This woman’s controversial obituary for her mother sparked outrage, but I think we need more like this

Many of us have been told, “Do not speak evil of the dead.” But what happens when someone who caused trauma dies?

The idea that the deceased should be exempt from criticism simply because they have died is tiresome and in dire need of revision. For abuse survivors, the death of their abuser can be the first opportunity to safely share their stories. Fortunately, our cultural mythologies about the eternal love of families—and especially mothers—are finally beginning to be questioned, such as Jennette McCurdy’s disturbing account of her mother’s lifelong abuse in her best-selling memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died. ” Too often, these honest memories are denied or disbelieved.

At the end of last year a viral obituary details the lifelong extreme abuse Gayle Harvey Heckman claimed to have experienced at the hands of her mother. A few days later, the publication retracted the obituary, citing the “shameful mistake“They didn’t read the submission more carefully before publishing it. The outlet had also described the obituary as a “hateful hate piece against a beloved member of our community.”

My heart broke for Heckman when I read the newspaper’s response. It seemed that the audience’s discomfort with the possibility of someone making horrific choices during their lifetime was far more important than validating a survivor’s truth.

The news media, and most people in general, seem to have very specific expectations about how someone should publicly express grief: when someone dies, we should attend their funeral; we should cry; we are supposed to miss and openly mourn the deceased; we must write a flowery obituary fit for a king (or queen).

The unspoken rule is that we should never, ever suggest that the dead behaved reprehensibly in life. Any mention that the legacy left behind was one of intense trauma for the survivors is summarily dismissed, as was the case for Heckman.

Personally, I’m no stranger to trying – and failing – to publish an honest obituary.

When my beloved grandfather, whom I called “Pop,” died a few years ago, I tried to publish an honest paragraph about his life. I saw firsthand how he overcame a brutal marriage and lived out his final years happily in Florida, as far away from his ex-wife as his legs could carry him.

Sometime in the ’80s, my father picked Pop up on the side of a country road where he had been walking barefoot, crying and looking for shelter, after his then-wife kicked him out of their house penniless. I was a kid when Pop slept on our couch in Brooklyn with nowhere else to go while he planned his next move. As I came of age, we spent hours on the phone as he expressed his regrets, including his marriage to my grandmother.

I am married and therefore am acutely aware that there are two sides to the story of every relationship. But having been a direct victim of abuse by the same woman, my grandfather’s experiences resonated deeply with my own.

Pop’s ex-wife was my biological grandmother, and there isn’t a generation in our family that wasn’t touched by her emotional, physical, and financial abuse. In 1980, she kicked my teenage parents and me out of her house when I was a baby. On a whim, she had concluded that my father and postpartum mother could make it on their own without work, without any resources to their name. Family stories say that the motivation for this decision had something to do with an argument over a messy bathroom.

Much later, years after the unthinkable position she put us in, my grandmother publicly and shamelessly took credit for what my parents were able to overcome in their early days as a young family. Her lack of self-awareness will never take my breath away.

When I was a young child – after my parents reconnected with my grandmother (reconnection with abusers is often a hallmark of dysfunctional family cycle) – my father felt it necessary to monitor my grandmother’s visits with my sister and me, citing how physically and emotionally hostile she had been toward us when she thought no one was watching or listening.

Years later, I turned to trauma-informed therapy to come to terms with my own upbringing, and it was only then that I began to understand how far-reaching and insidious my grandmother’s influence was.

This woman’s most morally corrupt (and sometimes criminal) behavior often took place in private – reserved only for those living under her poisonous thumb. Therefore, I can easily understand why ordinary friends, acquaintances, distant relatives or anyone else on the fringes of her life would find such dire details difficult – if not impossible – to believe.

This is precisely why society’s stance on obituaries needs to be reexamined. Those previously unaware of a person’s traumatic experiences at the hands of a family member can gain important insight into what actually took place, and survivors of abuse can lift the veil of silence under which they have lived and hopefully in the moving towards a cure.

They say the best revenge is a life well lived. As I reflected on my grandfather’s life, it occurred to me that leaving his abusive marriage and finding happiness as an Elvis lover in the Sunshine State may have been Pop’s greatest achievement—a detail I noted as I began drafting of his obituary. He was also a veteran who found his profession in car restoration.

As I wrote about his life, I wanted to capture his triumphs and trials, but I was shot down again and again. The newspapers did not want to hear about the abuses he had suffered and everything he had overcome on his path to peace. My only option was to write something palatable and half-true – an easy-to-swallow fairytale that readers could easily and safely digest.

As much as I hated being silenced, the life Pop lived gave me plenty to work with. He was a truly beloved member of his community who loved his family unconditionally.

My grandmother passed away last fall. As far as I know, she continued to be abusive until her last breath. I don’t believe there is any way to honor her life as she chose to live it, and for this reason no one in the family has written an obituary for her. Perhaps this essay is the closest I have come to telling what I know to be the truth about her and the pain she inflicted.

For some, writing honest obituaries can be healing. Invalidating and dismissing a survivor’s experiences for the sake of our own emotional comfort can be retraumatizing. And telling someone that their experiences no longer matter because their abuser has died is creepy. That’s not how the lasting consequences of abuse and trauma work. A newspaper editor is not in a moral position to decide whether an obituary is a “hateful piece of hate.”

While it is true that the deceased cannot defend themselves against claims about the way they lived their lives, they can also no longer be held responsible for causing harm. Death hands them a complete release. Because of this, an honest obituary may be a survivor’s only path to closure. As the American writer Anne Lamott once said: ‘You own everything that has happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” These are wise words for the rest of us.

I don’t know the intricacies and intimacies of Heckman’s life – or her mother’s – beyond what was originally published by her, but I believe her. And I believe that telling our stories, no matter how dark or painful they are, can be crucial to moving forward, processing trauma, and ultimately healing. Writing honest obituaries—whether for a family member or a world leader—isn’t about taking revenge or smearing someone’s reputation, and it’s certainly not fun. It’s about telling the truth, holding people accountable for what they’ve done, and hopefully, in doing so, finding a way to become whole again.

Need help? In the US, call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.Christina Wyman is a writer and teacher living in Michigan. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, ELLE Magazine, Marie Claire, The Guardian and other media. She hopes her essays on intergenerational trauma will help destigmatize survivors’ stories that emerge from violent and toxic family dynamics.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.