I find myself writing to you today, on the evening of my birthday, with your manuscript resting heavily beside me. It is not a gift in any ordinary sense, yet it is a gift nonetheless: a mirror, unflinching, unsentimental, and – at times – merciless.
I have read what you have written. It is, of course, your prerogative to construct your narrative as you see fit. But let us be clear: a narrative is not the same as truth.
I have read the passage you call Karen. Those words: “Karen did not unravel…” They arrest me. They hold me in a way few things have done for many years. I ask myself, did I not unravel? Or did I simply learn to contain my unraveling, to fold it back into a language of competence and survival, so that it appeared seamless to others? Perhaps I mistook containment for resilience. Perhaps I still do.
The passage ‘Karen did not unravel…’ caught my attention. You assert certainty where you cannot have had sight. You speculate upon my inner life, my motives, my choices, with an authority that is neither earned nor complete. You write as though you have discovered the hidden scaffolding of my being, when in fact you are arranging fragments into a structure that suits your thesis.
Reading myself in your words is a strange dislocation. I recognise fragments – my tone, my posture, the scaffolding of rationality I built to shield myself from storms I could not control. But I also see someone I scarcely know, as if you have reached into the shadows behind me and drawn out another figure altogether. One I feared, and one I denied.
I am not unaware of the literary impact you are aiming for, nor the dramatic advantage of casting me as the linchpin of generational trauma. But I will not collude with this portrayal of myself as some half-ruined matriarch, barely concealed behind rationality. It is convenient, yes. It makes for compelling copy. But it is not the full picture, and it certainly is not mine.
It is not easy to see myself through your eyes. And yet, I must acknowledge the courage it takes for you to write me at all. Most children do not write their mothers into myth. They leave them wrapped in silence or sentiment. You have chosen something sterner. I will not pretend it doesn’t wound. It does. But perhaps wounding was inevitable between us.
I worked. I provided. I survived. Not perfectly, no one does, but with a measure of determination that deserves more than reduction to pathology. You are entitled to your perspective, but I cannot allow silence to be mistaken for consent.
You will forgive me, I hope, if I say that parts of me resist your interpretation. Not because I wish to correct you (it is not mine to correct) but because no one ever lives entirely in another’s rendering. There are moments you cannot know, silences you cannot hear, choices I made not from cruelty but from a confusion of love, fear, and limitation. I am not sure whether you will ever believe that. But I need to write it down, even if only once.
You may consider this letter unnecessary, or even unhelpful. But in reading your manuscript I am reminded of the danger of a single story. You tell yours, but it is not mine. My life has been larger, more complex, and less easily dramatised than the lens through which you have chosen to view it.
If there is grace to be found here, it may be in this: that you have taken the fragments of me – those I abandoned, those I guarded, those I misused, and fashioned them into a story that will outlast both of us. For that, even as I recoil, I am strangely grateful.
For that reason, I will not continue to engage with your manuscript. If you choose to publish, that is on your conscience, not mine. I shall not answer further letters on the matter.
It is my birthday. I am older now, and I do not pretend that many years remain. I do not expect reconciliation, nor do I seek to rewrite your judgement. I only wish, with whatever remains in me, that one day you will know that my love – such as it was, flawed, broken, misdirected – was real.
Yours,
Ma x
Karen.
Reade Saunders 
Leave a comment