How do you write about your family’s baggage?

Your family and mine include dysfunctional people. Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents—some carried out unhealthy practices and held offensive attitudes. 

And now our generation has skeletons in the closet. Every family has baggage.

You know—the enabler.

Or the one who should have protected you but didn’t.

The bully, the controller, the know-it-all.

The petty one always looking for ways to take offence and blame you.

Your grandfather might have been a wife-beater. 

Perhaps your father was quick to criticize and slow to praise. 

Maybe your mother was egotistical and self-absorbed. 

Your family tree might include a drunkard or abuser, a liar, murderer, adulterer, sex addict, drug addict, or thief.

Even Jesus’ genealogical chart shows ill-famed characters: Rahab was a prostitute and King Manasseh deliberately defied God, carried out evil, and led God’s people astray. 

Yes, your family, like every family, has lots of good people and a few flawed people, and those people have influenced you. 

Some of the dysfunctional ones have played major roles in your life. 

So how should you, a memoirist, write about your people and their baggage?

First, examine your motive. It is all-important! 

Hear this: Memoir is not about revenge.

Forbid yourself to use your memoir to shame people.

Refrain from humiliating anyone. 

Refuse to get even. 

Writing a memoir can bring much-needed healing to you, the writer, but focus on the right reason to write about your past. 

Writing can help break the cycle of hand-me-down hang-ups that crippled your family’s generations, but focus on the right reason to write about your past.

“God’s Word clearly expresses 

what a good and effective teacher the past can be. 

The past will be a good teacher 

if we will simply approach it as a good student, 

from the perspective of what we can gain 

and how God can use it for His glory.”

(Beth Moore, Breaking Free; emphasis mine)

Do everything you must to be at peace with God:

Recognize that like your parents and grandparents, you have made and will make mistakes in raising your children and relating to your grandchildren. 

Your malfunctions might be different from those of your parents or grandparents but, be assured, you have your own shortcomings and failures. 

Ask for God’s forgiveness. 

Accept His forgiveness. 

Allow God to wrap you in His grace and mercy. 

Wrapped in God’s grace and mercy—that’s where you find peace with God. 

That’s where you find God’s healing in your life. 

Then pass it on: In writing your memoir, extend to your ancestors the same forgiveness, grace, and mercy God extended to you.

Read the following slowly, and then read it again. Take in its message:

“Thank God that 

although you cannot change the past, 

He can help you change what you’re doing with it! 

And the changes He makes in you 

in the present 

can certainly change the future! 

Hallelujah! Our God reigns!” 

(Beth Moore, Breaking Free; emphasis mine)