Vulnerability & Writing About Lost Innocence

I longed for easy days I could draw or create. There was so much about the world I wish I could have learned from the safety of literature or a classroom. Instead I saw pain and felt pain and learned pain as a witness to my mother's dysfunctional lifestyle. Her violent way of life became mine whether I chose to claim it or not.

The Universal Longing

Growing up with an abusive, neglectful and absent parent meant I was often left longing for love. I'd wake most days with the desire to move on from this lifetime even though I did not yet understand death or dying. For a child the thought most commonly conjured is about disappearing or wanting desperately to go away. Mostly for whatever caused pain to stop. That longing stayed with me for a vey long time.

If you're writing memoir about childhood trauma, you know this longing. It's the through-line that connects every painful scene in your memory, and every bad decision and desperate attempt to feel safe in the world.

I often felt lost and deeply lonely. There were days when the sadness turned into a blind rage for the injustice of it all. Thankfully, my anger never got the better of me. But the sadness did and it wreaked a whole lot of havoc in my life until I was able to move and grow beyond the child I was to the adult I could be.

Vulnerability on the Page Mirrors Vulnerability in Life

When you write about being an "easy target," you risk becoming one again—to critics, to trolls, to people who don't understand. But that vulnerability is also what makes memoir powerful.

The "wrong places" you looked for love aren't shameful detours, they're part of the story. Readers need to see the desperation, the logic that made sense at the time, even when it was destructive.

Coping Mechanisms Are Complex

Alcohol. Rage. Desperate relationships. These aren't simple "mistakes" they're survival strategies that worked until they didn't. Memoir requires showing both sides. And remember that loss has layers.

You don't just lose innocence. You lose the child you might have been. The education you deserved. The childhood that should have been yours. Name all the losses. Validate them so that you can finally free yourself.

Writing about your loss of innocence could mean writing a period of your life when you were "an easy target." Even if you were, own the lessons that came out of it.

Show the logic of your choices.  Even bad decisions made sense in the moment. Help readers understand why you did what you did.

Don't rush past the shame.  The feeling of becoming "less interesting or less desirable" that's the wound beneath the wound. Let readers sit with it.

Honor what you lost.  Innocence. Purity. The version of yourself that might have been. These losses matter.

Celebrate the turning points.  Even small ones. Even the moment you realized something wasn't working. That's awareness, and awareness is the beginning of change.

The Courage to Write It

Writing about being vulnerable, desperate, and lost requires a different kind of courage than writing about survival and triumph. It requires admitting you weren't always strong, weren't always making good choices, weren't always the hero of your own story.

But that's where the truth lives. And that's what readers need to see.

Thanks for reading. As always, keep writing and keep me posted.