How Writing a Memoir Changed My Life

I didn’t initially plan to write a memoir. I started with a collection of essays that led me down the dusty roads of my past. I wanted to write about the good times — trips to the park with my sons when the cool air made ghosts of our breath. I wanted to write about beautiful vacations, homemade cakes on birthdays and Christmas morning smiles. But that’s not a memoir, is it? It’s more like a Hallmark card.

I found myself digging deeper. I learned how to write a memoir outline. But the greater lessons were the ones that changed my life.

What it Means to Write a Memoir

There were low points: Writing about your personal pain can be overwhelming, and sometimes the process can reopen old wounds. But writing a memoir means capturing the good times as well as the bad, and for some authors, it’s just not a good idea. It can be too much. In my case, however, I found that looking back helped me gain clarity and see lessons and even blessings that I hadn’t seen when I lived those moments. The journey ultimately aided my healing.

Writing a Memoir Means Reliving Painful Memories

Among the most painful experiences I wrote about in my first memoir Petals of Rain were the days leading up to and after my divorce. I recalled the nights I lay trembling and sobbing in my bed. My ex’s infidelity had left a gaping wound that bled the best of me — my courage, my self-confidence, my belief in the future itself. I wondered who would ever love me again and why?

But writing a memoir about those years reminded me of the outcome—my recovery from toxic relationships.

When You Write a Memoir, You See The Past From a New Perspective

While memoirs must have clear themes, they allow you to highlight certain aspects of your life that worked together to shape your personal story. I wrote about my son’s ADHD, ODD, bipolar disorder, and when he drank bleach and landed in a psychiatric center. Those incidents sent me plunging into the depths of his pain. I wondered how my motherhood journey had become so frustrating, suffocating, terrifying, humbling and perilously unpredictable.

But I loved him through it, and I know now how the dark beginning led to a brighter end.

It’s was difficult to revisit these memories. Difficult but necessary. This is what it means to write a memoir, to unpack the past and give voice and meaning and order to all of the chaos. Every obstacle was part of my narrative, a stone that shaped my life path.

How to Write a Memoir:

The past tells the story of the present, so as I wrote, I sat with my younger self and listened to the cries of my heart. I honed memories into scenes, ideas into themes until the natural story arc emerged. I relished the good days when my sons were little boys, offering me grimy dandelions, which I stuffed into plastic cups to display on the kitchen counter. As I wrote, I thought, There she is. She didn’t know then how precious those weeds really were.

Other days, I recounted tales of loss, abuse, neglect, betrayal, and heartbreak. Writing a memoir means mining it all. Life is both painful and beautiful, a pendulum that never stops swinging.

Not long after publishing my first memoir, I experienced a trauma that led to my mother wound book. I treasured the process of creating something tangible, something to accept and embrace, something to give to my sons and to the world — a reminder that we are not alone, that pain is sometimes just a season. Although healing can be a lifelong journey.

What’s your story? Are you ready to take the leap and write a memoir? Check out how I landed a book publishing deal, and use these tips to help you get the process started.