Right Before My Eyes

A reflection, an invitation, and a story

In exactly 48 hours, I’ll be celebrating the release of my memoir, Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery with a crowd of people here in Richmond, Virginia, where I’ve lived for the past fifteen years with my wife Wendy. I’m so excited about toasting this book’s existence and celebrating the journey that got me to this place.

“Once upon a time…” to “…The End” is never a straight path. A memoir often takes an especially circuitous route. Hidden below the ink on each page lives a secret world of hesitation, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Will readers like it? Did I expose too much? Did I leave too much out? Is the writing good enough? Will readers be bored? WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF ME AFTER THEY’VE READ IT? Very few memoirists escape these questions, which constantly gnaw at our psyches.

The best way I can think of to overcome these feelings and launch the book into the world is to connect with you at either my in-person or virtual book launch. You give me confidence and reassurance that what I’m doing matters. PLEASE CONSIDER JOINING ME!

IN-PERSON BOOK LAUNCH

On Friday evening, I’ll be joined by people who, in some cases, have shared the road with me and in others, are learning about the journey for the first time. If you’re in the Greater Richmond Region (the place we affectionally called RVA), I hope you know that you’re invited to join me. The more the merrier! Here’s all the information you need:

VIRTUAL BOOK LAUNCH

On Saturday evening, I’m inviting people who can’t be here in person to join me virtually. Wherever you live in the world, if you can tune in, it would make me so happy to see you there. Here’s how you register to receive the Zoom link:

HOW TO PURCHASE A COPY

If you can’t make either book launch and still want to read the book, it will be available November 1, 2024, wherever books are sold.

---

Right Before My Eyes

Barely awake, I opened the refrigerator door to grab a carton of almond milk to pour on my Raisin Nut Bran cereal.  I’m not a morning person, but I do try to kind of keep to a schedule during the week and having something to eat is a part of that routine. Without even thinking about it, my hand reached for the milk carton in its usual place. Instead of grasping the carboard container that is always there, my fingers hit the back of the door bin. Nothing was there!

My wife Wendy is one of the most thorough people in the world when it comes to many things but especially in keeping the house stocked with staples. From toilet paper to cleaning supplies to almond milk, it’s a rare day when we run out of anything. As a result, I was certain that we couldn’t be out of milk.

I examined the refrigerator more deeply, especially the left side of the bottom shelf, where typically two unopened cartons of milk await their turn to move to the door for easy access. Instead of milk, however, I saw an empty spot next to a bag of romaine lettuce and a container of fresh-picked okra. No milk. I scanned the rest of the refrigerator just to be certain I hadn’t missed anything. I didn’t see anything resembling almond milk. I closed the door in frustration.

Maybe I’ll have something else for breakfast, I thought to myself. But nothing else sounded appealing. Without considering whether or how much I would be bothering Wendy at work, I texted her. After all, it is sometimes all about me!

“Sweetie, are we out of almond milk or am I just missing it?”

Her brief reply indicated that she was probably busy, “Middle shelf” was all she wrote.

I sighed. No, I said to myself. I’ve already looked there. But this wouldn’t be the first time I’d missed seeing something I was looking for, so I decided to open the refrigerator one more time. At least that way I could crow about the missing milk when Wendy got home from work later that day.

Magically appearing, a carton of almond milk lay all by itself on the middle shelf looking right at me with its single cyclops-like eye. I didn’t have to move anything out of the way to see. I didn’t have to scrounge behind the sodas or lift up the egg carton. It was just there. Right in front of my face.

“How did that get there?” I exclaimed to no one, staring at the carton like it was a type of fantasy reliquary. True confession: I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but I know about religious relics and the containers that hold them, reliquaries, from my Roman Catholic days. Somewhere along the line, I’d heard that in a fantasy world a reliquary might flicker between dimensions and only be visible to those in desperate need. That must be what happened here. I don’t know if my dry cereal qualified as a desperate need, but I would have sworn the milk wasn’t there a minute earlier. It materialized out of thin air in the five minutes it took me to text Wendy and wait for her reply.

At the thought of this miraculous apparition, I started laughing. And laughing. And laughing. How unobservant can someone be? I was certain I could win a prize in this category. But when my laughter slowed, I began to wonder, what else is right before my eyes that I don’t see?  That I cannot see? What am I missing about myself, about my life, about my friends’ and families’ lives, about the world around me? What am I oblivious to and what do I just ignore?

And those thoughts brought me back to the prologue I wrote for my memoir. The prologue consists of four letters I wrote to my mom after her death. In the last letter, I wrote about this very thing—what we choose to see, what others see, what we hide, and what’s buried so deep no one knows about it, not even us.

Some of you have read this section before, but you might find it helpful to read it again as you contemplate these questions for yourself. If you haven’t read it, I hope that as you do, you think about your own journey and what’s right before your own eyes that you cannot or choose not to see.

As I release this book into the world, I’m reminded of my commitment to live as authentically and as openly as I can muster, even when on some days, I can’t see the thing that’s staring me in the face.

Excerpt from the Prologue to Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery.

Dear Mom,

In my work in the chemical dependency field in the 1980s (you remember when you came to visit me at the treatment center I ran, Mom, and how impressed you were with the work I did?), we taught our patients about the Johari Window, a tool developed by Joseph Lift and Harrington Ingram (Johari)¹ to help people understand themselves and how they interact with others. It consists of a four-square grid in which you can examine your public and private self and your conscious and unconscious self.

I’ve found it helpful in understanding myself and my life story and in thinking about what I want to change about myself. Here’s what each quadrant means.

Public/Conscious (Open) Self

In the top left quadrant of the Johari Window is the Public/Conscious Self, the part of you that is known to you and to others around you. This is the visible you that people who know you would recognize when they hear you describe yourself. For example, I’m a white woman in her late sixties who was born in Michigan, grew up in Arkansas, and then returned to Michigan for school and a substantial part of my life.

Although I’ve also lived in Colorado, Massachusetts, Illinois, and North Carolina, I now live in Richmond, Virginia, with my wife, Wendy (yes, I got married, Mom, in 2010, but more about that at a later date). I have an active spiritual life as part of my Unitarian Universalist faith. I’m a social justice/civil rights activist, writer, and tech lover.

I have a wide range of skills that friends and employers have come to rely on. I’m calm in crisis situations, practical in everyday life, and dependable in my commitments. Although I’ve moved around a lot, both geographically and relationally, I work hard to keep people—friends, and even some of my exes—in my life.

I’ve always struggled with my weight—since the time between 7th and 8th grade when I came home from a month at Aunt Babe’s, and you decried that I had gained twenty pounds. “Must have been all those hamburgers and all that pie!” you declared. For the first time in my life, and from that moment on, I felt your disgust about who I was.

These are things that most people who get to know me can easily learn about me. They are things I would have told you or you would have learned about me when you visited, even though I know you didn’t like “cause” people.

Public/Unconscious (Blind) Self

The top right square in the Johari Window is the Blind (or Public/Unconscious) Self. It’s the part of you that is known to others and not to you. It might be a personality trait that annoys people, such as you laugh too loudly at a party, or a trait that people admire, like you always go the extra mile to help someone out. In either case, you’re not conscious of the behavior, it’s just who you are.

A personal development goal could be to become aware of how others see you, learn what they know about you that you don’t, and uncover experiences that impacted you that you don’t remember. As a child, I always had the feeling that other people, especially you and Dad, for starters, knew things about me that I didn’t know. As an adult, I’ve discovered what some of those things were, and that’s why I feel a need to tell this story.

Private/Conscious (Hidden) Self

The bottom left square in the Johari Window is the Hidden (or Private/Conscious) Self—that part of you that you and only you know—your innermost thoughts and feelings, escapades that you never told anyone about, secrets you keep. Moving what’s inside me to my public self has always been challenging to me. I don’t show my feelings easily. Some people have even said they experience me as aloof and difficult to get to know. I’m sure I get those traits from you. It’s better not to expose yourself to others for fear they might judge you.

I have to trust before I share much about me. This was especially true before I came out as a lesbian. Although I’m much more open today than I ever was as a younger person (as evidenced by this memoir), sharing myself with others is an ongoing part of my spiritual journey. This is where you guarded the family secret(s), Mom, praying no one would ever find out.

Private/Unconscious (Unknown) Self

Which leads me to the last window square in the bottom right corner, the Unknown Self. This is the part that is not known to you or anyone else, your hidden motivations and desires, things you don’t understand about why you do what you do. With honest self-examination, reflection, and openness, some of what’s hidden here can become known, at least to your private self.

As I’ve grown older, this has become an even more critical part of my journey, to better understand my actions, motivations, and responses to life’s events. To do that, I must be willing to learn things I don’t want to know, to accept my own shortcomings, to admit to myself that, even in my sixties, I might have some things to learn about myself.  

The greatest struggle of my life has been to lift the shade on the Johari Window, to let in the light, especially to understand, accept, and maybe even forgive the lies on which my life was built—those told to me and those I told to others.

Your secret didn’t fully unravel until I turned fifty years old, four years after you, at the age of eighty-eight, slipped away in your sleep at Jarrett’s house. Maybe it’s good you weren’t alive when I learned the truth. I don’t know if I ever could have confronted you with it, and I don’t know how we could have had a relationship with this unspoken thing between us.

You taught me never to make waves. As you well know, I’ve not always heeded that advice. I’ve made plenty of waves in my life, especially when it comes to challenging injustice and violence I see around me, but would I have ever been able to talk with you about this? I honestly don’t know. I guess that’s why I’m talking to you now, why I’m exposing your secrets to the world in this way.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve certainly questioned myself about whether it’s my story to tell. Do I have the right to tell your secrets, the choices you made, the lies you told? Is that fair to you to tarnish your memory? These are the questions of every responsible memoirist, and the answers are never easy.

In this case, I’ve come down on the side of yes. I was indelibly impacted by the choices you made. I’ve had to heal the pain you caused me, and I’ve had to find a way to understand how it has affected me. This is my story to tell. It’s my hope that it will benefit others who are trying to heal from similar deceptions.

If you were still alive, I would encourage you to tell it with me. It’s hard to imagine you could ever do that—you carried too much shame for that—but I truly believe that would result in genuine healing for both of us. I hope you could have seen that too.

I’ve said all I want to say to you now in these letters, Mom. It’s time to start telling the story I’ve uncovered. I hope your Spirit will guide me if I get something wrong. I’ll do the best I can, be as honest as I can be, and lift as much of the shade on the Johari window as possible.  I also hope your spirit will understand how important it is for the truth to be known. I love you, Mom.

Your daughter,

Annette

1. Luft, J.; Ingham, H. (1955). "The Johari window, a graphic model of interpersonal awareness". Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development. Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles.

---