Why I Wrote My Memoir – Part 1

Why write memoir?

“We’re so tired of reading about all these problems in your lives! When will you writers get that?”

Thus opened a review I was reading about a newly-released memoir. The author had written about her challenging and ultimately life-changing odyssey.

“Ouch,” I thought. My ego had a quick reply; thankfully I’ve learned to squash that little troublemaker as often and quickly as possible. I shifted instead to my heart words: What would I say to this reviewer if she and I could sit down for tea and conversation? 

Her words invited the questions: why do any of us write memoir? Why did I write mine?

Looking Back: Thus, I traveled back through the decades to when I was 49. Seemingly out of the blue, I’d begun having flashbacks to my childhood. (Later I would understand the trigger that started them.) It appeared I had dissociated from traumatic events in my childhood. I’d been carrying a large part of my early life outside myself and had no memory of it. Truly, I thought I’d become schizophrenic and sought professional help.

Writing Again: That’s when my previously-sporadic writing habit re-started in full: disorganized, tight, single-spaced words in a mauve-colored journal where I recorded pieces of another life I was uncovering. While every entry seemed like a small puzzle piece, singularly each fit together with no others. And those notes were a secret, never to be told to anyone outside my immediate circle. I could not imagine that one day I would re-visit them as seeds for a memoir.

Six years of personal healing work followed. The three-inch mauve journal continued on into a second black binder. In time,  our children left home and started their lives while my spouse and I agreed to end our devastated marriage. Subsequently, I moved from the community where I’d planned to live out my days and started over. I found a small cabin on a Blue Ridge mountainside 500 miles away and began to write stories about my life. Certainly, though, not about any secrets. Those binders were well-hidden beneath my computer table.

(Part 2 – continued tomorrow)