Category: Trauma
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Collapsed lives that turned into memoirs
As I try to explain my journey through life, those bad decisions and lost dreams keep coming back, fragmented, unkind, and confusing. Since I want to reveal an authentic tale of who I am, I might as well gather the broken bits of the past and figure out how to include them. By shaping them…
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Veterans seek healing by cycling through Vietnam
Outside, in the world around them, the world seemed peaceful, while much of the real drama was taking place inside their minds, where memories boiled and occasionally erupted into tears. I empathized with the courage it must have taken to face the country where deep scars were burned into their psyche, and several times I…
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Unbearable Courage of Living
His memoir brought me face to face with the unbearable courage of living. He takes me to the waiting room, the gurney, and the operating room, and makes it easy to empathize with his predicament. While he’s a nervous wreck, so am I. He lets me feel his sweaty hands and his edgy outbursts so…
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Memoir of abuse and redemption, book review
by Jerry Waxler One of the best memoirs I have read is about a guy who wants to score 10 points in bicycle racing. Whether or not he achieves his cycling goal, Ten Points by Bill Strickland gets 10 points from me for delivering everything I want from a memoir; dramatic tension, passionate love among…
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Your story works like your skin
by Jerry Waxler When you cut your skin, you bleed, and if you don’t clean it, infection sets in. Human beings also have another type of skin, made not of flesh but of stories. This skin provides a sense of purpose, of safety, of place in the world. When it’s healthy it is resilient enough…
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Alice Sebold’s Lucky, a searing memoir of trauma
It is this sixth sense for authenticity that pulls me in so deeply to Sebold’s Lucky. If you can find the authenticity of your own experience, and harness it into a story, you will not only capture your reader, but will also capture the essence of your experience. It’s this combination of real shared experience,…
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