Her memoir came one year after the book Home Fires, written by Don Katz about her birth family, the Gordons.

Her father was electrician Sam Goldenberg, and her mother was Eve Samberg, a singer at resorts in the Catskills Mountains; they married in 1942.

As a freelancer, she submitted fashion pieces for London Life magazine, the newly adopted name of the Tatler, published weekly during the Swinging Sixties.

The two left London for San Francisco at the beginning of 1967, just in time to witness and report on Michael Bowen's Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, where they dropped acid (lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD) and listened to Timothy Leary tell the crowd that people living in cities should reorganize as tribes and villages.

Susan Lydon refused menial, secretarial assignments suggested by Wenner and instead wrote reviews and articles.

[5] Lydon's daughter Shuna was born in March 1968, and she left Rolling Stone, writing for a short-lived Hearst periodical titled Eye aimed at the youth market.

[5] Lydon separated from her husband in January 1969, taking her daughter to Berkeley to live with Ramparts contributor Tuck Weills for six months.

[6] In December 1969 she was at the Altamont Free Concert to report on the Rolling Stones and the music scene, but she was appalled to witness there the death of the "good vibes" of the sixties.

[5] In Berkeley, Lydon met with women feminists who were conducting a consciousness raising awareness meeting, and she was shocked to hear one woman admit to never having experienced an orgasm.

A few earlier writers had uncovered the topic: based on the Kinsey Reports and the studies of Masters and Johnson, psychiatrist Mary Jane Sherfey had challenged Sigmund Freud's ideas in 1967, saying he was wrong about a distinct "vaginal orgasm", separate from clitoral orgasm, with the vaginal sort somehow superior.

Anne Koedt published "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm" in the same issue of Notes from the First Year, which was seen by a limited circle of feminists.

With clitoral orgasm, woman's sexual pleasure was independent of the male's, and she could seek her satisfaction as aggressively as the man sought his, a prospect which didn't appeal to too many men.

She lived in Marin County with drummer Dave Getz, ex–Big Brother and the Holding Company, and wrote a piece about Janis Joplin.

Her daughter, Shuna, was left alone while Lydon worked multiple jobs, shoplifted, stole money or prostituted herself to get another dose of heroin.

[2] Shuna found refuge at the Gordons' house in Long Island, staying with her grandparents during her high school years.

In Minnesota, she connected with a violent boyfriend, smoked crack cocaine and started "boosting" – shoplifting for quick resale.

[4] She proved her independence by staying clean for a year at the clinic, then moved to a nearby apartment to restore her career.

[16] In 1989, Lydon moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area, following her daughter, Shuna, who was enrolling in photography at California College of the Arts.

[19] Beginning in 1990, Don Katz began interviewing Lydon and her birth family the Gordons for his book Home Fires, published in 1992.

The book was hailed as an unvarnished look at the struggles of a typical post-war American family in which the children rebelled and developed into adults in ways that were not foreseen by the parents.

[21] Lydon retreated every summer to a cabin on the Russian River to write, knit and birdwatch with women friends.