A Very Special Blog Post (Yaya Sisterhood)
Content Warning: Alcoholism, Child Abuse
Younger listeners may not know this, but in the 90’s there was a phenomenon of “Very Special Episodes” where ordinarily funny sitcoms would tackle a very heavy and serious topic. These episodes were gut punches that came out of no where and everyone felt terrible afterward. That got me thinking, for no reason in particular, about our recent episode on The Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood.
The Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells is a story with several themes. It is about the feminine experience in a time of strictly enforced gender roles. It is about female friendship. It is about the unique and complex bonds between mother and daughter. It is a story about what it means when a person who society defines mainly by her capacity for love finds it difficult to love. At least, that’s what it wants to be.
It is at this point that I must admit a shameful truth. I am not a woman. I am not and will never be a mother or a daughter. I will never be joined in sisterhood with my fellow YaYas. Lacking this critical perspective, I am well aware that that in criticizing this book I run the risk of mansplaining something that is explicitly not for me. It is not my intention to approach this post as a man criticizing a portrayal of the feminine experience. I can not relate to Vivi or Sidda in their experiences as women. But I can relate to Sidda as the child of an alcoholic, and as the child of an alcoholic I found this book to be (charitably) out of touch.
As I sit here contemplating what to write next, I have a pretty easy time imagining how Sidda felt after that New York Times interview came out which exposed 1/10th of the trauma her mother inflicted on her. I can imagine Sidda’s conflict as she struggles to talk about her life’s journey and the inspiration for her work while tap dancing (pun intended) around huge and important parts of it. My father is dead. He died when I was 19, as a result of his addiction. I do not speak to anyone on his side of the family. I’m quite confident no one who knew him will ever see this blog. Still, my first instinct as I write is to downplay what happened, to protect his image and memory.
In all fairness, I did not suffer anywhere near the level of abuse that Sidda suffered. My father was never physically abusive. When he drank he mostly just went away. He’d fall asleep or he’d stay out. It was more of an absent parent situation. And, unlike with Sidda’s mother, my father did apologize. He did feel a sense of guilt. There was still too much pride there to ever accept the level of help that he would have needed to quit, though. When he was sober he was quite charming. He was even able to talk rehabilitation specialists into recommending out patient care and drank the whole time. Even Vivi’s luminous personality didn’t manage that.
One of the interesting things about being the child of even the nicest alcoholic is that it becomes second nature to lie about it. Often it’s a matter of survival. There are very real consequences to a child if their parent’s reputation is tarnished. In my case, my father could have lost his job. That would have been a disaster for our family.
In Sidda’s case, Vivi is not the primary breadwinner, but she is the glue holding the family together and it would not take much for Vivi to snap and hurt herself or someone else. In fact, Vivi does snap when Sidda is 10 years old and winds up institutionalized for months. If Vivi should snap again, she may well be looking at prison. That would destroy her father as well as her mother. Sidda’s entire support structure revolves around keeping Vivi’s secret. Exposing Vivi’s secret is what leads to Sidda’s mental-health-crisis-framing-device.
My parents’ marriage eventually collapsed under the weight of my father’s drinking. That’s when things got truly ugly. Separated from the family who made extensive efforts to sabotage his self destruction, my father drank himself to death within the span of a few years. I have no doubt that Vivi would not have survived long as a divorced woman. I imagine that Sidda must know this on some level. You can see the raw fear in her sensitivity to her mother’s moods and body language. Sidda doesn’t just fear being beaten. She fears hurting her mother.
It’s very challenging to talk about a family member who has harmed you, especially when the harm is unintentional. It’s easy to sound like you hate them. It’s very difficult to stand up for yourself without also tearing the other person down. Labeling someone as an abuser can feel like you’re betraying every good thing they ever did for you. In common parlance, “abuser” is a very dehumanizing term. “Abusers” are among the worst people there are. Often, the source of your trauma is all too human to you. You don’t think they deserve such a harsh label, and yet there isn’t a lot of good language for conveying this nuance. A therapist (which is largely dismissed as bougie by the characters in the book) can be very helpful here. The therapists job is to help you. They are not going to tell anyone what you say. You’re allowed to be selfish in therapy. You’re allowed to not care whose reputation you hurt. A therapist is never going to interrupt your expression of your feelings to remind you that the person who hurt you is actually a human being who is luminous and complex and most importantly “doesn’t owe you a goddam thing.”
I have no ill will towards my father. I don’t know if people will find that hard to believe or not, but genuinely, I don’t. I do get tired of hearing what a funny, intelligent guy he was and how much I remind everyone of him. I get very tired of that. It’s not that he wasn’t those things. It’s just that I saw how many of those traits enabled him to better destroy himself. No one can tell the smartest guy in the room what to do. I can’t imagine what it must be like for Sidda to hear from women who are the closest thing to family she has besides Vivi tell her that Vivi is a wonderful person who doesn’t owe her a goddam thing. That has to be one of the cruelest things I can imagine saying to a child who was beaten bloody by their mother.
I’m not a fan of the way the language of mental health has been co-opted for casual use. I quietly seethe when I hear someone describe a heated argument as “verbal abuse.” I roll my eyes when an unpleasant person is described as “toxic.” I find subreddits like AmITheAsshole, AmIOverreacting, and RelationshipAdvice deeply frustrating and unhelpful. There’s been a disturbing trend of labeling people as narcissists in particular, and then using that label to dehumanize them. There’s also been a disturbing trend of armchair psychoanalysts urging people end relationships to go no-contact with their families. So I want to be very clear here when I say that Vivi is a narcissist and that Sidda absolutely should not ask her forgiveness, there is some nuance behind what I’m saying.
Vivi is an almost textbook narcissist, but as Rebecca Wells points out she is also a human being. Vivi is capable of love and suffering and the full range of human experience. When I say that Sidda should not ask Vivi for forgiveness, I mean simply that Sidda has done nothing wrong. Quite the opposite, Vivi is firmly, unambiguously, without any mitigating factors, wrong. She is wrong. She has hurt people, not just Sidda. She continues to hurt people. Vivi is blinded by her own massive and immensely fragile ego. Full stop.
I do not want Vivi to grovel and cry and beg for Sidda’s forgiveness, but Vivi does need to at least own and acknowledge her actions. Vivi needs to admit that the abuse happened. Vivi needs to admit that she spent time in an institution (and that’s fine, get help if you need help). Vivi needs to admit it was a mistake to never speak to Sidda about that time. Vivi needs to acknowledge that Sidda has a right to feel hurt by Vivi’s actions.
The end of The Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood has Sidda again making the first move. Sidda again allows Vivi to preserve her pride at the expensive of Sidda’s own healing. Sidda again is encouraged by everyone around her to sacrifice her own emotional needs and to cater to Vivi’s. Rebecca Wells portrays this as a triumph of love. Sidda must be the bigger person here because Sidda can take it and Vivi can’t. That’s one of the saddest and most frustrating things I have ever been forced to read on a podcast. There is no “love” without respect. Vivi does not respect Sidda. Vivi cares about Sidda. Vivi has affection for Sidda. But Vivi cannot love Sidda. Vivi’s self-image is her prime concern. Vivi never once demonstrates any ability to put anyone else’s needs above her own. Vivi enjoys dominance. Sidda must always pay tribute to Vivi or Vivi will withhold affection. That is not love. That is dependence.
In the true Catholic spirit of the YaYas I’m going to quote a saint.
“Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation?” – Augustine of Hippo
Every major problem in my life has come down to pride. Often my own pride, but also the pride of others. My father and Sidda’s mother shared a prideful nature. They are both too proud to admit how little they control and how much help they need. The Divine Secrets are a monument to pride. These women worship themselves in a literal sense. They write their own testaments and build altars to themselves. As long as these women are members of the Yaya Sisterhood then they never need to be anything else. The world and everything in it is theirs to judge as tres yaya or non yaya. They don’t owe you a goddam thing.
The book leaves me with the impression that Vivi will continue to drink bourbon until the day she dies. She will continue to suffer mood swings and to abuse people who do not deserve it, and Sidda will continue to tolerate it. A bandaid has been applied to a wound that will slowly fester, and Rebecca Wells expects you to applaud and shed tears of joy. This book normalizes deeply unhealthy behaviors and relationships. It does so in a way that makes a lot of women feel seen and understood, and there’s something kind of insidious about that.
I’m encouraged that recent reviews of the book seem to note that Vivi is a problem. I would encourage anyone who finds themselves feeling like Sidda to establish a relationship with good therapist. I would encourage them to set clear boundaries and to demand that, at a bare minimum, they be treated with respect. If those boundaries are violated, it might be time to explore a break. Please do not let this book be the defining text of complicated mother-daughter relationships.
