⌂ Vote of Confidence: How I Became The Family Biographer

On gratitude and receiving the encouragement to write

Thank you for being here. Your presence has not gone unnoticed. I don’t obsessively check my subscriber count, but each time I post an essay, I see you have multiplied. It’s like watching a tree branch from a kitchen window in spring: Every day there are new buds, full of promise.

When I started this newsletter a year ago, I had zero readers. This was disheartening, so I sent an email to friends and family members asking them to sign up. Many did. I also invited followers from other platforms to find me here. That proved more difficult, because most people are resistant to change. Still, I was soon writing for over a hundred readers and that was motivating enough. Imagine a hundred people in your living room throwing confetti and saying, “Please, write more!”

I don’t receive this kind of cheering when I’m working on a book. For years I must find the motivation to write deep within myself. The idea of a finished manuscript floats ahead of me like an object I most desire.

“What kind of beast would turn its life into words?”
—Adrienne Rich

Today there are 889 of you and my heart is full. You may not read everything I put out, and I don’t expect you to—who can keep up?—but your presence feels supportive nonetheless. Each subscriber is a stamp of approval.

But authors don’t really need approval, right? Indeed we don’t. We don’t even need an audience. Yet having both gives me more confidence to write my truth. Your presence means that I deserve attention for the things I have to say.

I’m Dutch, so I didn’t grow up with a Thanksgiving tradition. I also know that the celebration is fraught with problems because it denies the cruel colonization of Native Americans in the USA. That said, there’s nothing wrong with paying attention to what’s going right in our life and express our gratitude. Even more: it can bring us happiness.

Being grateful doesn’t mean that our life cannot be improved. We can be thankful for the help we’ve received and also remain ambitious. We can be pleased with where we are and still feel compelled to achieve more. Gratitude and drive can exist side by side. As it does in me.

In short, I’m taking Thanksgiving Day as an opportunity to say:

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Will you stay with me to see where I go next?

My gratitude is as big (and as hard to capture) as the moon!

On Koh Lanta, Thailand, one windy night early February 2020, when the virus from Wuhan still seemed like a world away.

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For the next 10 days, until Sunday Dec 9th, I’m offering 30% off on all paid subscriptions!

30% off Thanksgiving Special

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How I Became The Family Biographer

As an extra thank you to my paid subscribers, I’d like to share an excerpt from my unpublished memoir.

In the late summer of 2020, when Daniel and I were sheltering from the world in a remote village in northern Vietnam and the pandemic barred us from attending his mother’s funeral in the United States, his sister applied for guardianship over their recently widowed father without telling us.

My father-in-law suffered from dementia and was soon considered incapacitated. When he lost his civil rights, my-sister-in-law and a neighbor took over his life: his healthcare, his social agenda, his estate. But my father-in-law had always had an adversarial relationship with his daughter and we didn’t trust the neighbor. So when Daniel and I discovered what had happened, we intervened to avoid disaster.

I wrote a book-length memoir about the events. It involves a private investigator, a criminal record, a box of guns, stupendous attorney bills, sleepless nights, and spiraling anxiety.

In June, I published an essay about what you can do to protect your family from elder abuse.

Today, I’d like to share an excerpt that shows how I received the permission (or was it the order?) to write this memoir.

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For the next 10 days, until Sunday Dec 9th, I’m offering 30% off on all paid subscriptions!

30% off Thanksgiving Special