? No, it doesn’t, but it takes away a lot of the shame and that has been very healing for me.
Marion: Yes. And that’s why I struggled writing that question, but you so beautifully defined what redemption can be and what it is for you.
And this is a perfect place to land. It’s fascinating to me how long the drama of the book goes on, literally till the last page, but how the redemption is there in it. And you’ve done a great job of populating the press with excerpts and essays. I’ve read you on many platforms.
So, let’s talk about that. Specifically, let’s talk about taking one experience of life, your father’s abuse, and looking at it from different angles. In the Forword, the Jewish, independent nonprofit publication, you have a perfect piece that presents the obstacles to you saying Kaddish for your father, Kaddish being an ancient Jewish prayer sequence, this one said for the dead.
In an earlier piece in the Forword, you grapple with the commandment to honor your father. At that time, he was still living, but was dying.
In The New York Times, in the run up to the election, you offer us a piece on prayer that you put your father pretty much in the backseat, his story no longer driving the narrative, but still present. So talk to me about dollying around, each time making the piece about something different, but having the same basic core story in there.
So are you asking separate questions in each? Are you exploring some other aspect? Because writers listening are flummoxed by this assignment. Their publisher says, “Okay, in the run up to the book, we want you to write an essay. And then when the book comes out, we want you to write an op-ed. After the book comes out, we want you to write three or four other essays.” So, talk a little bit about how you discern one piece from the other.
Sara: I may not give you the kind of answer you want, Marion, because I want to present something to you that’s very well thought out and very detailed and with a lot of intention.
But my process has been much more kind of organic, and I would say almost spontaneous in a way. So, the essays that I’ve written, again, it’s almost like my very first experience being a college student taking a writing class, even though I’m many years past that, I still have that same kind of unknowingness when I sit down at my computer.
I’m not, you know, I know they’re all different types of writers. I’m not the type of writer that, you know, goes in with an outline and, you know, very clear objective of what I want to say. It’s much more – spontaneous is the best word I can think of.
It just kind of appears to me, usually the first line of something. And that’s usually how I start any essay.
I just get a line, just one line. So, like you mentioned that the first piece I wrote in the Forward, when I found out my father was dying, this I published in 2016. And I just had the first line. I saw it like as a sentence in my, you know, in my mind’s eye.
And it said, “Today I found out my father is dying.” And I didn’t know what else I was going to write. I truly had no clue. But I sat at my computer, and I wrote down that first line. And I thought, if I can write down this first line, the second line will come.
And then the third line will come, and the fourth line will come. And each sentence just built on the next.
Marion: It’s a wonderful answer because writers struggle with authority all the time. And I teach an op-ed class here at The Memoir Project. And when writers come into it, I can always feel the sheepishness. They think, “Oh, I have to be a former joint chief of staff to write an op-ed.” And I say, no, no. You just have to have put a child on the school bus this morning or have adopted a dog during COVID, or whatever.
And of the pieces of yours that I’ve read by far and away, my favorite is the one I referenced a minute ago. It appeared as a full page opinion piece in The New York Times Sunday opinion section right before our most recent election. And the headline says, “You might consider praying.”
And in it, you suggest we might consider prayer. And then you kind of rebrand prayer, suggesting that, quote, “many of us were raised to believe that prayer is about communicating with God. It can be, of course, but prayer can also be of communicating with ourselves, a tool of self-inquiry. It can be entirely our own, bespoke.” Loved that. And in one deft paragraph, you described growing up in an Orthodox community, shedding observance and strictures of the life, admitting that much of what you learned at home no longer serves you.
And that on your way out of that life, the one thing you grabbed was prayer, which I just love the idea like you grab like, “I’ll take the mayonnaise and that comforter and prayer.” Yeah. And I just said to myself, the idea of grabbing prayer on the way out created instantly for me authority.
So when you’re writing from your method, which is to get a line that pops into your head, is it belief in yourself that gives you authority?
Marion: Is it like, oh, I don’t know, I’ll just see what happens next? Is it? I mean, these are all legitimate ways to come to the keyboard. So you know, authority is really important. But when do you get yours or how do you get yours or what do you think about authority?
It’s a hell of a knee breaker for a lot of writers.
Sara: In order to answer your question, I think I want to understand more what you mean by authority.
Marion: Well, I think just belief in yourself, that sense, you know, that people say, oh, no, you have to be a former Joint Chief of Staff to write an op-ed. No, you don’t. You have to have something to say, though. So do you build your authority sentence by sentence? Is that what you’re saying? Because some people go in very muscular and confident. I have this argument, I want to put it here, you know.
But what it sounds like is that you feel your way to it. What do you think?
Sara: Yes. I think that if you meet me in person or you know me in person or if anyone who’s listening to this who knows me knows, I’m not a super confident person in real life. I can be kind of shy.
I’m very introverted and I can be a little reticent. But when I’m writing, I’m able to access a totally different part of me. And it’s funny that you mentioned my essay that I wrote on prayer. I could have written a much different essay and maybe someday I’ll write this one too, which is that for me, writing really is prayer. It really is prayer.
It is my way of trying to reach out to the world, to God, to the universe, to who’s ever listening and perhaps also even to myself. Writing to me is that act of reaching out, looking for connection, looking for some type of release, some type of salvation, some type of sense making.
And I don’t come in all muscular, as you say. It’s more of a prayerful, or if you want to say, almost a meditative practice for me. And that’s also something that I struggled with for a long time was, you know, my story felt so unwieldy, and I didn’t know how I was going to write it.
And then I realized, you know, I don’t need to write a book. All I need to do is sit down at my computer every morning and write a few lines. And that process to me felt very much like the process of praying, which is you pray every single morning. Does it mean God is going to answer all of your prayers every single day? No, it doesn’t. But you show up. It’s a practice.
Marion: That is just the best answer. And I told you before we went on live that after reading your opinion piece that night, I did pray and I’m not a pray-er, but I said, “Okay, she says that I can re-imagine this for myself. And I did, that it can become bespoke.
And I did. And I suspect that millions of other people having read that piece did the same thing. So as we wrap this up, I’m fascinated by your bio. It says you concentrate on mental health, motherhood and domestic violence. So first of all, thank you.
And then there’s that big sigh, since let us not for one second forget that women and violence and domestic violence are topics that are not getting resolved, or we could argue even properly adjudicated in this country, that women in the role of testifying may even get awarded millions of dollars for being abused, but that their abuser can not only continue in a public role, but get appointed or even elected to public office in this country.
So define for me how you are going to stay firmly planted in this brand, because for goodness sake, I want you to do so amid the conflicting messages of society and what your plans are to do with it going forward.
Sara: Well, I’m never gonna stop writing.
Marion: Thank you.
Sara: You know, that’s in the face of threats that I’ve gotten from members of my extended family, members of my father’s family, who have told me directly, don’t you dare, don’t you dare. And I’ve lost people in writing this book.
So, to answer your question, how am I going to hold firm? By doing what I’ve been doing for basically the past, you know, 10 years or so, which is to maintain my practice. You know, I know a lot of people in the aftermath of the election are feeling, you know, out at sea and terrified, sad, bereft.
And I understand that. And for me, again, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about how I interpret writing as a form of prayer. What do we have? Right? I mean, I’m not a politician. I’m not gonna run for president. What do I have? I have my daily practice.
And I think that’s true of all of us. You know, if we feel defeated by what we see happening in the world at large, how do we respond to that? I mean, there are myriad ways, but for me, it’s going back to what I can control. And I can’t control everything happening in the world. I can’t control people who are continuing to abuse others. I can only control myself. And that’s why I find so much meaning in the idea of just creating a daily practice for myself.
So, can I change the world? Perhaps not. But I can write something that’s true and real, and maybe that will evoke something in someone else. And that’s kind of what I get my meaning from.
Marion: I cannot thank you enough for that. You will inspire so many to put their mind to their heart, to their keyboard, and to keep going. Thank you, Sara. It’s been a joy to talk to you.
Sara: I really appreciate your time, Marion. Thank you so much.
Marion: You’re welcome. The author is Sara Sherbill. Her new book is There Was Night and There Was Morning, a Memoir of Trauma and Redemption, just out from Union Square and Company. Get it wherever books are sold and see more on her at Sara sherbill dot com.
I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overit studios dot com. Our producer is Jacqueline Mignot. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing?
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