"I get knocked down, but I get up again"

My memoir is a careful tightrope balance between speaking my truth and protecting those I love…or in all honesty – trying not to be bollocked by my parents for telling the world their secrets.

So I won’t write about my Dad being a raging alcoholic or my Mom buying, selling, growing and smoking marijuana all of my life. I won’t write about plates and glasses smashing in the night, my Dad bumping off walls and peeing in wardrobes in his drunken state. I won’t write about my Mom’s red-rimmed eyes or her glassy stare – the way she would look through me and not at me when I was trying to talk to her. I won’t write about the times I would turn down my stereo when I knew it was going to kick off or pretend I was excited about ‘something outside’ so I could take Jay away from it all and protect him.

There will be so much between the lines that won’t make it onto the pages if my book ever gets printed.

Do all writers go through this?