Find healing through the process of writing your memoir

If you’re just starting to write your memoir, I have important advice for you.

When a friend of mine began his memoir, he started by writing about the most traumatic year of his life. Whoa!

I’ve seen other people begin by writing super-painful stuff, only to become overwhelmed all over again with the devastation—and soon they gave up writing altogether. Don’t let that happen to you!

Please hear this: Begin your memoir by writing your easy stories—the happy stories, the funny incidents, the fascinating experiences. That way you can ease your way into both writing and the reflecting that memoir is.

My heart wants you to fall in love with

remembering

and pondering

and discovering all the good stuff you didn’t recognize in the past,

and with making sense of what used to mystify you,

and with writing,

            and with choosing just the right words

                        to fashion your story as a gift for others to read.

Here's some good news: You don’t need to write your chapters/vignettes in the same order they will appear in your finished memoir. Write them in any order that’s easiest for you. Later you can organize them in the best way.

For now, give yourself permission to start with easy stories. Tackle your hard stories later.

Also, keep this in mind: Even if you’re not physically putting your painful story into words (with pen and ink or on a computer screen), you are working on the story. I can’t explain how that works but, behind the scenes, your heart and brain are working on how to write your troubling scenes.  

So, let your heartache marinate for a few more weeks or months. One day you’ll be vacuuming out the car, or playing catch with your grandson, or folding laundry when out of the blue, your heart and brain will speak to you (or maybe it’ll be God who speaks to you—I’d like to think it’s Him), and that voice will offer insights into your hurtful experience. Listen, and jot down notes to yourself: You’ll be mining treasures. Later you can use those notes to compose your difficult story’s rough draft. 

Also, remember: Your rough draft is for your eyes only. Write it all—the seared, charred, blistered parts, the questions you never had the courage to ask aloud, the doubts you never admitted before, the anger you kept bottled up.

Work out the pain—

work through the pain—

by writing with God beside you.

Wrestle with God

and with yourself

as you write.

Go ahead and cry.

Why?

Because God can bring healing

through the process of writing.

And be gentle with yourself, extend grace to yourself: Reliving those emotions and writing those scenes and conversations can be overwhelming.

I know of no anguish-free way to get through that writing process, but I can encourage you with this:

Write your story as a prayer to God

and He can use the process of writing

to help you make sense of events that

knocked the air out of you,

left you broken,

confused,

weary,

hopeless—

maybe even paralyzed—

and He can help you work through your grief.

If you’ll give it the needed time and if you’ll peel back enough layers and dig deep enough, writing your stories can lead to new insights, to answers that too long evaded you, and to resolution—to getting un-stuck so you can move on to healing and forgiveness and peace and hope for the future. Writing your story changes you.

If you stick with it, at some point you'll find the most profound, redeeming part of writing your story:

• You'll discover that God was beside you all the while, bringing you people and opportunities and Bible verses and Bible studies and sermons, working out His good plans—many details you probably didn't recognize in the midst of the incident, or saw only dimly, and
• you'll also discern how far you've come, how much you've healed.
• That, in turn, makes you overflow with gratitude toward God,
• and that solidifies your relationship with Him.

Mick Silva says it this way: “I’ve discovered that…protecting and preserving our stories is about discovering God’s story.” I call that your “God-and-you story.”

In that way, writing a memoir can be a journey of personal healing—even if you originally set out to write it for others.

And this is important: At some point, you’ll revise your manuscript. Your first draft, that for-your-eyes-only draft, will remain what it is. But use that rough material to craft a rewrite of your memoir for others to read.

Let God transform you 

through writing that painful first draft, 

and afterward, 

your God-and-you story can help others heal.

P. S. Did you read Tuesday’s post about Kathy Pooler’s experience writing her memoir? If you missed it, click on “Unveiling all the painful truths.” Since most memoirists must write about something painful, you don’t want to miss Kathy’s wisdom and encouragement.