Writing your Memoirs
“It’s the past that tells us who we are. Without it, we lose our identity.”
Stephen Hawking
Admit it: you have been tempted to write your autobiography. No? Writing not your thing? Perhaps you have contemplated expressing your life’s story through a different artistic medium: drawing, gardening, collage, dance, or music. However, for those of you who feel as though you do have a book in you, and that book is the story of your life, let me use this month’s blog to encourage you to start writing. Especially because so many of us are still in a (partial?) lock-down situation due to the rampant pandemic, perhaps now is the time for you to write your memoirs.
The English teacher in me wants to pontificate about the various terms used for such an endeavor: autobiography, memoir, lifewriting, journal, diary, and even the hybrid in which the story of the author’s life is presented as fiction. However, I will resist the temptation and simply share my recent experience of leading a two-part webinar on the subject, “Writing your Spiritual Autobiography.”
The audience for the webinar, which consisted of a two-hour presentation with writing prompts over two consecutive Thursdays, was made up of people interested in the religious aspect of life, so my emphasis on the spiritual was appropriate. Each hour focused on a particular Scriptural concept and we applied that to various dimensions of telling one’s life story.
Naturally, the Biblical injunction to “Remember” was a logical starting point. “Remember” is used repeatedly throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and how can one write a lifestory without remembering? We then moved into “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” During that session, we focused on the good things that we have experienced. The following week was rooted in Psalm 30:5b. We spent one hour on the first half of the verse and the second hour focused on its conclusion: “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
Reading autobiography has been my passion since childhood. I realize it’s a cliché among Holocaust scholars, but Anne Frank changed my life. My mother handed me The Diary of a Young Girl when I was about twelve years old and said she thought it might interest me. Reading the diary launched me on a life-long quest to learn more about the Shoah, which ultimately led to my dissertation and subsequent book examining Holocaust survivors’ autobiographies, with special attention to the spiritual dimension conveyed in them.
Stephen Hawking’s insight, quoted above, says so much. Some readers have endured the terrible pain of a loved one who has lost his or her memories—a tragedy for both the patient and family members. Celebrate your understanding of your past by writing your memoirs.
So: want to write your autobiography? Get started! Just a few bits of writing advice: You don’t have to begin at the beginning. Write whatever you need to express; no one will see an early draft (unless you volunteer it). You can decide later if you need to temper something you fear will hurt someone. Write first, edit later. Truly, I believe that the world will be a better, more compassionate, more empathetic place if we learn more about other people’s life stories.