THE MEMOIR NOTES #6: Memory, Imagination and Small 't" Truth
how do we find our way through the maze?
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.
Hi, Friend:
Memory. Imagination. Truth.
How do we find our way through this maze?
Memoirs are made of the writer’s MEMORIES. Yet even when I feel confident about my memory and experience of certain events, I understand how subjective this entire process is and that it does not mean my memories qualify as the Capital T Truth.
First of all, memory is such a trickster. Multiple memories can merge and get all mixed up. We’ve all had that experience of “remembering” something only to have other family members correct some part of that memory. “That was Uncle Bob who fell in the lake, not Grandaddy.” Or “It wasn’t the lake, it was a river. “ You get the idea.
My initiation into this memoir process began with a deep desire to try to understand and find meaning in the events of my life, to face and heal painful memories, and to create something that would be ultimately hopeful and helpful to others, especially my daughters. I wanted to write my way through a process of generational healing for myself and for our family. I also hoped to shape my story in a way that others could find meaning and a connection to the story of their own lives.
“Why we endeavor collectively to write a book or paint a canvas or write a symphony…..is to understand who we are as human beings, and it's that shared knowledge that somehow helps us to survive.” —Richard Blanco
I began by trying to piece together a chaotic early childhood filled with many household moves and rotating key players. Where did I live and with whom at any given time? Over the course of a year or so, my sleuthing and interviews with the few remaining relatives still alive who remember, helped me piece together a decent, mostly accurate timeline.
Even so, much of what actually happened and why is left to my imagination, combined with what I knew of each of these family members and the way things unfolded in the later years of my life. Much of it is still left to my imagination and best guesses.
Speed bumps and diverging paths. For me, it’s difficult to write about my earliest years of life when there are multiple options for what might have happened to me. How do I write this story when 1) I do not have the information and all the key players are gone 2) there are only sketchy details 3) and any story I make up as likely to have happened could be a gross misunderstanding or misrepresentation. I do not have the answers and I never will. This is sometimes maddening to me. In better moments, I am at peace with the never knowing.
“The reason I write memoir is to be able to see the experience itself…. I hardly know what I think until I write…. Writing is a way to organize your life. Give it a frame, give it a structure so that you can really see what it was that happened. “ — Sue William Silverman
Will it be accurate? Will this be what actually happened to me before I can remember what happened to me? Of course not. Will it be Truth with a capital T? How can it be? It is our best guess, but for our purposes here , it’s all we can do. If the key players are not here to ask for their truth, we do our best to construct something that we pray comes close to it.
As I listen again to Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir, I realize that I certainly can’t include these “imaginings” in a traditional memoir, unless I were to say right up front that the book is a combination of my memories and my imagination. I wasn’t there when my parents eloped. When my mom was terribly sick all throughout her pregnancy. When my parents divorced. When I was almost two and my mom joined a cult and my grandparents rescued her. There’s much that I was never told directly but inherited from their collective grief and secrecy and shame and those snippets of stories.
HAUNTED is a world that denotes an unresolved parallel, a presence that is not quite a presence; a visitation by the as yet unspeakable. It is also emblematic of the longing for incarnation, of an unbearable substrate of wanting, of not finding a home in this world or the next, someone or something that walks the halls of our house or our mind looking for what will help it lay its own self to rest. “ — David Whyte
This exercise in imagining what might have happened…imagining the incarnation as a way to make a map of my early experience has been a useful practice for me personally.
Clearly though, that would not be a memoir. That would, however, make great fiction. Sometimes I wonder which would better serve others. And then I remember that first and foremost this process is for me. What comes later is for others.
However, as a memoir reader it would drive me mad. What part actually happened? What parts are what she guessed happened? What is she making up? Where does she veer off of the truth rails?
It is tempting to just move on and away from any story that I cannot tell in complete confidence, and yet, this process I am undergoing is about more than what ends up on the page. I know intuitively that there is much for me to discover in sifting through the possibilities of what might have happened in my early years, even if I will not find definitive answers.
“We all need a way to express or make something out of experiences that otherwise have no meaning. If what you want is clarity and meaning, you have to break the secrets over your knee and make something of those ingredients.” — Abigal Thomas
xo Mary
3 THINGS WORTH SHARING:
The film, PAST LIVES with one of my favorite actors, Teo Yoo (swoon). Deeply thoughtful, quiet, impactful. Exquisite acting and direction. A must-see.
Writing your hard stories? Highly recommend this book: Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art From Trauma by Melanie Brooks
What a beautiful word. We get to bloom too, friends. And you can’t rush the bloom.
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Ohhh. I like thinking about what could have happened. You know I’ve been working on my memoir forever. Since the end of 2022, I’ve taken a break and written a chapbook of one poem that’s all about what could have happened. I’ll send you the link in my Google docs if you wanna read it. It’s been interesting. I think I can refer back to it in my memoir (when I resume work on it in a month or two).