Augusten Burroughs’ Mother Speaks Out

On a rainy day, canada goose uk black friday Margaret Robison sits in her wheelchair on the tiny porch behind her house. It’s her favorite place for writing poetry.

The covered balcony hangs in the trees, like a diving board over the canada goose outlet uk sale Deerfield River. Robison lives in the foothills of the canada goose outlet online Berkshire Mountains, in Shelburne Falls, Mass. From her porch she looks out at the river, pockmarked by rain, and across the water to big green hills covered in clouds.

“When I write on the porch, canada goose uk shop I never know what’s going to attract my attention,” she says. “Maybe it’s gong official canada goose outlet to be one leaf. Or I notice an apple beginning to turn red. Or a duck floats canada goose outlet by. I never know. She’s a poet who uses words to describe her world and to make sense of her life. canada goose outlet sale In her poems, she’s described her stroke and recovery from it canada goose and the time canada goose factory sale she spent in a canada goose uk outlet psychiatric institution. But the words of her son, memoirist Augusten Burroughs, cast her in a harsh light.

There have been few mothers as monstrous as the one in his memoir Running with Scissors. In Canada Goose online it, Robison is described as so cold https://www.st-edwards-cam.org.uk and self absorbed that she gives away her young son to her psychiatrist.

Robison calls her son Chris, the name canada goose outlet new york city she gave him at birth. canada goose outlet uk He was 18 when he started calling himself Augusten Burroughs.

“First of all, Chris is Chris to me. Augusten Burroughs is a fiction to canada goose outlet online uk me,” says Robison. “I know a little bit about Augusten Burroughs. I met him in San Francisco. When Chris called me and asked me to come. And he was lost, he said. I met Augusten Burroughs there. But Augusten Burroughs and Chris are not quite the same.”

In Running with Scissors, Burroughs canada goose outlet canada writes that he was “just a kid” when his mother sent him away to live with the psychiatrist. He was 13 when he started having sex with a 33 year old pedophile who was loosely attached to the family.

‘He’s My Son’

Robison won’t say what canada goose outlet store uk did or didn’t happen 30 years ago. There are more generous explanations: That she was struggling with her own mental illness and that her son, by moving in with the doctor, could transfer to a better school. Still, Robison offers no defense or mitigating circumstances for her conduct as a mother.

“I’ve had to forgive myself for many things,” she says. “To forgive my son. I have worked a long time with forgiveness.”

The family of the psychiatrist sued Burroughs, accusing him of making up events to make his book more marketable. Robison says that’s something she wouldn’t Canada Goose Coats On Sale do.

“First of all, he’s my son,” she explains, “And I love him with all my heart.”

A Chance to Grow Spiritually

Then she says something even more unexpected.

“That book of Chris’s offered me the opportunity to grow spiritually in a way that nothing had offered me before,” she says. “I’m grateful for that book. I’m grateful for the opportunity that it gave me to canada goose outlet black friday grow spiritually.”

She says she’s decided there’s no point to rehash the past. Instead, she speaks of hope for reconciliation.

“I love my family. The most canada goose store important things in my life are peace and harmony. I’ve come to joy and celebrate that and wish that for my son.”

Robison says she hasn’t seen Burroughs since the canada goose outlet book came out, even though he lives nearby. She says that she’s the one who gave her son the courage to pursue publishing his work. In another memoir, Dry he tells of his battle with alcoholism. Robison says she typed 200 of his poems with the one hand she could still use after her stroke. She sent the poems to publishers and got his first work in print.

“You see, Chris and I used to be wonderful writing companions. We critiqued each others’ work,” she says. “At the time we were talking everyday, maybe two or three times a day.”

Margaret Robison is 70. Her left side is paralyzed and in her wheelchair, her body sags. Her hair is gray but her eyes burn and her gaze remains intense.

She lives in a tiny house where every bit of wall space and every shelf is filled with religious icons and colorful artwork. Her postcards of flowers, art and personal heroes such as Emily Dickinson and Frida Kahlo are lined up precisely.

There are a few photos of her famous son, too, as a playful child and as a serious adult.

Robison is surrounded by a circle of supportive friends canada goose jacket outlet who are fiercely loyal to her. Some know she’s the mother in “Running with Scissors,” but it doesn’t matter to them. The Margaret Robison they describe is warm, generous and wise. They say she’s a woman at peace.

Debbie Yaffee’s has known Robison for years but read Running With Scissors only after seeing a story in the newspaper about it.

“I read that book and I just was broiling,” she says. “I was broiling. I was so angry that he would do this. Just [presenting] this lopsided view making her look so terrible.”.