If I’m going to be honest, I have to admit that I never thought I would write the title of this post. When I imagined all the stories that were before me to tell, The Hidden Side was not among them. Yet for reasons I write about here, this story did become mine to write.
This was scary, this realizing that I was actually going to go here and do this—step into what would probably be any mother’s worst nightmare. Even after my editor gave me the green light to write the story, I was in a bit of shock. I didn’t know how I’d get through it emotionally. And yet it was now my job to do so, and do so authentically.
Have you heard that famous writing rule, “Write what you know”? Well, I definitely broke it in writing The Hidden Side. Thankfully, I don’t know what it’s like to have a son who has committed such a terrible crime that he faces being locked away forever. But there are woman out there who know what this is like. Brave women. Women who have written their testimonies for others, like me, to glimpse not only their ordeals, but their hearts.
In my research, I discovered a particularly extreme example of what my character, Natalie, would be going through in the form of a memoir written by Sue Klebold. Sue is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters.
I remember obtaining A Mother’s Reckoning from the library, bringing it home and putting it on my table, looking at the picture of an ordinary woman and her small son on the cover. Only this little boy wouldn’t grow up to have a career, maybe a family. In fact, the world would not know him for anything good he had done, but instead, he would be forever known for the pain he inflicted in the last hours before his death.
I did not want to go here. I did not, quite simply, want to relate to this woman. This woman who, at first glance, had raised a monster. Better to presume Dylan’s actions were some sort of parenting shortcoming. Safer to think that of course, my own children could never do anything nearly as terrible. My own children were loved, taught things of faith. I paid attention to them, to their interests, what they watched on television, who they hung out with, how they did in school. Safer to think that I was nothing like this woman who had birthed a boy capable of such travesty.
And then I read. Sue’s honesty and pain came through across the page. No, she wasn’t a perfect mother, but none of us can claim that. My heart ached for her, and in my reading I glimpsed the pain of my character, Natalie, whom I would need to write about.
Another book I read that helped me understand some of what Natalie would be feeling was Carol Kent’s beautiful book, When I Lay My Isaac Down. Though not the mother of a school shooter, Carol’s son is serving a life sentence in jail. And yet her journey and her faith inspired me in the writing of The Hidden Side. It reminded me that God can, and often does, choose to work good out of the depths of darkness.
These books helped me grow in my humanity, my empathy, and my faith. They inspired me to write this story. I certainly don’t have all the answers to why these things happen. Plain and simple, humans often act wrongly. Sometimes very wrongly. Yet it was my desire to peel back the layers of things unseen—things we might not want to see…the hidden side, the gray area, of those difficult trials.
There is always the other side of the story. And though I often wish to curl up in my safe little world and refuse to peer into it, I am convinced that God is strong enough to work through the dark and despair, the bitterness and betrayal. He is strong enough and capable enough and simply enough to sustain us. That is the hope I wish to leave my readers with, that is the hope I have tried so very hard to portray in The Hidden Side. I look forward to hearing what you think!