THE MEMOIR NOTES #4: Upstairs/Downstairs/In-Between Life
Living In Multiple Worlds While You Write Your Story + Creating Emotional Capacity To Do This Work
The Memoir Notes is a series of real-time notes inside Heart’s Content documenting my process as I write my memoir. I share story drafts with my private community in each month’s intimate, bonus newsletter for paid subscribers. Join us if you want to follow along in real-time and read what I’m writing and have a chat with us about it.
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. -William Wordsworth
Coming up for air, I begin this note to you.
I’ve had my head down creating two rapid-fire lists for the past two hours.
Last year, I would pull a “memory” Post-it note off the wall and dive deep into writing about a particular event. I wrote the story memories I had the emotional capacity to face and write. Some of them were the big hairy ones, others smaller story nods to fill out a characterization or description of a place, depending on my capacity on any particular day.
Today, I focused on the flow of the Big Picture.
Life mapping like this is nothing new. And this is not my first time walking through a list like this, but I felt the urge to do it again at this stage of my process.
The first list was made up of pivotal stories and key turning points or visceral moments from childhood, middle, teen, and college years. Not all of these events will belong in a memoir, but I wanted to capture what rose to the surface most easily and obviously as pivotal stories from my early life. This was the nudge I felt as I sat to write today so I trusted it. Some of the memories involved my mom - clearly, one of the key players- and some did not.
Next, I made another list of stories from my childhood, teen, and adult years that were pivotal “mom” stories. I’ve never approached my memories of her in quite this way before. Scanning the screen of my mind as if watching a film of our relationship set on fast forward, seeing our story play out in the most concise shorthand over seven handwritten pages. When I finally got to the present day, beyond her death in 2015 and all that followed it, I put my pen down and immediately felt the familiar grief well up in me.
Head in my hands, I let myself feel the cumulative weight of the arc of the story my mother and I share as it spilled out of me and through me. It all feels so freaking tragic. So ridiculously wasteful. And I wondered if there is a bottom to this kind of generational grief. Like an eternal spring, it never seems to run dry.
And yet.
Whereas once upon a time these memories, like an earthquake, could shake me to my core with aftershocks for days or weeks afterward, now I can feel what arises and return to the foundation of myself much more quickly. I can stay anchored even while feeling the tremors of grief. It certainly isn’t easy work, but it is possible now in ways it has not been in years past. As I have said myself and as my close friends have reflected to me, I am ready now. And I am ready because I am willing to keep doing this work.
After making these lists and feeling this impact, I needed a break.
I slowly walked up the stairwell from the basement. My body moved through the halfway, liminal space between my past and my present, as I made the transition upstairs to life as it is now. I crossed through the den and stepped out into the sunshine on my back patio. The sun wrapped around my welcoming skin. I stood there in this other world of sunshine and blue sky and my garden and the life I am living - my present life, a very good life- and I thought for a moment about the Upstairs/Downstairs/In Between life of writing your story.
Ron came outside to check on me and I asked for a hug. I am learning to follow this work with self-care and tending to what I need at that moment. What I needed was a good, long hug in the sunshine from the arms that I trust most to hold me as I hold it all.
Writing to you now, the tune You Can’t Rush Your Healing just bubbled up in my mind and heart. We can’t indeed. It takes time to build the emotional capacity to look back and face our pain. I have visited these memories before, and yet each time I circle back I heal another aspect. Another layer is being integrated. This gives me hope. While I may never be completely finished with grief, it doesn’t mean it will always feel as it once did. I know it doesn’t from experience. But that is the fear that keeps us from the work. And this work, and the courage to do it, is where liberation is born.
In his book Consolations, poet and essayist David Whyte writes on the theme of maturity. Here’s what he says:
Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts, most especially the ability, despite our many griefs and losses, to courageously inhabit the past, the present, and the future all at once.
This is exactly the space we inhabit in our healing work. Holding space for all the Past Me’s to talk to the Present Me as we all reside in the unwounded Me that is my Wholeness. As it is for you as well. Forward together, friend.
The Downstairs -and Everything In Between- are held in the light by the Upstairs.
I’d love to hear from you.
xo Mary
3 THINGS WORTH SHARING:
Synchronistically, I not only discovered this wonderful podcast, but the episode I listened to was an interview with a documentary filmmaker who filmed his half-brother’s quest to find his mother who left him. It couldn’t have been more specifically geared toward me and the story I shared in my short film. The most personal is the most universal, we know that. Take a listen if you’re interested.
Here’s the link to the Reed Harkness film, SAM NOW, and where you can watch. Just in case you, like me, immediately want to watch after hearing this vulnerable podcast episode. In the meantime, here’s the trailer:
Currently popping in and out of the book: Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by Poet David Whyte. Y’all already know what a fan I am of his poetry. These essays are brief yet powerful and perfect for a daily devotional of sorts.
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OUR COMMUNITY CARE DONATIONS FROM OUR PAID SUBSCRIBERS FOR JUNE
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I hope you’ll keep in touch and share a comment below if you’re feeling chatty. If you are more comfortable responding privately, simply reply to this email. Either way, I’ll get back to you. Thanks for reading!
Beautiful as always, Mary - your comments are so inspiring to me.
Mary, I love this! So beautifully written and well-said.