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I Usually write the introduction to private lives, but the author of this issue's piece, Mindy Lewis, submitted such a meaningful overview of her work that I felt that it was unnecessary for me to do so.—Clemens Loew, PhD, editor.
In “One of the Good Guys” I explore my long relationship with the psychiatrist my mother sent me to as a troubled adolescent. Ten years ago I completed a memoir about my adolescent years spent in a psychiatric ward, and in so doing had worked out much of the residual anger, grief, and shame that I'd carried within me for decades. Yet, in writing this essay, I discovered a new sense of empathy for the adults in my life at the time—Dr. L., my mother—who were trying to do their best for me at a time when options and knowledge were more limited than they are today. As I finished the essay, I felt something inside me shift, as if I'd found a new completion, a different distance from events with which I thought I'd already come to terms. Once again, I'd experienced the unique power of personal narrative to heal, enlighten, inform, transform, remember, make whole.
Submissions to Private Lives should be written in narrative form rather than scholarly style, so that the reader is engaged in a personal experience with the narrator. Examples include such experiences as first love, a death, a moment that defined your career, an experience that altered your life, or the loss of a loved one. Adolescents and nontherapists are encouraged to submit as well.
The length should be about 14 pages, double-spaced.