"The problem with being a writer of romance and romantic situations is that my capacity for creating and believing in fantasy is huge," Kaling writes after describing a dream family that includes an hipster architect husband named Alex, "Nothing can ever be as amazing as Harry & Sally or, in my book, Joe Fox & Kathleen Kelly from the movie You've Got Mail." And while Kaling's process of creating potential families in her mind is a bit goofy, it's also very honest and sweet and something I'm sure many of us have also done over the years.

It's a strange thing to try and visualize your future; as Kaling notes, she already has a family that she's proud to be a part of, as a sister and a daughter, but it's different than having a core unit you've created on your own. "Do I want to be the child in my current family, or the parent/wife/grown-up of some other one?" Kaling asks, "The first seems real and comfortable. The second seemed like a silly bit of mischief, a game of pretend, even though I have a sense it might be just around the corner."

In many ways, visualizing your future spouse or children can serve as a means to prepare for the inevitable separation from your parents and siblings as you grow older and strike out on your own, and while the imaginary families we create in our minds might be slightly ridiculous, they're also a quiet affirmation for those hoping to find a partner or have children that there might just be someone out there waiting and imagining the same silly things. It's also a way to figure out who you are and what you want out of life, and though the pieces may not come together in a way you expected, it's nice to at least have a sense of what those pieces might look like. It's also funny to look back on past visualizations; at 16, I was pretty sure I'd be married to a gothy rock star and living with my kids, Starla and Glynis. At 28, my imagined future doesn't involve children at all, especially ones named after Smashing Pumpkins songs. When I'm 38, I'm sure I'll have another view: the picture, naturally, changes as we change.

So what say you, commenters? Have you ever imagined your future family? Or perhaps a lack thereof? Feel free to share your stories in the comments.

Mindy Kaling Writes Her Own Script For A Perfect Family [NYTimes]

It seems as though various members of Phillips' family are split over the allegations made in Mackenzie's memoir High on Arrival. In a written statement to Oprah, half-sister Bijou said the following:

When I was 13, Mackenzie told me that she had a consensual sexual relationship with our father. This news was confusing and it was also scary, as I lived alone with him since I was three. I didn't know what to believe, and it didn't help that shortly thereafter, it didn't happen. Mackenzie's history with our father is hers, but also clouded with 30 years of drug abuse. I hope she can come to terms with this and find peace. The life I had with my father was very different. He was Mr. Mom. He was encouraging and loving. The man that raised me would never be capable of doing such things, and if he was, it is heartbreaking for me to think that my family would leave me alone with him. I understand Mackenzie's need to come clean with the history that she feels will help others, but it's devastating to have the world watch as we try and mend broken fences, especially when the man in question isn't here to defend himself.

In the clip on the left, Mackenzie responds to Bijou's statement.


Mackenzie's half-brother Tamerlane posted a YouTube video, in which he neither denied nor confirmed the allegations, but instead referred to his family as a "bowl of dog urine" in comparison to his personal guru. He also added a caption to the video that says the following:

i am broke right now if you want to give me money contact my accountant anthony at abonsignore@agsny.com

Two of Mackenzie's former stepmothers, Genevieve Waite (mother of Bijou and Tamerlane), and Michelle Phillips (mother of Chynna), have dismissed the allegations entirely. In a statement to Oprah on Wednesday, Genevieve said:

I am stunned by Mackenzie's terrible allegations about her father. I would often complain about her overly familiar attitudes towards him, and he said it was just her way. John was a good man. … He was incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, to have sexual relations with his own child.

Michelle Phillips has perhaps been the most vocal in her opinion. She admits that John Phillips was a bad father, but refuses to believe Mackenzie's claims of having had a sexual relationship with him. Michelle told the Hollywood Reporter:

Mackenzie has a lot of mental illness. She's had a needle stuck up her arm for 35 years. She was arrested for heroin and coke just recently. She did ‘Celebrity Rehab' and now she writes a book. The whole thing is timed... Mackenzie is jealous of her siblings, who have accomplished a lot and did not become drug addicts.

And in a statement to The Insider she said:

Mackenzie's drug addiction for 35 years has been the result of many unpleasant experiences. Whether her relationship with her father is delusional or not, it is an unfortunate circumstance and very hurtful for our entire family.

In the clip at left, Mackenzie addresses Michelle's recent statements.


But it's not just family members who are responding to Mackenzie's story of incest and rape. Jessica Woods—daughter of the Mamas & the Papas' Denny Doherty—contacted Oprah in a statement, confirming that the allegations are true:

I just watched your show with Mackenzie Phillips. Tears are running down my face. Everything she said is true. My dad told me the awful truth. He was horrified at what John had done and knew all of it.

In the clip to the left, Mackenzie reacts to Jessica's support.


Owen Elliott [pictured left]—daughter of the late Mama Cass—released a statement to Extra today, also confirming the allegations:

Mackenzie is my best friend. She speaks her truth, and it's not a pretty truth. She has lived with this for 30+ years, and talking about this now is an important part of her recovery. I am very proud of her. Her bravery in telling her story is bound to help others.

Myerson's book is just one of two familial addiction memoirs reviewed in yesterday's Times. The other is a review of Kaylie Jones's memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me. Jones is the daughter of James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity, but her memoir focuses on her alcoholic, "histrionic" mother Gloria. Reviewer Janet Maslin says Jones "exposes her mother's cruelty, narcissism and heavy drinking, reeling off story after story about her mother's scorching wisecracks and bravura displays of malice." "Kaylie is at her fieriest," she continues, "in describing the step-by-step souring of her dealings with her mother and the ghastly decline of her mother's physical and mental health." A memoir that takes a mother's "ghastly decline" as it own aesthetic apex sounds potentially distasteful, but Maslin praises Jones's candor, saying, "she doesn't let propriety blunt her memories."

Gloria Jones is dead now, and can't be harmed by anything her daughter writes. But Jake Myerson, son of Julie Myerson and subject of her memoir The Lost Child, is very much alive — and only twenty years old. When Julie Myerson chose to write about her son's teenage marijuana addiction and her eventual decision to kick him out of the house, her British readership was outraged. The Times's Patricia Cohen says Myerson "was pilloried in her home country this spring as cruel, selfish and manipulative." Myerson elaborates: "a bit of a witch burning was what it felt like." Myerson feels that both memoir and drug addiction are less taboo in America, where she's releasing the book this week, and she hopes "Americans won't rush in and judge me."

But the harshest judgment may have come from the subject of the book, Myerson's son Jake. In a March interview with the Daily Mail, he vented his anger not only at the book but at his mother's anonymous column Living With Teenagers. Earlier in March, Myerson had confessed, "I wrote Living With Teenagers. I did so anonymously because I wanted to write truthfully, and that meant my children's identities had to be obscured." But, Jake says,

The thing is, it wasn't really anonymous; not to the people who knew us, those who matter. Having grown up with this, being written about in an arbitrary way since the age of two, I have always said to my parents 'Please don't do this, I hate this.' I was made to feel I was wrong for being offended by it.

He also accuses his mother of repeatedly denying she was the author of the column, even after his school friends worked it out and began to tease him. Of The Lost Child, he says,

What she has done has taken the very worst years of my life and cleverly blended it into a work of art, and that to me is obscene. I was only 17, I was a confused teenager, I was too young really to know who I was or what was happening.

He adds that before its publication, "she gave me a copy of the manuscript of The Lost Child and told me to read it. She wanted my approval; the problem is she would have published it regardless." Somewhat distastefully, Jake's comments to the Daily Mail caused Julie Myerson's publisher to rush the book out two months early in order to take advantage of the controversy.

Jake Myerson has lots more choice words for his mother, calling her a "pseudo New Labour socialist" who greatly exaggerated her son started action and "couldn't survive" without writing about her family. But Jake himself is very young and not exactly restrained — he talks about his siblings, one of whom is still a minor, and says his parents should have gotten a divorce — and it's hard to believe his side of the story is the unalloyed truth. The image he paints (with eager assists by the Daily Mail) of Julie Myerson as unrepentant fame-whore is probably oversimplified. That said, Myerson does sound like a piece of work. In her last Living With Teenagers column, she wrote,

There was no way I would or could continue writing with them knowing what I was doing. Over those two years, as our teenagers bloomed and matured and softened, and became so much more vulnerable, so the column began to feel less like some kind of benign, semi-comic revenge and more like a betrayal.

Getting back at your "ghastly" mom is one thing, but should you really be using your column to get "revenge" on your children, no matter how benign? And does "the importance of publicizing the nightmare of teenage drug use" — the justification Myerson and her husband use for publishing The Lost Child — really outweigh a young man's desire to keep his painful adolescence private? In the Times, Susan Cheever basically says: totally! Author of two addiction memoirs, one of which describes her assignations with two men while her daughter was sick, she explains, "I strongly believe everybody has the right to their own story." But everyone's story includes other people's, and artistic autonomy becomes a lot less admirable when those people are your children.

Cheever may be working out some of her own revenge, since her dad wrote "very, very thinly" veiled novels about their family. Perhaps she's so adamant about her right to her own story because, as a child, she was deprived of control over it. The same thing, it seems, has happened to Jake Myerson. Of his parents, he says, "They are writers, they are published, they have a voice. I don't." But the Daily Mail has been only too happy to give him a voice — unfortunately, his mother hasn't set a very good example of how to use it.

A Mother's Memoir, A Son's Anguish [NYT]
A Daughter's Memoir, A Mother's Anguish [NYT]
'You're The Addict, Mum!' Son Of Julie Myerson Says She's Hooked On Exploiting Her Own Children [Daily Mail]
Mum, What You Did Is Obscene: The Son Julie Myerson Kicked Out For Smoking Pot Tells His Side Of The Story [Daily Mail]