Caroline RothsteinVerified account

I put so much work into blud & couldn't tour w/ it. My mother is extremely ill. She's stalked me my entire life. When she learned my new last name, she Googled me, def not expecting to find the poems describing her abuses. It tipped her over. She got worse. Went on a rampage...

Wrote bizarre 1-star reviews of every book she could find online. Pretended to be my paternal uncle on FB, shaming me for what I've written about my "poor, Christ-loving mother" (not knowing said uncle's locked up for 30 yrs)

When I called her out, threatening to post court documents (I've been in the system since I was 3 mos. old) she called CPS on me. My kids were pulled out of class & questioned by authorities because "the claims were jus so outrageous we had to check in on them"

I was under investigation for 90 days. Though cleared, it was fucking triggering. She literally accused me of doing shit SHE had done to ME as a child She knew that would fuck w/ me. It did. & I haven't written in 16 months. My poetry saves my life, but is also dangerous for me.

blud was a necessary purge. I love the book. I love all the people I carried into it - my ancestors within the text, my friends, my family, chosen & birthed. but that bitch's response to it sent me deep into a PTSD hole, & I've not found my way out of it yet.

So when some tricky little "up and coming" poet rolls up on my life & tries to put it on, all I can say is, CLOWN, THIS WILL NOT BE COMFORTABLE. I'm just barely figuring out how to navigate it. Goddamn, don't gank my shit. I don't come from clean hands. YOU DO NOT. WANT. THIS.

Who are we, if not our words? Who are we if we are not allowed to tell our own stories? I survived my own vanishing. I arrive in my art. That is where I map my forgiveness, my sorrow, my joys. Let it be mine. Don't change a single word of it.

I need to come back to this, because that tattoo of hers is more than just a line. I was the youngest patient in the US to get braces back in the 80s. My orthodontist was stunned that I'd lost all my baby teeth. I was seven.