I’m always excited by the publication of memoirs about LGBTQ families, and I’m happy to be part of the blog tour for Lara Lillibridge’s memoir Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home
”You know you can’t write the story they expect, these nice normal lesbians,” Lillibridge reflects to herself in the book, “because you don’t actually know what it feels like to be raised by nice normal lesbians. You only know what it was like to be raised with a mentally ill lesbian stepmother and a mother trying her hardest to keep the family together. Their sexuality was far less significant.” At the same time, she understands that her story may give fodder to the anti-gay movement, and this means “You are not just your own voice, your own history—rather, you carry the expectations of both extremes.”
Kudos to her, then, for defying expectations and sharing her quirky, entertaining, sometimes disturbing, and often insightful story. Lillibridge grew up in Rochester, New York with her mother, brother, and stepmother Pat. Her father had left when she was four, moving to Alaska but proclaiming he still wanted to be involved in his children’s lives. Lillibridge and her brother would visit him several times a year, making the 12-hour plane trip by themselves and watching their father cycle through seven wives.
Lillibridge writes in the third person, referring to herself as Girl, with other characters called by their familial titles: Mother, Stepmother, etc. Those expecting a traditional first-person approach may be put off by this at first, but it gives the work a freshness and energy often lacking in other memoirs, and give Lillibridge extra distance to reflect. She also adds occasional first-person “Notes from the Fourth Wall” that offer additional observations on events and people without bogging down the main narrative.
One realizes, even in the early chapters, that all three of Lillibridge’s parents struggled with being parents and with personal issues that impacted their parenting. Her stepmother had bipolar disorder and rages that her mother was unable to stop; her father had attachment disorder and other problems. There is love, though, underneath the flaws, and Lillibridge skillfully paints her story in shades of gray, rather than black and white.
Everyone wants to know what it was like to be raised by lesbians, how we functioned, what made it different. I want to talk about other things, the things that formed me and shaped me and scarred me. Not my mother’s sexuality.
Lillibridge’s relationship with her parents is further complicated by teasing she suffered from classmates for having two moms, who were even more of a rarity in the 1970s and 80s than now. While her mother and stepmother “want to be viewed as equal parents,” they “can’t erase” her father, even though he is on the other side of the country. Not only did Lillibridge love him, she tells us, he was her one “connection to the straight world,” the one parent she could “talk about without hedging pronouns.” This keeps her tied to him despite his sometimes inappropriate behavior.
Lillibridge also offers us a thoughtful writer’s scrutiny of awkward school moments, ups and downs of friendships, and other commonalities of growing up, even as she untangles her own family’s unique threads. She takes us through high school, into her college years, and into her own unsuccessful relationships and marriages, showing us how the messages and lessons of our youth can echo years later.
This is a book full of imperfect people. Because it is a memoir, it cannot be turned into a tale with a happy Disney ending. Yet Lillibridge shows us that she has been able to look back at her parents, especially since becoming a mother herself, and better understand their motivations and actions as they tried to raise children without losing themselves.
“The story everyone wants to hear isn’t the story I want to tell,” she asserts. “Everyone wants to know what it was like to be raised by lesbians, how we functioned, what made it different. I want to talk about other things, the things that formed me and shaped me and scarred me. Not my mother’s sexuality.” We should be glad she listened to herself and told the story she wanted. That’s an important message in itself for us LGBTQ parents—that our children’s stories are not our own. And those of us who have family members with mental illness or who have suffered in bad relationships will also appreciate that Lillibridge has not hidden those aspects of her life. Our imperfections are not in our queerness, but queer families can be as imperfect as any others. Girlish reminds us that we are not alone in that.
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