Privacy Versus Secrecy

Milwaukee, WI January 2012

I write memoir. It’s kind of my thing, has been for a few years now. I am a pretty public person, willing to talk with most folks about private issues, though I am discrete, or like to think of myself that way – trying not to over share, to have boundaries. Sometimes my wife has to remind me to speak quietly in a public place while having an intimate conversation on my cell phone.

I am very careful about confidentiality with my students, and set limits as to what gets shared about my own life with others, asking for confidentiality for myself. But now that some essays are getting published – on elephant journal, in the anthology Trans-Kin, I am beginning to realize what I have set up for myself here – a life of a writer sharing her life with everyone who will read it.