Felicia Sullivan
Interview with a Memoir Author

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

I just want to start off by saying I think it's amazing and very courageous of you to tell your story with such honesty and conviction. I can tell that you felt the need to share where you've been and how far you've come. I think most people would be too scared of judgment to do this. That brings me to my first, and very personal, question. How are you today?

Thank you!! It warms me so much to hear your deeply kind words. Writing the book from both a personal and craft perspective was incredibly difficult. Personally, I was trying to come to terms with what I had experienced as a child while also struggling with a drinking problem, all the while trying to achieve what writers set out to do – write a good story that is their own. Returning to the past – memories of the years I had spent as my mother's daughter, my mother's caretaker – was indeed painful, but necessary. For years I was adamant about not returning to this dark country, but living this way wasn't necessary healthy because the past consistently crept back in my life and the harder I tried to deny it (self-medicating, living a life of my own invention), the more difficult bearing the weight of these two lives became. Ultimately I knew that confronting the past was the only way I would move beyond it.

Now I live with my eyes wide open. I'm completely sober and privileged to have passionate and supportive people in my life. The powerful combination of this newfangled family and my sobriety gives me enormous confidence that anything is possible. That I deserve happiness.

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

I know this may be an impossible question to answer but I'd like to ask. Do you feel like there was good in your mother’s parenting at all? Have you been able to find any positive lessons you learned from being her daughter?

Absolutely! That's what makes the book and my relationship with her so heartbreaking! I don't forgive my mother for the choices she made but I now understand why she made them. And part of me feels an unbelievable amount of sorrow for her – a single parent who never had it easy, a woman who lacked role models and support. It was us against the world, and it was a war she always had to win, but soon grew tired of fighting. Drugs made the landmines, and their inevitable explosions, easier to bear. However, my refrain is this: before the drugs she had a choice and she always chose her over me.

And as I grow older, I get a twinge of sadness when I hear friends talk about their meddling, overprotective mothers – stalwart, loveable women who are their very best friends. I ache for that maternal figure and guide, and although professional mentors, a terrific father, and friends who have served as my surrogate family, comfort me, there is nothing like that intimate mother-daughter relationship. So while I don't miss my mother, I long for the idea of one.

Positive lessons? They were few, but powerful. Knowledge is power, and strength and the art of survival, is something to be revered.

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

I think in a memoir of survival like the one you've written, readers are always left a little bit awed by the person's ability to rise above their extreme hardships and make a better life for themselves. Where did you find the strength to do this?

That's a difficult question to answer because it's often something that I continually ask myself. Granted, my mother was an incredibly flawed woman, but she was strong, resilient, capable, and I admired her those traits and perhaps they aided in my survival.

Put simply: I had to survive because there was no other option, and I knew that there was the possibility, albeit a minor one, of having a better life.

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

You certainly don't paint a rosy picture of yourself as a young adult and it's what I find most honest about this book. You struggled, you failed at things, you almost took your mother's path, but then you turned your life around. Was there an absolute turning point for you? Does someone truly have to hit "rock bottom" in order to change?

Once my mother and I parted ways, I never adequately mourned her loss, and for years, I denied my upbringing and my life with her because I was ashamed. I longed for the lives I'd only read about – blond girls with credit cards having an endless amount of fun. I desired all that was WASP, affluent and genteel. I reveled in this inane simplicity because it was the furthest from who I was and the farther I could run, the better. But there was still the reality, a past that consistently ghosted and I discovered that closing the distance between the two was easier with alcohol, at first, and then much more so with cocaine.

Since I was ashamed of my past, of living in poverty, of a mother who loved and terrorized me, I was desperate to live a seemingly "perfect" life of my own invention.

But at one point the weight of these two lives – the accomplished, in-control professional and the frightened child who never really mourned the loss of her mother – were becoming difficult to bear. Something had to give. And I guess that's what I label the proverbial "rock bottom." Because I was starting to realize that becoming my mother wasn't a way a live – it was an easy way to die.

While I can't speak for others, I needed to hit bottom, to realize that monumental things and people could be lost, if I didn't change.

BCQ: How will your past affect the possibility of you having children of your own some day?

Felicia: I haven't decided whether or not I plan to have children. Perhaps I'll cross that bridge with my partner when the time comes.

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Why did you dislike your hair so much as a child? Do you still?

My hair was always a constant reminder of my uncertain heritage – a familial lineage that was kept from me. Since there was no certainty, I never felt brave enough to stand up for myself when others mocked the disconnect between my coarse, kinky hair and pale skin.

Today, I have a love-hate relationship with my hair, as I guess most women do. It's difficult to maintain, but at least I never have to worry about it falling out. I have enough hair for a small village!

BCQ: Have you been able to find out any more about your heritage? Your father?

Felicia: Regrettably, no.

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Can you explain the significance of the title?

Growing up in a rough area in Brooklyn, New York, where opportunities for social, educational and economic advancement weren't easily accessible, where we as children watched television programs that depicted close-knit upwardly mobile families living in the genteel, manicured suburbs with their expansive lawns, cable boxes and homecoming football games, and we wondered – where were our Cadillacs, Liz Claiborne purses and happiness on demand?

Much of my childhood was bleak, dark, and the concept of seeing or accessing the sky, an emblem of light, seemed impossible.

I'm privileged to say that I no longer view the world this way, where I'm practically drenched in light!

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan

Where is your mother now? Do you know? Does it matter to you or have you finally let her go?

In 1997 I had to make a choice between my mother and myself, and, after years of fear, shame and abuse, I made the decision to choose me. It was a painful choice but in retrospect it was a necessary and healthy one.

Presently, I don't know my mother's whereabouts – whether she's alive or passed – and for me, this is a good thing. It's taken me a long time to get to find a sort of closure with our past, the life we led together, and it's paramount that I surround myself with positive, healthy, caring people.

Memoir Authors: Interview with Felicia Sullivan