Why write memoir?

My response to this question has changed over the years it has taken me to finish my memoir “Never Still.”

I have been writing regularly since age 12. Of late I have been downsizing and see the boxes of diaries and journals now taking up much space in my storage locker. I feel they deserve a good read before I toss them but haven't been moved to go there yet.

I did read my diary from age twelve, though. I was delighted to meet the person inside it. She was kind, confident, and happy. Also, boring on the page. There was no deep complexity hiding between the lines. She recorded her days. Apparently, that was enough.

So perhaps I have been writing memoir continuously throughout my life.

When COVID ordered us to our rooms, I found myself with my partner in our three-bedroom house having oodles of hours to myself.

My mind would slip into the past, memories would arise, and I began to record them. First an idea, then I would transport myself back to that time and have a good look. The initial little fragment would blossom as I gave it some time and space.

Any of my senses could be an entry point. The smell of lilacs would lead to my baba's front porch and from there into her kitchen where I would hear her laugh, watch her dance and the story would present itself.

Sound worked too. So did texture. The feel of a fur coat on my cheek when my eyes were burning from too much cigarette smoke at Christmas. My first taste of avocado on a bus.

I wrote story after story during the four years of COVID never thinking about a memoir, a book. I was having fun reliving my life, making discoveries as I went along, remembering events that had been completely buried by the day-to-day.

At one moment I decided to draw a long line and put my most life changing events on it like pearls on a string. Then from each pearl offshoots. For example, a pearl might be motherhood, offshoots might be the birth, first year, insights, relationship with child's father. Travel led to countries, friendships, risks, and the person I became while moving through unfamiliar places.

Before long the necklace went around the walls of my yoga room and each pearl looked like a Sputnik.

Life is not a tidy sequence. One event keeps sending meaning to another. And somewhere beneath questions arise.

What did I believe then? What did I refuse to see? What did I learn too late? What did I carry from one relationship to the next? Where was the growth in this event?

I love this part of writing memoir. When I recognize an ordinary moment and suddenly feel the larger question underneath it.

These realizations happened during the writing not before I started.

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TMI…!!! Who is this book directed at? It began as a book of one, for me. This allowed me to follow every odd path.

It extended to family, and this made me think about context and fairness.

Writing for publication asked me to consider what a reader who didn't know me might need to enter the story.  By this time, I gave myself license to show a little leg and explore wider themes.

Coming of age as a doctor, mother, and woman through travel, then staying put. Now I had to choose carefully because privacy mattered. And so does kindness when other people are part of the story.

I have loved every stage of the writing process.

I would be happy to talk with anyone wanting to start or is in the process of writing their memoir.