THE MEMOIR NOTES #5: On The Other Side Of "I Don't Know "
The meandering, bewildering, trustworthy experience of writing your story.
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, read what I’m writing, and chat with us about it. I hope it might also encourage you to write and heal your story.
Dear Sweetness,
I hope it’s okay to call you that. I feel a kinship with you and gratitude for your company. Thank you again for joining me here.
The last two weeks have been unseasonably rainy in Colorado and I have missed the sunshine and the comfort of my long, meandering walks across the Butte. But the earth here is thirsty and in desperate need of water, and there are happy wildflowers everywhere, so I welcome it. I’ve been trying to settle back into my regular rhythms since returning home from vacation.
As I return to a more consistent writing practice, I realize that I’ve arrived at an interesting juncture on the path of this self-taught, exploratory memoir school of mine. So, let’s get into it.
I have written many words.
I have stacks and stacks of monthly notebooks.
I have digital folders holding documents filled with stories and memories.
Spiral notebooks spilling over with my questions, musings, tantrums, confusions, and moments of graced clarity. Each story opening up more memories and more questions.
I have pages splashed with tears.
Pages pressed with deep grooves of remembered anger.
Pages nesting my softer, slower words, written in moments following quiet contemplation.
These pages are embellished with stars, underlined and circled, scribbled with side notes and with corners folded over for quick reference someday.
I write prayers and poems and practical tips for moving forward.
I scrawl notes from my therapy sessions and recovery meetings.
I watch for intersections and recurring themes.
I make lists. And more lists. Desiring and determined that I not miss some crucial clue.
These are some of my navigational tools for this uncharted territory.
It’s a massive outpouring of words, ideas, feelings, and questions. Tears and joys. Grief and gladness. Searching and researching.
My stories are lined up like eager little children waiting for the teacher to tell them where they are going. The teacher looks around and over the tops of their heads, squinting into the blurry horizon, pauses and says, Yeah, kids, I’m not sure…
It is no small thing to attempt to deconstruct and reconstruct a life in words.
I pray for patience. I ask for help. Every day.
I have words. Lots of words.
But I still do not have clarity about what this memoir is really about. The foundational Story beneath all the stories. Not yet, anyway. But I trust it will come.
This work is not much different than seeking meaning in our life as we live it, except that now we are making copious notes. Working backward and forward and in between at the same time. Holding multiple universes of experience and memory like a nesting doll.
Memoir is just as much about the present, and the future, as it is about the past.
I didn’t know that when I began this process.
I didn’t fully understand what this process would require of me.
And I wholeheartedly believe this is a crucial part of the work. The not-knowing.
I lean my cheek into my palm and wonder what I have gotten myself into.
I don’t know.
I don’t know exactly how to do what I am trying to do or where it is all going.
And yet, I am actually doing it.
I keep showing up. I keep moving forward. I keep writing and thinking and feeling and tending. I keep trusting the messy, confusing, creative-spiritual process.
It helps that it’s not the first time I have attempted to do something I’ve never done before. Whether parenting or directing a short film, or a thousand new experiences in life, I yield to the uncharted territory.
Of course I want answers I do not have yet. Surprise, surprise. I wanted them a long time ago.
This is just the way it goes, friend.
We mutter about why this process take so long, and we hear our wiser, quieter self respond, because it just does. It takes the time it takes. And as uncomfortable as it often is, I’d rather be on this journey than not, even if it means I have to sit inside all of this uncertainty, all of the not-knowing-yet, and some of the I-will-never-know’s along the way.
I pause. I breathe. I look around. I take stock.
I’ve got a cup of moxie, a quart of determination, and a gallon of trust in this meandering process. I lean my elbows on this writing table, and my chin onto my palms, but I lean my heart on the Spirit and this courageous community I share with you.
The only thing that I can tell you at this moment, with any degree of certainty, is that all the best discoveries I’ve ever made in life have been on the other side of “I don’t know. “ So why wouldn’t that be true for this process as well? I take comfort in that, and I hope you can, too.
The other thing I know for certain? We are not meant to do this alone. Yes, the work itself is solitary but I feel sure I wouldn’t have come this far without you and my concentric circles of support. Knowing that you are out there, reading these words, sometime in the future, somewhere in your own life and circumstances, maybe even eating a summer peach in the sunshine, strengthens me.
If you too have been called to a healing writing practice for yourself, and maybe find yourself wondering what you have gotten yourself into, just keep writing.
We don’t have to be brilliant. We just have to keep at it. We just have to be loyal to our own healing, until the blurry horizon up ahead begins to take on a shape and clarity that we can recognize. May we see it and smile, and recognize that somehow we always knew we were headed here.
Headed home.
Stay courageous and curious and connected, Sweetness. I hope you’ll stay in touch.
xo Mary
3 THINGS WORTH SHARING:
An excerpt from one of the stories I am sharing with my paid subscriber community. At the end of each month, they receive a bonus newsletter where I share drafts of my memoir work in progress, more about my process, and my creative recommendations for the month.
“Not too long ago, I had a really powerful dream.
In the dream, I was standing in the middle of a lake and my mom was scooping water and pouring it over my head, like a holy ritual, a baptism of sorts. She held some kind of sacred cup or bowl, and she gently poured the lake water over my head, blessing me.
To many this might seem like a beautiful, comforting image from a deceased mother, but to me, it was not. I was furious. A feeling of indignation arose in me. “How dare you? HOW DARE YOU?” I was shocked by the intensity of my anger in response to her seeming act of love. I awoke and still felt the ripples of irritation and the ensuing confusion. What did this dream mean? It stayed with me and disturbed me throughout the day.
Even though I knew the childhood events that formed much of the dream’s foundational lexicon, it seemed it was attempting to deliver a new message. A message I was just beginning to understand…
Some backstory here will help. Through exploring my memories I discovered that I learned humiliation and a love bigger than I’d ever known, both when I was nine years old…”
You can read the rest of the story and join our community by choosing a paid subscription and supporting my work for only $5 a month. Welcome in!
Thinking of starting your own Substack newsletter this year? You’ll find lots of encouragement from other writers here! Take for example this note from S.E. Reid:
“No matter what kind of writing you do, your work comes from a very ancient and powerful role in the community: the storyteller. Your words educate, inspire, entertain, and warn. You are descended from prophets, poets, bards, and playwrights. All over the globe, there is a cultural history of sharing, connecting, through the power of words. And you are the latest in a long, long line.
So next time you feel inadequate, foolish, insecure, or anxious about this work, tell yourself: this is my birthright. This is my calling. I have centuries of storytellers behind me, willing me to go on. I am a writer.
And then pick up the pen, or turn on the computer, and get to work.
Most importantly: keep going, keep writing, and DON'T GIVE UP!”
This quote from Madeleine L’Engle. Mmmm. So helpful. Even if, like me, you’re cooking up multiple stories and not multiple books. Which story is “nearly full” and can be brought to the front of the stove?
When I start working on a book, which is usually several years and several books before I start to write it, I am somewhat like a French peasant cook. There are several pots on the back of the stove, and as I go by during the day's work, I drop a carrot in one, an onion in another, a chunk of meat in an-other. When it comes time to prepare the meal, I take the pot which is most nearly full and bring it to the front of the stove.
-Madeleine L'Engle, Walking On Water
OUR COMMUNITY CARE DONATIONS FOR JUNE:
A portion of this month’s paid subscriptions will be donated to: HABITAT FOR HUMANITY. Founded in 1987, Loveland Habitat for Humanity has built over 160 homes for families here in my new hometown of Loveland, Colorado.
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. Thank you for reading!
What came to mind is Rilke’s encouragement that we have to live into the questions and by doing that we may some day find the answers revealed (very imperfectly paraphrased). You are a gifted writer (love the analogy of your stories being like little children) and I appreciate the depth of your sharing with our community.