Why I Wrote Tough Luck

I first tried to write Tough Luck in 2012. I had so many questions about my childhood, and I thought that if I put everything down on paper, perhaps I could begin to understand it. But I stopped. I knew what had happened to me, yet I was still too close to much of it to tell the story clearly.

For the first ten years of my life, I moved between relatives’ homes. I often wondered why I could not stay in one place, and why the circumstances of my birth seemed to have decided so much before I was old enough to understand any of it. There were questions about my father’s family that nobody answered. I gathered bits of information as I grew older, but there was always more I wanted to know.

Then I lost my mother. I loved her, and I also carried hurt from parts of our life together. While she was alive, I asked her many times where my father was. The question made her angry. Sometimes she slapped me; other times she warned me not to ask again. I did not understand her reaction. I only knew that I wanted to know him. I saw my two half siblings with their father, and I longed for that kind of closeness too. My mother’s husband was in our lives, but I did not have that fatherly relationship with him. Through all those years I held on to one thought: one day, I would find my father.

After my mother died, I was angry about what she had gone through and about the things I could no longer ask her. At times I spoke about that anger publicly. At other times I tried to explain it to friends. I knew I was repeating myself, but I did not know what else to do with it.

I think that was one reason I wanted to write the book. I wanted people to understand my mother’s life more fully. I also wanted to understand my own. People had formed opinions about me, including about relationships that had been painful for me. I could not control what anyone thought, but I could tell my story in my own words.

On May 25, 2023, I had a conversation with a cousin that brought back memories I had put aside. That night I felt I needed to write them down before they slipped away again. I returned to the pages I had begun years earlier, this time ready to ask harder questions and stay with the answers.

Writing Tough Luck did not make the difficult parts of my life disappear. It helped me see how they belonged to a larger story. There was grief and rejection, but there were also people who helped me, chances I took, work I was proud of, and love I found along the way. I wanted to write about all of it.

I especially wanted to be honest about my mother. I did not want to hide the hurt I felt as a child, and I did not want that hurt to be the only thing I remembered about her. Writing gave me space to hold both.

The book is about where I came from, and about the life I wanted to make for myself. For a long time, I felt that other people knew only pieces of my story. Tough Luck was my way of bringing those pieces together and, finally, speaking for myself.