Last week I felt like I’d revisited another lifetime as I taught my new mini-workshop the Heart and Soul of Memoir Writing. I’ve been teaching memoir writing for over 30 years, mostly in person, and then enjoying the gatherings on zoom. I enjoyed seeing eager faces on the screen, writers who wanted and needed to gather with other writers. Everyone was carrying a story, or many stories inside, and talked about the special kind of pleasure we feel when someone says, “Write your story. Write your truth. Say how it was. Don’t hold back.” Relief was on their faces as they wrote their truths, then shared with the group.

I love the way Brenda Ueland-If You Want to Write— talks about humans who have the urge to write, but hesitate—as we all do!

Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his true self and not the self he thinks he be… No one exactly like any other individual, and no two identical persons have ever existed. Consequently, if you speak or write from yourself, you can’t help being original. So remember these two things. You are talented and you are original. Be sure of that…This creative power and imagination is in everyone, and so is the need to express it, i.e., to share it with others.

She says that this delight in originality and creativity is drummed out of us in school, in society. Children are taught lockstep to conform to certain methods and beliefs, and all too often the creative spark we see in children who are encouraged to be creative, to write and make art and messes and to express themselves is hemmed in and often silenced with criticism. With shoulds. We take this kind of treatment with us, embedded in our unconscious.

Yes, writing a memoir is a creative act. It is art making on the page. Our fingers hover over the keys as we struggle with permission—our own permission—to write what is in our hearts. To trust that what we have to say matters. To put words to moments that had no words, but our bodies remember.

There is the matter of internalized censoring, protecting the family or community from our stories, our insights, our confessions. Our truths. The family might be gone, but they live inside us, those voices, and they call out for our silence and our loyalty. “You can’t write that about Uncle Billy. It’s not fair to expose him.” This was said by family members who knew very well what Uncle Billy did to all the little girls in the family when he got the chance.

Shame. That’s the name of this thing that keeps us quiet. In my work as a therapist, I have listened to many accounts of abuse, painful stories that fell from their lips. Therapy clients and memoir writers alike need to release their stories of pain and otherness from their body. They need to break out of silence and form words to logically and honestly tell what happened. So they can be free to move forward. So they are free to simply Be.

Studies show that trauma loops in our brain over and over again, and the movies of what happened, the words play on endless repeat. The good news is that writing allows us to capture that and put it in black squiggles on the page. To state the truth without fanfare. It heals and slows down that looping.

I’m planning a series of workshops about writing as healing, peeling the layers of what that means and how people can write their healing story, with support. With the witnessing of other writers who understand that path.

The next mini-workshop is February 26—and the topic is: Writing Your Truth-Managing Family Secrets.

As I write my new book for Sibylline Press, The Heart and Craft of Writing a Healing Memoir, I feel once again the thrill of sharing the good news about writing, expressing, and celebrating the creative spark in all of us! Telling the stories that can lead to change and transformation. To make sense of the past.

Explore these prompts as you seek your truths:

· What truths are you unwilling to put on the page. Why?

· What truths do you feel need to be told—and why is it important to you?

· Have you experienced silencing—when and how?

· What do you have to say that must be said?