Q & A: Meghan Daum

In her new book, The Unspeakable, essayist Meghan Daum takes a clear-eyed look at the gulf between what we're supposed to feel and what we really do, beginning with her own life and her relationship with her mother.

Do you think we prefer sentimentality over authenticity?

I think there's an inclination and even pressure to lay some kind of redemptive framework on everything we experience. I noticed this when my mother was sick and dying. She was under pressure to be heroic and have epiphanies as a dying person, and I was under pressure to achieve this new closeness with her and to have some sort of breakthrough in our relationship. It's unfair, but people need so badly for everything to turn into a happy story.

Was it therapeutic to write about her and this experience?

Not really. If I were to say that, I would be falling prey to the very thing I'm trying to debunk. It would be like saying the redemption narrative has been applied. Ultimately, I think it was an act of love toward my mother to write honestly about our relationship, and her relationship with her mother, and the expectations and limitations of mother-daughter relationships.

In what ways are you your mother's daughter?

She was searching for her identity and not able to ever really find it, at least from my point of view. I guess the legacy that I inherited from her was a preoccupation with identity, and instead of searching for my own, I ended up thinking and writing about it a lot. That very process perhaps became my identity. There's also my decision not to be a mother, which comes not entirely, but in part, from that legacy.

What led you to address this choice in the book?

Rather than talking about my own decision, which is only interesting to a point, I wanted to reframe the discussion around people who choose not to have children. They have the worst PR in the world. They come up with a million reasons—some shallow and some overly grandiose—and nobody will just say, "I'd rather not do this." The fact is that some people just don't want to have children. And it's a really important job that you shouldn't do if you don't want to.

Is there anything you're afraid of writing about publicly?

Oh, yeah! Many things. But nobody will ever know what those are.