Making Peace with Our Fathers: On Personal Storytelling and Going ‘Home’
Write what you know, claim where you’re from and look deeply into it.
It’s been a big few weeks.
A fortnight ago I woke in the middle of the night and spontaneously wrote something that became my first published article on Medium. It was essentially a reflection on my difficult relationship with my dad and also some musings on masculinity.
Since then, I’ve had tons of people get in touch, some of whom I haven’t seen since I left school. I’ve also contracted COVID so have been bed/housebound for 7 days now, whilst also communicating with my dad’s care home where he has tried to take his life twice in the last week.
I’m not writing this as a sob story. Instead, it’s been quite a transformational period and not only am I heartened by people’s messages, but I also hadn’t realised just how nourishing it is to be honest in a public format. Which leads me to the purpose of writing this piece, and it’s not all about me…
I’m aware of the adage that all is required of any writer, any person, is to tell their own story, not vainly, but as a sharing of experience that may then echo with a reader’s own experience. To remind us that we’re not alone in the lives we live behind the mask we wear for others.
Nearly two hundred years ago Henry David Thoreau put it much better than I can:
“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well… Moreover, I require of every writer a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives… I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.”
As a writer, director and screenwriter, my language has always been fiction, creating narratives that aren’t real even though they may be influenced by the real. The first screenplays I ever wrote were about kids having to work it out for themselves, disconnected from parental influence, growing up in a tough, unprivileged environment.
Writing from a child’s perspective has always felt like a natural way into stories for me, it’s where my voice feels most at home. Although I was unaware at the time, I can see now that the themes above were unconsciously drawn from my own experiences, albeit a few fantastical steps removed.
Nevertheless, the demands of my own naive let’s-break-into-Hollywood ambitions took me on a subsequent detour via big-budget (i.e. too expensive to yet get made) ‘high-concept’ screenplays including a sci-fi noir, a supernatural western and family festive action fare (“Pitch: Die Hard meets Gremlins in Santa’s Workshop!”).
However, as I mature, with a strong sense of my own creative identity and my own primal narratives, I’m reminded of the advice of uber-writing guru, Natalie Goldberg:
“It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole.”
In this, I do not believe she means physically trekking back to the land of your youth, but she does mean being true to the world you came from, both regional and familial.
My home is the Black Country, so named for its key role in Britain’s industrial heritage, which also gave inspiration for Tolkien’s ‘Mordor’ (which literally translates as ‘black country’ in Elvish — insert nerd emoji here!). Life took me away on my own ‘unexpected journey’ and I haven’t lived there as an adult since. However, it’s always been in my heart, and now, recent experiences draw me back.
Not literally, I’m not about to up sticks and relocate, but in my writing, it wants me to speak. At times, growing up as a boy in the Black Country felt like a survival sport, it was brutal and cruel, and not all of us made it. That period contains some of the saddest stories I know, stories which inform how I live now, why I mentor boys, but they are stories I will save for elsewhere.
Because now, my life is forcing me to confront THE male story: that of my relationship with my father. He who was there at the very beginning but would then subsequently be absent from so much more of my life. Because now I know, as men, when we look at our relationships with our fathers, painful as that is, resistant as we may be, we learn so much about ourselves and crucially, we can grow.
When you feel like you’ve raised yourself (as I do), and especially when you define yourself as a man who grew-up without a father (mine disowned me, which made me), it’s easy to leave the subject of fathers out of any narrative, personal or constructed.
Sure, I’ve always wanted my ‘Obi-Wan’ Kenobi to step in and show me how it’s done but as subject matters, fathers have always been as absent as the real thing for me. When I look back over just about everything I’ve ever written, there is always a great big father-shaped space. Often these stories absolutely do revolve around the absent father, but more so they are also engaged with the resourcefulness and leadership of the child.
But now, as my work and life calls me ‘home’, and as I continue to mature as a man, how can I leave out the subject of the father? In the widest sense we must talk about fathers, not just the individuals but also in the notional trajectory for all men. I’m not saying all men need to become biological fathers but I’m very much up for a strong sense of shared masculine responsibility.
Patriarchy has become a dirty word with many negative elements. ‘Masculinity’ now more often appears as the compound ‘toxic masculinity’. There is very little positive PR on being a man and yet we know there are many who are fighting the good fight. But what we see are the detrimental effects when things fall apart.
We know the stats:
- 80% of suicides are men;
- 95% of UK prison population are men;
- 92% of violent crimes are committed by men.
I don’t have the solutions but it’s inspiring to see a huge increase in conversations on the subject in formats like this, as we hopefully ascend from a “boy psychology to a man psychology” (as Gillette & Moore describe in their book ‘King, Warrior, Magician, Lover’).
I also have immediately-actionable suggestions. Firstly, I have long been an advocate of all men getting involved in mentoring young people. I see so many women who volunteer their time to positively contribute to the generation coming through but I always find myself asking, “Where are all the guys?”
The act of giving your time makes you a better person, the benefit is there for the mentor and the mentee. As the African proverb says:
“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel the warmth.”
I also know that men talking to men in an open, non-judgemental way is crucial and I’m so moved by those who employ this approach in their male interactions. You know when you’re speaking with an elevated soul like this, it’s a completely different feel to the competitive, hierarchical approach that’s all too common.
I guess that’s all I’m trying to do here. For me, the ability to write down these thoughts honestly, without hiding behind a narrative and knowing that someone, somewhere will read them, is very motivating. Combine that with the personal responses I’ve received and the conversations that have ensued, I can now see the value in simply being open, even with strangers. I do feel I want to be honest, to find strength in the vulnerability, where in the past I have felt showing any vulnerability to be the weakness.
I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t been tough. I’ve inherited all the responsibilities of having a father, yet I never received any of the benefits. It requires a herculean effort to overlook all of this man’s shortcomings, for when I see them in him, I fear they are also present in me. It has always been easier to look away, or to go away, but time might be running out now.
I need to find compassion for someone whom I have only ever known resentment. And yet here he is, unknowingly inspiring me to write, to question. Isn’t the search for compassion something that is in all of our stories? To have loved more? To have shown love even when it was buried deep down under layers of our own pain and blame?
It’s not lost on me that while my dad has been deteriorating in a care home for the last 4 months, going out of his brain due to the isolation, that I’ve been granted a mirroring experience, confined to my bedroom for the last 7 days.
The time has given me much space for reflection, things I’d like to ask him, things I may never get a chance to. I’m also realistic about what those answers may give me.
I believe that we resolve our relationships with our parents within ourselves. We cannot change them and truly we can never understand another, but underneath it all, for each of us, I guess our highest, most selfless purpose is to find compassion for another human being, not least our maddening, infuriating, all-too-human parents.
I’d settle now for being able to look my father in the eye, to show him that I see him and to feel that I am seen by him. I see now the deep tragedy for a father to have his only son feel the way I do about him. How did this happen? How did it come to this?
I’m not sure what comes next. Writing this, like the last piece, didn’t come as a decision, it started as general scribblings in my covid fog. What I do know is I’ll keep writing like this and being open, it’s a start.
And here’s my suggestion to you — start writing too. Find the time, half an hour in the morning, write what you feel. Forget about being ‘good’, just spend time with you, be with yourself in a kind and caring way. Listen to you. I bet you don’t do enough of that, do you? Or feel heard? Start by listening to yourself. Go ‘home’.
That mask I mentioned, the one we all wear in the performance of our lives? Who are you behind it? Lovely and vulnerable, I’ll bet, a little bit scared, a few skeletons in the closet, a work in progress with a great big heart. Sounds alright to me. Tell your story.
Steven Chatterton is a writer-director, screenwriter, children’s author and broadcaster, living in London, originally from The Black Country. His focus is on storytelling from a child’s perspective, stories that show their growth and leadership while highlighting inequality and driving social mobility.
His scripts have been selected for development programmes across Europe and he holds masters degrees in Film (Birkbeck University) and Screenwriting (University of the Arts London).
He is a huge advocate of mentoring children and young people, working with several charities across London. You can follow him on Twitter: @ChattertonSD.
