Category Archives: identity

The Story-of-self Matures in the Memoir Revolution

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by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: Write Your Story, Change the World and How to Become a Heroic Writer

In the sixties, millions of us joined the counterculture in order to invent a new way to live. Our search felt so important and yet for many of us, it ended in confusion. As a result the quest to “find one’s self” fell into disrepute. That’s too bad, because a coherent sense of self is one of the foundations for a satisfying life, providing lessons from the past, confidence in the present, and a roadmap for the future.

Fifty years later, I find myself in the midst of another mass movement. Millions of us want to write memoirs. And this time, our collective effort appears to be much wiser, based not on the rejection of traditions, but on a deeper understanding of the guidance our society has been offering us all along. The Memoir Revolution allows us to tap into the ancient wisdom of the Story to help us pull together the pieces of self.

A perfect example of such an endeavor is Paige Strickland’s memoir Akin to the Truth. As an adopted child, she knew her parents loved her. She also knew she didn’t completely fit in. At family gatherings, she wondered how it would feel to be with relatives who were biologically related. Paige grew up, met her biological family, and then spent many years trying to knit these parts of herself into one whole person. By turning that journey into a memoir, she lets us experience it with her.

Accompanying her on scenes in school, I feel her fear about being judged “different” not only because she was adopted, but for lots of other reasons, such as pressures from friends, school, family, and so on.

Her account ranges across the whole scope of growing up, and appears at first glance to digress from the single issue of adoption. Many writing classes demand that students cut out any scene that does not directly relate to the theme. In this rigorous definition of theme in memoir, Strickland’s varied scenes with her girl friends in school might appear to be moving off point. But as our collective fascination with memoirs continues to grow, an increasing number of us want to stretch those rules and learn the actual experience of real life, even if it spills into areas outside the focus stated on the title and blurb of the book.

Paige Strickland’s Coming of Age story demonstrates that the Memoir Revolution is maturing. We are collectively moving beyond the memoir as defined by New York Times bestsellers, and coming to understand the memoir genre as a window into the mental machinery of ordinary people.

The evolution from “best seller” to “real person” played out in my mind in the first couple of pages of Akin to the Truth. When I opened the book, I was caught up in the promise that it was going to be about the challenges of meeting her adopted family. Two excellent memoirs that narrowly focus on these challenges are Lucky Girl by Mei-ling Hopgood  and Mistress’s Daughter by A.M. Homes,   Both of these successful books breezed past the varied challenges of Coming of Age and headed sharply and concisely toward rediscovering the author’s biological family.

However, after reading few more pages of Akin to the Truth, I bristled at her portrayal of the complexities of childhood. Her stories about feeling slow in school, or about her socially clumsy dad violated my expectations of a tightly focused theme. Then over the next few pages, my attitude shifted. I found myself warming to her, befriending her, getting into her shoes. I loosened the expectation that every scene must bear down on her adoption, and I settled into accompanying a girl growing up.

As she grows older, her worries shift from wanting to be accepted by cadres of little girls, to the issues of cultivating her love life. The story of her extended courtship including false starts and apparent endings is excellent, and by the time they commit to each other, I am completely immersed in her charter to become an adult.

In retrospect, the book was not about reconciling with her biological family. It was about growing up. All of us must make this journey from fully-formed adults. This search for identity, often a laugh-line in jokes about the 60s, is actually a crucial mission for every young person. Paige Strickland’s Akin to the Truth provides us with yet another window into that journey from the fragmented self of childhood into the  completed, competent self of adulthood.

Is ordinary life a good topic for a memoir?
Years ago, when I was gaining my early glimpses into the Memoir Revolution, I enjoyed reading the memoir A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel about a little girl growing up in a small town. The protagonist was adorable, and I felt like I was there, observing her family squabbles, her adventures in the neighborhood, and her concerns about her parents’ marriage.

But when I analyzed the memoir I couldn’t figure out why such a story, with no claim to gravitas or sensationalism, earned a place on the bookstore shelf. Over time, I have come to see that ordinary life is the backdrop upon which all memoirs are staged. We live in a home or apartment, go to work, go shopping, desire simple psychological basics like dignity, friendship, and achievement. Our daily journeys become the raw material for our memoirs.

Memoir writers like Haven Kimmel or Paige Strickland turn such lives into well-told stories. In order to follow their lead, you must learn the craft, edit, seek feedback, and revise. Your goal is to carry the reader along from page to page. By the end, your reader must close the book, feeling grateful to you for having taken them on a meaningful, personal journey.

Why are we reading and writing about ordinary lives?
Who are the readers of these memoirs of real people? Obviously we are other real people who, in addition to desiring a well-written story, also relish the imprecise lines of real life. Memoirs offer the authenticity of unique experience, help us understand our neighbors, and inspire us to share our own stories.

The experiment in the 60s to “find myself” ended in confusion. Now, fifty years later, I can see that a failed experiment is simply a step along the path to success. The goal to find yourself is still urgently important. But now, instead of using tie-dyed clothing, bell bottoms and marijuana to assert our individuality we are attempting to craft the unique stories of our lives.

Unlike the youthful focus of the 60s counterculture, the Memoir Revolution is energizing people of all ages. Young people are using memoirs to help them understand their transition into adulthood. In mid-life, people are using memoirs to help evolve their roles to the next step. And older people tell their stories to create continuity across many chapters.

At any age, if you want to tie together the pieces of yourself, consider Paige Strickland’s journey. She was adopted and had two sets of parents. But many of us have multiple segments that could benefit from the power of storytelling.

Millions of us grew up trying to find our identities with divorced parents and blended families. Immigrants like Iranian born, Firoozeh Dumas, in Funny in Farsi, had to figure out how to integrate their ancestral identities with their new ones. Rebecca Walker in Black, White and Jewish and James McBride in Color of Water had to reconcile being born with a white Jewish parent and a black one. And all of us who live into old age need to reconcile youthful and aging parts of ourselves.

Examples for Your Memoir Techniques in the Memoirs You Read
If you are attempting to find your whole self by writing a memoir, take advantage of Paige Strickland’s Akin to the Truth.  Use her story to help you write your own.

She does an excellent job using the voice appropriate to each age of her character, from child, to older child, to teen, to adult. This technique was made famous by James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

She represents excellent scenes about the wide variety of interior conversations of the youthful mind, wanting to be accepted, crabby about a loving father who is dealing with his own issues, worried she doesn’t quite fit into her family for all kinds of reasons, not limited to ones of biological origin.

And above all, she gives an awesome example of developing a “story of self” gradually knitting herself together from the various parts.

You can’t change the past, but like Paige Strickland, you can organize the past into a story. By writing your memoir, you gain control over your understanding of it, shape the transitions, organize it with a beginning, middle, and end. The benefits of writing it are yours alone. When you publish it, you provide insight and inspiration for others to follow.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

To order my self-help workbook for developing habits, overcoming self-doubts, and reaching readers, read my book How to Become a Heroic Writer.

Memoirs about Search for Cultural Identity in Modernity

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by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: a guide to memoirs, including yours.

In the first part of this article, I consider how Karen Levy’s memoir My Father’s Gardens raises important questions about the search for cultural identity during Coming of Age. In this part, I offer examples of other memoirs that ask similar questions. By exploring these memoirs, you might be able to get in touch with the way national origin, religion, skin color, or other cultural factors influenced your self-image as you grew into your role as an adult.

Examples of Memoirs that Chronicle the Search for Cultural Identity

In Frank McCourt’s childhood home in Ireland, he was mocked as an outsider because he was born the United States. At the end of Angela’s Ashes, he returns to the United States, trying to find his true identity. At the start of his second memoir, ‘Tis, he realizes that as an Irishman, he is advised to stick with his own kind. In other words, he is seen not as an American, but an Irish-American.

Mei-ling Hopgood in Lucky Girl is a Chinese girl adopted into a Midwest family, creating cultural tension between her parents and neighbors and her own biological origins. When she goes back to China to meet her biological family, she feels out of place, unsure if that’s where she belonged.

In the memoir, House on Sugar Beach, Helene Cooper tells of growing up in Liberia. Helene Cooper’s ancestors were freed slaves who moved from the United States to form the nation of Liberia. In the end, to escape a violent rebellion, Cooper emigrates to the U.S. One of the most interesting aspects of her story is that in her own land of Liberia, those blacks who had once been slaves in America had, by virtue of their larger experience, become the privileged elite, often resented by their countrymen who had no such foreign ties.

Henry Louis Gates’ memoir Colored People rivals Cooper’s in terms of the complexity of crossing cultures. Growing up in his small town in the waning years of Jim Crow, he felt secure with his black family and neighbors. He came of age during the tumultuous sixties when the laws changed and Jim Crow was crumbling. While other authors talk about shuttling back and forth between cultures, Gates must cross boundaries at a time when those boundaries are rapidly moving.

In Color of Water, James McBride felt securely black in his home and his neighborhood. As a young adult, he went on a search to understand his white, Jewish mother, who had always hidden her origins from him.

Rebecca Walker’s childhood was split between her mother’s middle class black neighborhood in San Francisco and her father’s privileged white neighborhood on the east coast. Her memoir Black, White and Jewish describes the confusion of trying to develop an identity while straddling these subcultures.

In the book, Black, White, and Other, author Lise Funderberg collects oral histories of many young people who struggled to grow up with a parent on each side of this cultural divide. Funderberg’s book of oral history was written before Barack Obama’s bestselling Dreams of our Fathers led readers along his own journey through this dilemma . All these stories raise awareness that even after multiple generations in the so-called Melting Pot, our cultural identities continue to influence the way we see ourselves.

When Rhoda Janzen in Mennonite in a Black Dress wanted to become an adult, she moved away from her Mennonite community to sophisticated city living. Her memoir is about returning to her roots and trying to make sense of the blend between the modernized culture of her adulthood and the sheltered one in which she grew up.

In Shirley Showalter’s early childhood, as described in her memoir Blush, she grew up embraced by the Mennonite culture of her family and community. Over time, she becomes increasingly aware that her dress, customs, and even choice of words differ from the “outside world.” To become an adult she chooses to assimilate, while at the same time maintaining what she finds good about the Mennonite aspect of herself.

In Sue William Silverman’s quirky memoir Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, she attempts to use her passion for pop culture as an entry point into American culture. In her desperate attempt to understand how a Jewish girl could become identified with a larger blended culture, she seizes on Pat Boone as the epitome of that blended culture, and tries to make sense of herself in relationship to him.

Jewish identity plays a key role in Harry Bernstein’s memoir. Bernstein grows up in England in the early part of the twentieth century. On one side of the street live Jews, and on the other side, Christians, creating a cultural boundary down the center that he calls the Invisible Wall, the title of his memoir.

When Carlos Eire emigrates from Cuba as a little boy in the cruel politically-motivated airlift known as “Operation Peter Pan” of the early 1960s, he considers himself a fan of American pop-culture. It never occurs to him he will be rejected by the people of that great land. But in Florida, his Cuban accent sets him apart as the Other and his classmates scorn him. In the powerful memoir, Learning to Die in Miami, he spends his Coming of Age attempting to be accepted as an American.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book Nomad describes her evolution from an African tribal culture into the European Melting Pot. In a fascinating journey from penniless immigrant to member of the Dutch parliament, and in 2005 voted by Time Magazine to be one of the 100 most influential people in the world. The book is a must read for anyone interested in taking a brilliant, in-depth look at the challenges of assimilation in the Western world.

For a look at going back in the other direction, read the series of memoirs written by Ian Mathie about his years as a foreign aid worker in Africa. Even though Mathie is white, he isn’t nearly as much of an outsider in these remote villages as he seems. His missionary parents raised him in the jungles of Africa, providing him with a deep knowledge of local customs. Although his memoirs portray adult adventures in these situations, they all reflect his self-image as a man who has embraced two stunningly different identities. He has somehow found peace as both a modern, white European and a black, indigenous African. Every page and crisis makes one wonder, “How does he find such peace, embracing these two vastly different aspects of his own identity?”

As you attempt to fit into an increasingly blended world, one way to become more comfortable in your own skin is to write a memoir. When you shape your past into a story, your identity becomes a sharable, understandable part of yourself. You no longer limit your identity to just skin color, age, education, job, religion, national origin, and language. You come to see yourself as the person who lived this story.

The universality of memoirs works in both directions. When you read memoirs you gain a broader empathy for the way other people have lived, loved, and learned. Memoirs are a valuable tool in the melting pot. I am so excited to be part of this Memoir Revolution which is teaching us collectively that by combining literature and life, our culture offers us a language that helps us grow together.

Notes
Here is a link to My Father’s Garden by Karen Levy.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Memoirs Chronicle Search for Identity in the Melting Pot, Pt 1

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by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: a guide to memoirs, including yours.

At the beginning of the Memoir Revolution, Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes and Jeanette Walls in Glass Castle horrified readers with the challenges of growing up in chaotic, impoverished homes. The spectacular success of these bestsellers ensured a whole genre of Coming of Age memoirs. These stories about that period of life continue to extend our collective understanding of the many challenges kids face on their journey to become adults.

Take for example Karen Levy’s beautifully written memoir My Father’s Gardens about a young girl whose parents moved back and forth between Israel and the U.S.. She did not suffer from alcoholism, child abuse or neglect, or poverty. The dramatic tension in her memoir is generated by her constant search for identity.

When she moved to the United States, her Israeli accent gave her away as a foreigner. However, when she went back to Israel, she experienced the same problem in reverse. Her Americanized accent made her an outsider in Israel, as well. This constant state of trying to belong forced her to ask an extreme version of the question every young person faces. “Who am I and how do I fit in?”

At first glance, moving back and forth between two countries seems like an extreme aberration. However, when you look more closely, you can see similarities to what millions of kids face when they go back and forth between the cultural mixing at school during the day, and ethnicity of their home at night. In modernity, with its great mixing and migrating, an increasing number of children are growing up in a culture different from the one in which their parents or grandparents were born. For those kids, the search for identity is complicated by many of the same tensions that influenced Karen Levy.

To add to the challenge of modernity, more people marry across cultural lines, creating a dual identity inside their own homes. If you are one of the millions have had to find themselves while bridging across two or more cultures, Karen Levy’s memoir will awaken familiar feelings. Even if your own Coming of Age did not involve complex cultural mixing, your ability to navigate in modernity will be enhanced by learning more about the psychological conflicts caused by trying to fit in.

Writing Prompt
If you are writing your own memoir, see if Karen Levy’s search for identity can help you get in touch with some of your own dilemmas about the question “who am I and where do I fit in?”

What understandings about your culture did you learn in your family and neighborhood? Write a scene when you realized that there were other cultures that might not accept you, and might even consider you to be the Other. What did that feel like? What impact did these cultural interactions have on your journey to find your own identity?

My search for cultural identity
When  I was growing up, I felt safe listening to the Yiddish my parents spoke in order to keep secrets from us kids. And I felt safe when I walked the few blocks to synagogue, crowded to overflowing during High Holidays. Because of the predominance of Jews in my part of Philadelphia, even at school most of my classmates and teachers were Jewish.

So as a teenager, when I opened a book and saw photos of the Holocaust, depicting those who had been tortured and murdered for looking and sounding like me, I was stunned to realize being Jewish is dangerous. However, I never personally experienced the stress of fitting into a non-Jewish culture until I was eighteen years old.

When I entered school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the predominance of northern Europeans threw me into massive confusion about my identity. Not only were many of my classmates blond, and almost all of them Christian, but when the war protests heated up, I discovered that many people in rural parts of the state considered the protests a product of Jewish agitators. As the police and politicians become increasingly aggressive against us, I realized that I was participating in a battle as old as the human race, with dominant groups feeling threatened by the Other.

Over the years of growing up, I again relaxed and learned to participate in a culture that is based, at least in theory, on the attempt to ignore differences among people. Later in life, when I began to look back at my own development, I often wondered why I struggled so desperately to travel from child to adult. Once I began writing my memoir and reading others, I realized that even though adults do their best to ignore these differences, when their kids go out into the world, they must figure these things out for themselves.

Kids from ethnic backgrounds face an exercise of getting the two images to overlap, like the familiar optical test at the eye doctor’s office. One image is the one you learned about yourself in your childhood home, and the other is the image you learn about yourself in the wider world. The exercise of bringing these two into focus creates wonderful material to explore in the story of yourself.

In the second part of this article, I list a selection of memoirs that highlight the attempt to make sense of cultural identity in a variety of circumstances.

Notes
Here is a link to My Father’s Garden by Karen Levy.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

A Memoir of a Girl’s Urgent Need to Find Identity

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by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: a guide to memoirs, including yours.

Karen Levy grew up alternating between the United States and Israel, never sure of which one she belonged to. The story of her Coming of Age, as told in the memoir, My Father’s Gardens, shows how her split identity created challenges on many fronts. Wherever she went, she felt like an outsider. Friendship was made more difficult because she kept leaving them behind. Her first job involved her in military intrigue, as a result of mandatory conscription in Israel. And relationships were made almost impossible by her overly protective mother, who demanded her daughter’s undivided loyalty.

In the end, she resolved her own challenge to grow up by choosing a country, settling down with a man and writing for a living. The resolution with her parents was more problematic, lending a sad note to her difficult choices.

Even before I read the first page I was hooked on the story of a woman who had to constantly find herself. Search for identity is one of my favorite themes in a memoir. On the surface, such an introspective search might not seem important enough to motivate me to read and enjoy a whole book. And yet, when I think back on the problems of growing up, my own search for identity drove me almost mad.

My grandparents left Ukraine to escape religious persecution. When they settled in the U.S. they stuck together with their own kind, as immigrants tended to do. My enclave of Jews in an ethnic neighborhood in Philadelphia kept me feeling safe and whole as long as I stayed home. But once I moved to the Midwest, I struggled to find a balance between my heritage and the desire to be accepted as an American. To find this new, blended identity, I attempted the peculiar, and as it turned out, maddening exercise of reshaping my self-image. This psychologically-demanding task I imposed on myself at the age of 18 sent me careening through a series of experiments that complicated the already challenging process of growing up.

As a young man, trying to mix into the “Melting Pot” of United States culture, I was trapped in a long journey of assimilation. As I grew older, I discovered that the entire country consists of people who surrender some of their ancestral identity in order to enter a shared one.

As the great mixing of modernity extends across the globe with massive migrations and blending cultures, people all over the world are attempting to let go of parts of their traditional culture in order to find psychological wholeness among the modern mix.

The Memoir Revolution is a wonderful tool to help us achieve our new identities as citizens of the modern world. Memoirs let writers and readers apply the power of story to the important task of being healthy, whole human beings.

Karen Levy’s attempt to connect with her own country became more difficult than most because she was torn between two, never sure of which one reflected her true identity. As a result of her unusual situation, and her deep, sophisticated story about her experience, the memoir offers a rich, complex look at the whole process of steering between cultures in order to find Self.

Other memoirs that explore self-identity torn between cultures

For another look at this tearing between two cultural identities, read the powerful page-turner Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham. In it, the young man returned to his birth country, Vietnam, only to find that he was angrily rejected by his former countrymen because he grew up in the U.S. Ultimately he had to face the fact that he needed to find his identity within himself.

In Rebecca Walker’s memoir Black, White, and Jewish, the author lives half her life with her white lawyer father in his upper class neighborhood, and the other half with her famous black author mother, Alice, in a lower middle class neighborhood. For a deeper look at people who straddled the fence between two races read the oral history by Lise Funderberg called Black, White, and Other about kids with mixed-race parents. By straddling the fence between races, they had special challenges that highlighted the universal journey of finding the story of self.

Notes

Here is a link to My Father’s Garden by Karen Levy.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Recovering Self-concept after Addiction

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by Jerry Waxler

As teenagers, our first buzz expands options and reveals mysteries. Grateful for these gifts, we shift our priorities, leading to bad decisions and frayed relationships. The substance siphons off the precious energy that could have been fueling the climb toward our dreams.

Addiction exposes this edgy limitation of the human experience: we need to be in control, and yet, we often are not. Consider a comedian whose pratfall turns his body into a sack of potatoes. There’s hardly a surer way to get a laugh. However, what is funny in comedy is shameful in real life. If we stumble, we pretend it didn’t happen. Addicts do the same thing, collapsing toward the substance while claiming they are in complete control. By hiding and lying, addicts push away helping hands.

Beneath the surface, though, some higher instinct compels an upward gaze. With help and struggle, many who have fallen down, get up, glad to march forward, as long as we don’t look back.

Long after recovery, regrets exert a backward pull. “Did I really have all of that and throw it away?” We try to ignore those glimpses in our rearview mirror of screwed up parts of our lives, betrayals not only of other people but of our own ideals.

According to the Twelve Step programs, instead of ignoring the past, we must make peace with it. The Fourth Step, the moral inventory, fearlessly focuses our attention on the things we would rather forget. The Fourth Step collects the fragments and helps us pull them together, reclaiming an appreciation for a whole self, including the years devoted in service to the addictive substance or behavior. Through authentic self-exploration and sharing, the members of Alcoholics or Narcotics or Gamblers Anonymous reach toward each other for support.

However, because of the shame associated with the loss of control, they continue to shield themselves from the public. Perhaps that is changing. In the memoir age, such walls of secrecy and shame are breaking down. Memoirs give addicted individuals a voice, turning the sorrow of their fall into a more complete story which celebrates the courage of return. In the twenty first century, memoirs shine the light of wisdom on such behavior, empowering more of us to help each other or be helped sooner.

Examples

Susan Cheever, “My Life in a Bottle.” The daughter of a famous writer hits the bottle and shows how the seduction of alcohol can drain the inner person while the outer one appears competent.

Dani Shapiro, “Slow Motion.” A daughter in a privileged New York family lets drugs, alcohol, and sex consume her life.

Nic Sheff, “Tweak.” Nic Sheff, a talented young man with a promising future, loses himself in methamphetamines. Then he slowly and fitfully climbs out.

Gail Caldwell, “Let’s Take the Long Way Home.” A writer, dog lover, and best friend, recounts her complex journey from alcohol to life. It has some of the best Alcoholics Anonymous scenes I’ve read. Gail Caldwell’s best friend is Caroline Knapp, author of “Drinking, A Love Story,” an intimate personal account of the journey out of denial and back to sobriety. “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” pays homage to their friendship as well as their return from addiction.

Mary Karr, “Lit.” Famous for her first memoir “Liar’s Club,” in this sequel Mary Karr recounts her long bleary journey through the world of inebriation and then step by step back towards society and God.

My relationship to substances
By my second year in college, I smoked dope most days. Before I knew what was happening, my self-concept became murky and confused. The decisions I made during those years dismantled my original dream of becoming a doctor. When I finally stopped taking drugs, I faced a long climb. Returning to health wasn’t the hardest part. Now that I had thrown away my goals, I had to work for decades to replace my original mission with a new one. Eventually, it worked out okay. But how does such an interrupted and resurrected lifetime make sense? By writing my memoir, I see the way each decision led to the next. I no longer need to pick and choose the good parts and try to throw away the bad. The self-concept that arises through the memoir is every bit as whole as the one I originally envisioned, and in many respects far more interesting and multi-dimensional.

Writing Prompt
What was your relationship to addiction, whether substances or behavior? If you have never admitted these experiences to anyone and are afraid to put them on paper, be ready to delete them or burn them. To help you adjust to these human foibles, speak to a therapist or share your writing in a supportive critique group.
Link to other articles in this series

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

Self-concept and memoir – launching problems and identifying with a group

Recovering self-concept after trauma

Self Concept and Memoirs: The Power of Purpose

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Self-concept and memoirs: The power of purpose

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by Jerry Waxler

Read my book, Memoir Revolution, about how turning your life into a story can change the world.

This is the fourth article in my series about using memoir reading and writing to deepen your understanding of your own self-concept. To start from the beginning, click here. Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity,

In his memoir, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” psychologist Viktor Frankl observed that a person who lacks purpose is susceptible to a variety of ills. According to Frankl’s theory, we live to the fullest only when we pursue a goal greater than ourselves. Abraham Maslow offers a slightly different slant on the issue of desire. His famous Hierarchy of Needs describes how our sense of purpose evolves from the most basic physical requirements for food and shelter, up through safety, pride, and recognition. At the very top of the hierarchy are transcendent goals like creativity, spirituality and service.

In many memoirs, and certainly the ones I enjoy the most, these energizing psychological principles leap off the pages. In the beginning of each memoir, the protagonist burns with some sort of desire, and then through the course of events, the character matures and begins to develop a deeper understanding of purpose.

To make your memoir as compelling as possible, search for your central mission. What drove you from day to day? When you find it, you will be giving yourself as well as your readers a gift. The wind in your sails that has propelled you through the years, also propels your reader through the pages.

Examples
Viktor Frankl, “Man’s search for meaning.” Frankl keeps himself alive during internment in Nazi death camps by helping fellow prisoners. He also dreams of someday helping people in the world. For the rest of his life, he follows this dream, promoting his system of Logotherapy, based on the notion that finding your true purpose is the antidote to modern ills.

Davis, Jenkins, and Hunt, “The Pact.” Three boys in northern New Jersey band together to overcome the influences of their tough urban environment. They help each other become doctors. Then they return to their community to inspire other struggling young men to follow the same path.

Greg Mortenson, “Three Cups of Tea.” As a young man interested only in climbing mountains, Mortenson finds his true calling when he stumbles into a village where poor people save his life and offer him a place in their homes. He vows to build a school for their children, and his work evolves into an international charity that builds schools for poor children in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Purpose interrupted

In any good story, as in any full-featured life, there are ups and downs. When our sense of purpose stalls or derails, it can feel not only like the death of a dream, but like a small death of the self. How do we get back into the game of life when our best effort failed? The story of resurrecting self after such setbacks reveals the courage and resilience of the human spirit. Many of the memoirs on my bookshelf tell about such complex journeys. These examples may help you discover how purpose played out in your own story.

Dani Shapiro, “Slow Motion.” This author entered a prestigious college, a powerful first step that would set the stage for her life as a writer. Then she hit a snag. A seducer showered her with flattery, gifts, and drugs, and she almost lost everything. The climb back to purpose shows her resilience. In fact, in a sense, it was this call to higher purpose that pulled her out of the abyss.

Janice Erlbaum, “Have you found her?” The author was homeless as a young girl. As an adult she returned to a shelter to help homeless kids. When her good intentions missed their mark, she shows her vulnerability and also gives us the chance to learn about human nature along with her. Her experience makes me wonder about the profound suffering possible in life, the desire to help, the limits of that help, and the degree to which you have to grow wiser yourself in order to heal others.

David Berner, “Accidental Lessons.” The author was a successful radio newscaster who, in mid-life, realized his career had only satisfied him externally. Internally he was drying up. Berner found deeper meaning by spending a year teaching in an inner city school. His memoir offers an example of discovering a deeper calling the second time around.

How did I find my purpose?

Like Dani Shapiro, my life presents an example, of a failure to launch. When my original goal of becoming a doctor fell apart, I fell into a spiritual void. With no reason to do anything, I lost interest in turning the pages of my own life. Stumbling in the dark, I came upon a belief system that prevented my spiritual demise, and I gradually built myself back to mental health. And like David Berner, in my fifties I began searching for a career that would allow me more opportunities to work with people. Eventually I found my calling to people find their story. This mission is providing me more enthusiasm about life than I experienced since I was a teen.

Writing Prompt
Write a scene which shows what you longed for. Did  you find fulfillment at your paid job, or a volunteer job, a hobby, or with your family, or community service. Look for places when your life connected with a larger social purpose.

Link to other articles in this series

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

Self-concept and memoir – launching problems and identifying with a group

Recovering self-concept after trauma

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Recovering Self-concept after Trauma

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by Jerry Waxler

This is the third article in my series about using memoir reading and writing to deepen your understanding of your own self-concept. To start from the beginning, click here. Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity,

Identity ought to be a stable thing. Once you find it, you should be set for life. But in reality, your ideas about yourself undergo continuous adaptation. We all adapt to the slow changes that unfold over years. And sometimes, our peaceful self-image is threatened by assaults so deep and swift they shake the foundations of sanity. Betrayal, divorce, job loss, combat trauma,  crime, abuse, disease, or death of a loved one can rip apart our trust that we know how to live in the world. We hang on using prayer, social supports, or counseling. Even as we shrink away from the parts of our life that hurt, we try to return to our routines. Eventually, the past slides into the past while often leaving behind a sticky residue.

One way to gain power over the bitterness and confusion that have been left behind by trauma is to write about it. Write the entire period, from your initial sense of safety, to the coming storm, then the actual experience. Then comes the most important part. Continue your story through the long journey to recovery.

One problem with events that assaulted you is that you feel trapped, as if the memory has become a prison. The power of the unexpected event feels like a life sentence. By writing the whole experience, you can form a more intimate familiarity with the journey back to safety.

By becoming a storyteller of your own life, you gain control over the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, finding the words that help you integrate the turn of events into your understanding of how you fit into the world. And by shaping the experience into a form that can be shared with others, you turn private sorrow into social compassion.

Memoirs that provide examples of facing and recovering from trauma

Alice Sebold, “Lucky.” She explicitly describes the rape that stole her innocence. Then for the rest of her life she attempts to reclaim her ability to once again believe she is a good person in a safe world. For my essay about Alice Sebold’s Lucky, click here

Jim McGarrah, “Temporary Sort of Peace.”Altered forever by his devastating experience as a combat soldier in Vietnam, McGarrah turned to writing, and looked for himself amidst the rubble of his own story. For my interview with author Jim McGarrah, click here

David Manchester, “Goodbye Darkness.” This veteran heals his nightmares by visiting the Pacific islands where he fought in World War II. In addition to providing a powerful historical account, he also searches for identity and tries to put his demons to rest. For my essay about combat trauma, click here.

Jill Bolte Taylor, “My Stroke of Insight.” After a stroke destroys the left-half of her brain, she must make do with only the right half. Then she takes an 8 year journey of rehabilitation, becoming whole and learning profound lessons about her brain and self. For my essay about My Stroke of Insight, click here.

Gary Presley “Seven Wheelchairs.” Presley, an athletic teenager is stricken with polio and then spends decades coming to terms with life in a wheelchair. His recovery is not of body but of spirit, and inspires me to think about the nobility of the long road of life. For my essay about Gary Presley’s memoir, click here.

My shakeup and subsequent re-discovery

I entered college with advanced placement scores in math, majored in physics and was sure I would be a doctor. After five years of anti-war protests, marijuana, and nihilistic beliefs, I was living in a garage, not talking to anyone for weeks at a time, striving to escape civilization. I suffered what might have been called a “nervous breakdown” if anyone had focused enough on me to give it a label. I unraveled my sense of self, and became story-less, a man without a workable self-concept, reducing myself to raw nerves and meaninglessness. I was a living laboratory experiment demonstrating that a healthy story is a minimum requirement for life. Looking back, I see that I spent much of my adult life recovering from the disruption. Writing my memoir has helped me gain an overview of this lifetime journey.

Writing Prompt

Write about unexpected suffering that made you feel like your previous sense of self no longer made sense. To help you see the whole experience, start with an outline from before the event when you felt safe until after, when you reclaimed your poise. Let your writing carry you forward from the quicksand back onto solid ground. If writing a dismal portion pulls you down, balance that feeling by writing scenes of hope and healing.

Notes
This method applies to trauma that you can look back on. Writing such a story can help you grow to a place where you can find wisdom about past suffering. If you are currently experiencing trauma or out-of-control feelings, please seek social support from a compassionate caregiver.

Link to other articles in this series

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

Self-concept and memoir – launching problems and identifying with a group

Recovering self-concept after trauma

Self Concept and Memoirs: The Power of Purpose

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Self-concept and memoir – launching problems and identifying with a group

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by Jerry Waxler

This is the second article in my series about using memoir reading and writing to help you understand the notion of “Self-concept” in general, and your own self-concept in particular. In a previous entry, I spoke about the initial formation of self-concept during Coming of Age. In today’s entry, I list more aspects of identity, showing how these two things, story and self-concept, merge in the pages of memoirs you read or write.

Collecting the pieces of a chaotic launch

In an ideal world, by the time we leave home, or “launch” into the world, we have a coherent sense of purpose. But many of us must try to find our place in the world armed only with a blurred picture or even a damaged one. When the story that we developed during Coming of Age doesn’t lead us towards satisfaction, we must evolve. Some authors recount long struggles to replace their confusing or misleading original self-image with a more coherent one.

Examples:
A.M. Homes, “Mistress’s Daughter.” She was comfortable with her identity, until her biological mother contacts her and throws her identity into confusion. She obsessively researches this new definition of herself, trying to decide if the “real” her is the daughter of this woman she is meeting for the first time, or the daughter of the adoptive parents who raised her.

Linda Joy Myers, “Don’t Call Me Mother.” Rejected by her mother, she strives to define herself. Early in her life, she reaches out to her extended family and later, she turns back to try to knit all the pieces together in her memoir. Today, the author has moved far beyond that fractured self. As a therapist and memoir teacher, she helps other people knit together the pieces of their lives. Link to Linda Joy’s blog, Link to my article about “Don’t Call Me Mother.”

Barack Obama, “Dreams from our Fathers” He was born in the American melting pot with a white mother and a black African father. The memoir recounts his search for his true identity and proves that the human spirit is capable of knitting together a coherent whole from fractured parts.

Ashley Rhodes-Courter ,”Three Little Words.” She tries to patch herself together from the crazy-quilt of life in a variety of foster homes, eventually reaching safety in an adopted home with parents who help get her back on track. She made it her mission to return to the foster system and try to heal it.

My own search to pick up the pieces
When I left home, I thought I knew myself. Soon I realized I only knew how to relate to people within my all-Jewish neighborhood. The broader world confused me and I fumbled. By the time I was 24, my grip on life had unraveled. The self I was becoming looked nothing like the self I had intended. I envied those kids who wanted something and then attained it. By failing my initial goal, I was thrown into uncertainty. What had thrown me off course? Was my failure to launch caused, as I first assumed, by the crazy 60s? Or was it more psychological than that? Perhaps I was undermined by the same gene-pool that caused my first cousin to kill himself shortly after earning his credentials as a psychiatrist. Or perhaps I had reached some invisible internal  limitations imposed on me by undiagnosed Asperger’s. Such limits social incompetence was practically invisible in my ultra-nerdy all-boys high school, but inadequate to cope with the social demands on the campus of a large state university. The quest to put the pieces back together has driven me for forty years.

Writing Prompt
What parts of yourself felt unfinished or disconnected when you went out into the world? These desires might run deep, creating a sense of purpose that runs under the surface for many years, and possibly for the rest of your life. Your memoir could help you find closure to these old dreams.

Identifying with a group

Humans are social creatures who group together, and so, when we look for ourselves, we often look for the larger group we’re part of. As Bob Dylan said, “You have to serve somebody.” In almost everyone’s life, there is a series of such attempts to identify with some group, idea, or organization, such as your ethnic group, local sports team, political party, religious affiliation. For many memoir authors, their to serve and identify play a prominent role in the protagonist’s search for self concept.

Examples:
Diane Diekman, “Navy GreenShirt.” The author spent her working life in the Navy. Her memoir is about finding her self, while serving the organization.

Ji Chaozhu, “Man on Mao’s Right.” One of Chairman Mao’s chief interpreters finds his identity through devotion to the national interests of China. Read my article about “Man on Mao’s Right.”

Donald Walters, “The Path.” Walters, one of Paramahansa Yogananda’s assistants, tells about life in the service of an Indian spiritual teacher.  My article about “The Path.”

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, “The Sky Begins at your Feet.” She shows how people in groups serve each other. From ecology groups, to writing groups, to groups of friends, the people in her life arrange themselves along lines of mutual support and striving. My interview with author Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Who did I identify with or serve?
I have always been conflicted about my group allegiances. I first saw myself as Jewish and then poly-religious, first as an American then a citizen of the world, first an aspiring doctor, then a computer guy, a therapist, and a writer. Along the way, I have served many groups: writing groups, technical groups, spiritual groups. But serving one is never enough for me. I see them all connected somehow and try to apply lessons I learn in one to improve the workings of another, hoping somehow to learn how to individually and collectively serve the greatest possible good.

Writing Prompt
Look back through the years, and list the organizations you served. Perhaps there were hobby groups, religious or spiritual group, schools and other community activities, your job, your country, your family. Write a few paragraphs about each one. Then put them in chronological order and comment on how your attitude towards serving organizations changed over time.

Link to other articles in this series

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

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by Jerry Waxler

Read Memoir Revolution to use your story to heal, connect and inspire, .

As long as I can remember, I have been trying to figure out who I am. In high school, I thought I had solved my identity problem by falling in love with math. But despite my proficiency in advanced placement calculus, life remained a mystery. In college, I moved to physics, hoping the laws of the material universe held the key, but Newton’s laws and Maxwell’s equations left me ignorant about who I was. I broadened my inquiry to include history, literature, and music. Even then, I still couldn’t answer the simple question, “Who am I?”

In my 20s I turned to spirituality, in my 30s to career, in my 40s to self-help and psychology, and in my 50s I thought I could write my way out of my jam. But like scratching an itch on a phantom limb, no matter how hard I rubbed, I was never able to relieve the pressure. It was only when I began to read memoirs and write my own that I began to find answers to my perennial question.

To write a memoir, I peer into my memory and pull together facts and scenes. Then I watch myself take shape on the pages. Within that story emerge the components of self and identity that have eluded me for so long. Depending on the angle of vision, I discover many dimensions of self, each one offering insight, validation, and a different way to make sense of my journey on earth. Here are ways that memoir reading and writing have helped me discover my self.

“Coming of Age” — the Journey to adulthood

Memoirs about Coming of Age explore the period when a young person tries to understand who they are supposed to become. First they learn about themselves from parents, siblings, neighbors, and friends. Then they crawl, stumble, and race in various directions, until they finally find ground firm enough to support their weight. Here are several Coming of Age memoirs that have shown me how other people did it.

Examples:

Frank McCourt, “Angela’s Ashes.” McCourt grew up in Ireland with a father steeped in alcohol. The book is all about a boy learning who he is and how he is supposed to head out into life.

Jeanette Walls, “Glass Castle.” She went from ragamuffin adventurer child to successful television personality, two extremely different identities. Thanks to great writing, she turns her struggle into a wonderful read, but underneath it all, she is traveling the same road we all must, to go from zero to 20.

Mark Salzman, “Lost in Space.” Salzman shares his obsessive approach to growing up, learning Karate and Chinese language on his journey from boy to man.

Haven Kimmel, “A Girl Named Zippy.” An ordinary girl from a small town proves that growing up, even when uneventful, contains plenty of drama and importance.

My Coming of Age

I had a relatively healthy childhood. I lived with both my parents and regularly visited both sets of grandparents who lived a half hour from my home. Neither of my parents were addicted, or abusive, or suffered from mental illness. We weren’t too poor or too rich. My studious habits and love of science fit perfectly with my upbringing as a pharmacist’s son. By the time I left for college, my self-image had fixated on a specific and well-formed plan. I knew i would become a doctor. My older brother was already in medical school and I thought all I had to do was follow his lead. When my plan fell apart, so did I, sending me on a decade-long journey to find a new plan.

Writing Prompt

Describe your own Coming of Age. When you reached early adulthood, what messages about yourself had you incorporated into the story of who you were and where you were heading?

More ways that reading and writing memoirs help you find your identity:

Melting pot and cultural identity

Many memoirs teach about the power of the Melting Pot – leaving behind your, or your ancestors’ identity and finding one you can share in your new, blended culture.

Write: What was your own journey, and the journey of your parents and grandparents to identify as members of a modern culture?

Shifting sands of time

After you reach adulthood, and embark on the true journey of you, the world keeps changing, the people around you change, and even your body changes. All these developments require modifications and amendments to your story-of-self.

Write: What changes in self-concept have taken place through the course of your adult life?

Spirituality and religion

While the traditional view of “religion” placed you firmly within the definition of your religion of birth, many of us in the 21st century seek our concept of self in a more universal set of beliefs known as “spirituality.” By writing your story and reading others, you can find and define your identity along these lines

Healing and rebuilding from traumas

Writing a memoir offers you an opportunity to change your frame of reference from being the victim of your own life, to becoming its author. By crafting the words that describe your evolution as a person, you can gain control and develop inner strength and wisdom to help you heal and resolve issues from the past.

Write: What events or circumstances in your life do you regret? Instead of trying to erase them from memory, use your creative mind to forge a story of survival, courage, and wholeness.

See my article on the recovery of self-concept after trauma by clicking here.

Re-storying after loss

After you’ve lost someone dear to you, your life must go on without that person. Reconstructing your self-concept in their absence requires deep work, sometimes real convalescence as you reshape your story-of-self.

The identity of geography

While we think our self-concept goes with us wherever we go, many memoirs tease out the profound influence place can have on our image of who we are. In Song of the Plains by Linda Joy Myers, and Ruby Slippers by Tracy Sealey, the authors explore the journey from heartland to coast and back again. In Jew Store by Stella Suberman, the family shifts its identity from urban to rural America.

The evolving relationship to gender and sexuality

In my younger days, sorting out all the variables of gender identity and sexuality seemed like a great puzzle. Through the decades, so many more options and variables have been added. From the tidal wave of sexual liberation in the 60s, to the cultural shift in male-female relations in the second half of the twentieth century, to the great blurring of gender identity in the 21st century, our relationship to these supposedly fixed features keeps changing. And I’ve found yet another shift in my relationship to gender and sexuality in older years. To find the true you  beneath the every changing sands of time, what better way than authoring your story.

Go wider and deeper in your relationship to the “Other”

Your self concept exists in relationship to the people around you. In an community or primitive tribe, you would have defined your Self as “someone who belongs to this group.” In today’s churning, shrinking world, we are challenged to include “outsiders.” Since our group is now diverse, it throws our own identity into question. If “I am a member of this group” I need to understand who these people are. Memoirs take you inside the experience of this enormous diversity and turn your global neighbors from strangers into friends. In the process, your own notion of self-identity expands, extending beyond the cultural constraints of people who look exactly like you.

Deepen your insight into the introspective voice

The only way to know other people’s thoughts is either by what they say, or what we guess. When I was growing up and trying to understand people, I read literature, which unfortunately only gave me insight into the characters invented by fiction writers. By developing a familiarity with the memoir genre, you are ushered into the introspective world of the people around you. And by writing your own memoir, you challenge yourself to become more aware of the narrative you tell yourself.

To read more about the psychological notion of self-concept, read my article on Mental Health Survival Guide

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my short, step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Color of Water, a memoir of race, family and fabulous writing

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by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: Write Your Story, Change the World and How to Become a Heroic Writer

James McBride’s mother, Ruth, taught her twelve children to reach for their dreams.  For example, a little-known clause in New York City’s educational system allowed her to send her kids to any school. She sent them to the best in the city where they were often the only blacks in the class. Despite her intense involvement in their lives, they knew little about her past. When James was a young boy, struggling to understand his racial identity, he asked her, “Are you white?” She evaded the question, replying, “I have light skin.” He couldn’t figure it out, and kept hounding her. “What color is God?” he asked. “He’s the color of water,” she said. “He doesn’t have any color.”

James McBride’s search for his racial identity intensified during adolescence. While his older siblings were earning college degrees, McBride rebelled so hard he ended up on a street corner, hanging out with punks stealing and dealing on their way down. In their company, something finally clicked and he realized the street corner was a dead end.

I should not be too surprised that McBride suffered while searching for his identity. During my adolescence, I too went through a period of uncertainty and anxiety so severe it turned self-destructive. One challenge for me was to figure out how a Jew was supposed to fit in to the Christian Melting Pot. After reading McBride’s memoir, I realize I had it easy compared to this boy with a white mother and a black father, trying to find his place in a culture that takes race far too seriously.

Surrounded by an all-black cast of siblings, neighbors, and extended family, he had no trouble finding the black half of his heritage, but his white relatives were a closed book. After college, less troubled but still curious, he applied his journalistic skills to discover the white half.

His requests to his mother became more focused, and finally after a lifetime of secrecy and angry refusal, she started talking. His interviews with her resulted in the New York Times bestselling memoir “Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother” which weaves his mother’s tales of her youth into the author’s memories of his childhood.

Ruth’s reticence about her past reflected much that she preferred to forget. She grew up as an orthodox Jew in a small town in the south, shunned by her schoolmates, and raised by a cruel father who treated his wife and two children like servants. When Ruth set out to start her own life, she rejected everything about her father including his racism. She fell in love with and married a black man, triggering her entire family to reject her. The cut-off went in both directions. She broke off contact and eventually converted to Christianity.

If he wrote about his whole life, why wasn’t it an autobiography?

McBride’s life contains more than enough material for an entire memoir, and yet by the end of the book, we have also learned his aging mother’s history, a combined story that spans 80 years. This extended timeline defies the generally accepted rule that the journey of an entire life is an autobiography, a form supposedly more suitable for celebrities, politicians, and generals.

To write for strangers we’re supposed to limit ourselves to tighter timelines that focus on one particular aspect or period. Despite the broader scope of “Color of Water,” the book was fabulously successful, selling more than a million copies. How did this apparent autobiography earn such a prominent position as a highly acclaimed memoir?

In my opinion, “The Color of Water” compels me to turn pages for the same reason any good book does. The author has achieved expertise as a storyteller. McBride’s writing style was fostered by the years he worked as a professional journalist, reinforcing the comment I heard recently at a writing conference that the best preparation for any writer is to take a job as a reporter.

One scene offers an example of the lively nature of his writing. McBride’s older brother told him there was a surprise waiting in the closet. McBride peered into the dark to see what it was. The brother shoved him in and slammed the door. So far it sounds like a normal prank. The additional twist was that another brother, waiting quietly at the back of the closet, suddenly screamed and attacked, scaring McBride out of his wits. The two brothers had schemed to maximize the mischief, providing the reader with a vivid image of the loving mayhem that permeates McBride’s home.

Stylistically, the “Color of Water” jumps back and forth through time, interspersing tales of his mother’s childhood with his own. He even pops forward into the present, describing his trip to the small southern town where his mother grew up. As a reader I enjoy his time-weaving, but as a writer I find his style less accessible to analysis than a simpler, more chronologically organized tale. I wonder if his creative license comes from his years as a journalist or as a jazz musician, or more likely, both.

Somehow, McBride managed to achieve it all, thus proving that the power of memoirs is not in the rules but in the craft. Thanks to his excellent storytelling, James McBride ushered me into his life, where I joined the other million readers who also learned about the trials, pleasures, and challenges of this family and this man. Together we shared his tribute to his mother, Ruth McBride, and became one person wiser in our exploration of the vast range of human experience.

Writing Prompt
Write about a prank, an accident, or some explosive moment that left you disoriented and lets you show your characters in an almost otherworldly state of mind.

Writing Prompt
Look again at misadventures of your adolescence that you typically think of as stupid, misguided mistakes. Challenge your automatic self-attacks by writing about those events as if they were valuable experiments or detours along the longer road of growing up. For the purposes of this exercise, push your self-critic aside. Instead of judging yourself, simply tell the story.

Writing Prompt
Scan your life story writing, and pick an important scene you wish you could deepen. Interview a parent or sibling or, if they are not available, imagine you are interviewing them. Ask about their role in this scene, or their ideas about it, or about similar situations that they might have experienced. Use this real or imagined conversation to help flesh in some background to deepen your own scene.

Notes

For the Amazon link to Color of Water, click here.

For James McBride’s Home Page, click here.

Another bestselling memoirist John Grogan, author of Marley and Me, also started his career as a journalist. To read more about my take on Marley and Me, click here.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my self-help workbook for developing habits, overcoming self-doubts, and reaching readers, read my book How to Become a Heroic Writer.