If writing a book tops your list of regrets, you could be missing out on more than you know. These days, more and more people are finding a sense of fulfillment through penning their memoirs. Whether for public or family consumption, the process can be just as illuminating when it comes to self-discovery.
Many of my writing coach clients have taken up memoir writing.
Leslie Absher wrote about growing up as the daughter of a CIA agent stationed in Greece during the 1967 coup. Her memoir, Spy Daughter, Queer Girl: In Search of Truth and Acceptance in a Family of Secrets, started out as a way to obviate the guilt-by-association she carried regarding U.S. involvement in the Greek government’s overthrow and subsequent torture of dissidents. Along the way, she figured that she could sort out the troubled relationship with her father that had so scarred her. She finally came to realize that her beautifully written book was really about her. Her investigation into what happened in Greece, into the role her father played in the coup, and into their relationship also demanded serious self-exploration. In the process, she was made whole again.
Sam Simon’s award-winning book The Actual Dance: Love’s Ultimate Journey chronicles his struggles with his worst fears during what everyone expects to be his wife’s losing battle with breast cancer. He based his memoir on the one-man play he stars in, which he wrote after joining an improv group to help contend with the overwhelming despair he could not share with his wife (who, amazingly, managed to beat the odds). He’s now working on a new memoir called Dementia Man: An Existential Journey, also based on a one-man play he wrote about his experience with the onset of early dementia. The one-act play, which he also stars in, won the Dementia Spring Foundation’s 2023 Dementia Arts Impact Award. As his website says, “Simon takes the stage as a man facing his cognitive decline and asks the hard questions of what to do next in the face of what he calls “an existential journey.” It is a peek into the head and heart of the struggle with a broken medical system and a personal and family challenge. The play challenges the audience to imagine a meaningful future for the millions of people with neurocognitive disease, with accommodation and adaptation.” Knowing Sam, the memoir will propel him along a trail of self-discovery that will surprise even him and lend still more power to his story.
Jeff Swaney’s upcoming memoir, None of the Answers, is a rich, textured page-turner, full of humor, wisdom, challenges, and adventure. So much adventure, it’s hard to believe that Jeff survived all his exploits. The crazy armchair ride proved downright cathartic for Jeff, to the point where I started to feel like a therapist practicing without a license. Again. But that can be the nature of memoir writing. The result, at least in Jeff’s case, is a book that will surprise you, anger you, make you laugh, and ultimately trigger questions and answers about your own life.
Even books geared towards the promotion of one’s business can prove revealing. When I worked with locals Sarah Whipple and Fred Swisher on their book 55 Myths, Tips and Secrets: Bend’s Essential Guide to Landscaping, each had to examine not only the services they provide, but why they feel their work is so meaningful. That evaluation of professional achievement and personal calling, along with a book that illustrates both, helped promote their business and has made them realize that “the sky is the limit.”
Whether you want to promote a business or a cause, write the great American novel or simply sum up a lifetime for your friends and family like one Bend resident did in her memoir, Ninety Years of Living, you don’t have to miss out any longer. Here’s to memoir writing!
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