Andrea Leeb, nurse-turned-lawyer-turned-writer, tells her story of child sexual abuse and perseverance in her memoir Such a Pretty Picture. I sat down, albeit virtually, with Leeb to discuss her battle against self-doubt and her writing journey.
Such a Pretty Picture will be available this October from She Writes Press.
What compelled you to write about your childhood experiences?
I have an MFA in Creative Writing, but I chose to write fiction. I chose to write fiction because I never thought I would write a memoir. I often wrote a lot of short stories that were around issues of family trauma or family abuse, but issues that were completely fictional.
When my father died, it coincided with the “movement around 2017. I realized that it was time to tell my story, and I thought that it could help people. I felt that, as a writer, there was always a little bit of rawness that was missing from my fiction work. I think that’s because I was writing around, instead of from, my own life. I began writing it in a workshop, and I quickly realized I was going to write a book.
Did the refusal from those in your life — whether mental health professionals or family members — to acknowledge what you dealt with at any time make you question your story’s legitimacy? If so, how did you deal with this self-doubt?
Well, when I was younger, I definitely questioned it. Before I wrote it, I was always questioning myself. I was always minimizing. I think it was hard to say that things weren’t happening, but I was able to minimize it.
As I grew older, it was still a question of “Am I crazy? Am I making this up? Is there something wrong with me?” Growing older, the memories didn’t go away, and I think it was hard for me to believe that I was making it up. In fact, I think it made me shut down. I didn’t want to talk about it. I was terrified of people perceiving me as unstable, hysterical — because these were the things that my father told me I was.
In my book, I write a lot about Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre. There’s another book by Jean Rhys called Wide Sargasso Sea, where Mrs. Rochester is actually found out to not be so mad — that she’s driven to madness and gaslighting when she is put in the attic. Still, I was always a little afraid that people would perceive me as hysterical or not mentally stable, so that made me doubt myself. I thought it was better to keep my mouth shut and keep going.
When writing, I did have moments where I was like, “Am I exaggerating? Is this real?” I am really fortunate because I have a sister, Sarai, who is in the book. She was very supportive of my writing the book. She read the first draft and read the later drafts. Although our memories of what our childhoods were — and they were different in some ways — she could vouch for the accuracy of a lot of scenes, and what was happening in the family, even though the sexual abuse wasn’t happening to her.
You state that you had difficulty with the term “survivor.” What is it about this term that feels inaccurate or ill-fitting?
At that point in time, I was 33. I was at the precipice of getting myself help. I tried to button myself up, but in retrospect, I don’t think that I was that good at it. I think there was always something a little off about me. I mean, I met my friends from college, and they didn’t know, but I was always a little quirky. They might have described me as being somewhat overly emotional, even though I said I wasn’t.
At the time, I was attempting to minimize what had happened, and “survivor” to me meant that I had something to survive from. I was trying to tell the story that my family was perfect, that I grew up with loving parents. I really wanted the family I didn’t have. I’m sure it was happening around me, to friends, but I never looked behind my friends’ closed doors.
I wanted to make my own picture better, and using “survivor” at the time made me feel as though I had to admit there was a problem.
Now, I use that term proudly. I am a survivor. Yet, even when I started using it, I resisted the word “victim.” However, I’ve been working with the UCLA Rape Treatment Center, and they use the term “victim.” I’ve talked a lot with the therapist and people there who provide services, and I’ve come around to that term as well, because, in fact, survivors of sexual abuse — especially childhood or otherwise — are actually victims of a crime. I’m now comfortable with both terms, and I personally use them interchangeably.
How do you feel your experiences and education as a nurse and attorney have impacted your life?
I had a lot of trouble with intimacy in my relationships — being able to really feel. I wasn’t a good girlfriend, and I wasn’t a good wife when I was first married. I write about this in the book later on. Honestly, when I think back on it, I wasn’t always the best of friends, either — although some of my friends from college would say otherwise, which is nice to hear. But it’s because all these things require a high level of intimacy.
Being a nurse allowed me to be helpful without having a seriously intimate relationship. You go to work and you leave, but you can still provide a sort of care. I became a nurse because I wanted to give somebody that moment of hopefulness that I didn’t get.
Becoming a lawyer… that’s a whole different thing. I wanted to have a voice. I wanted to be empowered, so that was very important. But the work is very intense, and I’m a compartmentalizer, so it might not have been the healthiest thing, but it allowed me to compartmentalize so as not to fall apart. I needed grounded careers.
I love books. You can see in the book that I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know if I had the stability to do that — to live the writer’s life. I needed those grounded places to go to work every day and come home. Being a lawyer meant sometimes not coming home for a while, but I think it gave me a sense of stability.
What do you do to nourish yourself? How do you balance writing about potentially triggering memories with taking care of and protecting your mental health?
In my book, I talk a lot about getting help. For me, that was therapy. There are a thousand modalities, and I am not a therapist, so I can’t say one modality is better. I needed to get help in the form of some sort of therapy to really begin my healing process. When I first started the book, I was not in therapy, and I quickly realized that I really needed somebody to speak to — so that was a big part of what nourished me then.
The page has always helped me. It’s an intimate relationship. It’s me, myself, and the words on the page. I had someone tell me in school once, “Your fingers are going to know what your mind doesn’t know.”
I’ve always exercised a lot, but I was more of a fast exerciser. I ran, I spun. I did all of these cardiac things, and those did help me a lot to relax, but writing the book and going to yoga have been soothing. I began doing yoga after my mother died, and I do yoga almost daily now, and I do Pilates a lot. These things have helped me to be more in touch with my physical self.
What do you hope your audience takes away from your memoir?
I hope that people who have gone through similar experiences — or any kind of childhood or adult trauma — talk to someone as soon as possible. There’s no harm in talking, but they should do it as soon as they can. This is hard, and it makes you feel terrible about yourself, but recovery is possible. It is possible to live a fulfilled, happy life. It is even possible to find joy.
My book is not a tied-into-a-bow narrative where someone walks out of recovery and everything is perfect. I can’t promise people perfection in life, but I can promise that recovery is possible and that healing is possible.
I want readers to be aware of childhood sexual abuse, and that this can happen even in the prettiest of houses. This is not an issue of socioeconomics, an issue of race, or an issue of education. This type of abuse — especially incest — can happen in any family, and childhood sexual abuse happens frequently. RAINN says that one in nine young women and one in 20 boys will be sexually assaulted before the age of 18. It is generally by someone they know.
I hope that for most people, it isn’t by a parent. But I want them to know that this happens, and to be aware and open if someone tells them that it happened.
