OPENING DOORS THROUGH MEMOIRS

In the year I have been working on the first of what I hope to be three memoirs, I have found it to be a challenging, cathartic, and stimulating exercise.  

Not only is a memoir is a wonderful legacy and gift to leave a person’s family, but writing a memoir has helped me come to terms with the violence that has plagued portions of my life—including the murder of the mother of my oldest grandchild. Hopefully, my memoirs will help my descendants learn from my mistakes and prepare for life’s ups and downs.

So many times I have wished my parents and grand parents had left a written record of their lives and their experiences. Indeed, my decision to write my own memoir comes from a request from my youngest son for me to write an autobiography. It was in studying the differences between biographies, autobiographies, and a memoir that I learned a memoir was a better vehicle for me—a memoir, unlike an autobiography, is not the story of a person’s life, it is stories about a person’s life usually based around a theme.

Over the next several weeks, I am going to be posting on memoir writing and will intersperse those posts with my other writings on gun violence. (To be continued)