From Memory to Memoir

Everyone who knows me knows that I like to talk. I process my thoughts out loud, trying out ideas, exploring feelings. I like to tell stories—about me or my family, from now or long ago. If I am lucky enough to live into my 90s, I will be that person who is trying to tell folks, “I remember one time, back in the day...” 

Over the years, I’ve learned to be a better listener, to listen more carefully to others’ stories, to stop myself from jumping in my mind to what I think they’re telling me or about to say. Some days I’m better at it than others, but overall I’ve learned to be a better companion.  

I also process as I write—deleting, pausing to think of how to re-phrase something, reaching around in my mind for the thoughts that matter or the ideas that will help me find a path to clarity. 

Never was that truer than as I wrote down memories of life with my dad and worked to craft them into a memoir. Just as I continue to learn to be a better listener to others, I have learned through writing and revising these memories to be a better companion to myself.  

Over the months and years of reflection and revision, I learned more about myself as I processed a memory, inhabiting it and allowing myself to feel again what I felt then. Reflecting and analyzing, I would write myself into a conclusion or an insight about it: “That’s what that tells me about myself!” 

Except, no.  

Sometimes immediately but sometimes the next day or months later, I would reread it and realize that a particular conclusion didn't resonate with me after all. It wasn't the insight I needed into my own experience. Or into life. Or death. In those moments, I learned to listen better to myself. I learned to quiet my excitement about what was written, about its finality, and instead to ask if I had jumped too quickly to the end. I learned too that sometimes there is no insight. Sometimes there is just the memory, just sitting in it again, breathing, knowing it is not now, knowing it helped to shape the person I am. Sometimes that is enough. 

At times I felt alone in my experiences. I turn to books for all kinds of healing and learning and I have found lots of memoirs and books about people who were grieving their beloved parent or family member. I also found that there are many that talk about grieving the loss of the parent you never had if you were the survivor of physical or sexual abuse. Neither of these extremes represent my experience. I felt alone at times as I tried to figure out how to grieve someone who had given me many gifts and had snatched many of them away too. How was I to grieve in this messy middle, a survivor of emotional abuse and estrangement? Where was the book that could be my companion?  

It’s not that I was alone in my journey through memory. I am fortunate that my sister, Karen, and my mom were willing to listen and to talk about my memories—and their own. I could share what I had written and ask them if it resonated, if it felt true.  

I know that I don’t usually remember events from yesterday, let alone 30 years ago, with absolute accuracy. Every memory we have is already crafted to some degree by our perspective. And so it was that Karen or my mom might not remember everything as I did. I listen to their stories. I try to feel what they feel, what they felt in that moment.  

After reading part of the memoir, Karen says of a particular memory I recount, “Daddy didn't say it quite that way to me, but that's ok. It's your memory. Your memoir.”  

“But I’m trying to get it as close to accurate as possible,” I reply. “Should I change it? I’ve tweaked other phrases when you or Mom told me it wasn’t how you recalled it.”  

“I wouldn’t change this one,” she says. “You’re accurate in all the important ways. I can hear him saying all these things. I can feel how I felt. You got it right fundamentally.”  

My mom says the same.  

I know that I am lucky that Karen and my mom share the same overall feelings about what happened to us as a family. I know that I am fortunate that in telling my stories, I have two family companions and that I have learned to listen better to myself.  

My heart aches for those whose families have fractured into more pieces than mine, who don't have anyone to say to them “yes, yes, I remember that!” or who have people around them who discount their truth and memories. 

One hope I have for my memoir is that it can be a companion for those who don't have what I have in Karen and my mom. Another hope is that it can help those who cannot relate to my experience better understand what to say to those who can. Then they may be the companion who says, “I see your pain, I know it’s confusing to you, and that’s ok too. Your form of grief is valid.”  

After all, just as I cannot fathom what it is like to be a survivor of physical or sexual abuse, and I can’t imagine what it’s like to have had a family where you didn’t grow up fearing your dad, those who have had positive relationships with both their parents (maybe even their whole families!) cannot immediately imagine what dysfunction does to a person.  

I was listening not long ago to a colleague talk about both their parents and the fun they have just being together. Because of my own experiences and frame, I kept waiting for the bad part. And waiting. I stopped myself and said, “It sounds like you get along super well and have strong relationships with your parents. Am I correct?” “Yes!” was the enthusiastic and sincere response. I smiled. “I’m so glad.” And I am. What a joy to know that too can be true for some! 

 I thought at that moment of my relationship with my kids. I thought of the great times we experience together, of the times they seek me out to do something, of the wonderful conversations we have. I learned at that moment to listen better for the good. And I know in conversations with me sometimes others have learned to listen better—and respond better—to my more challenging experiences.  

As I have wandered from memory to memory, and then from memory to memoir, my mom and sister have been my constant companions. They were there for me when we lived through those moments. They were there for me when I revisited them. They helped me try to make some sense of it all, to value my truth. We have such power to validate each other's experiences. There is so much healing when we do so.