Write a memoir to solve the puzzle of the past

In my early fifties, my past still called to me. In fact, the older I got, the more disturbed I was by those strange events. From the time I entered college in 1965 to the time I collapsed into the hippie movement in 1971, my past remained shrouded in a mist of simmering anger, regret, meaninglessness, even glimpses of the old despair.

What happened back then? How could I have gone that far off the path? Was there any meaning hidden in that misery? Like a puzzle begging to be solved, I couldn’t shake the feeling that to move forward, I needed to put those pieces in order.

But the prospect of ever finding meaning in those years seemed hopeless. Untii my fifties, when a memory entered my awareness, I looked at it, felt confused by it, then helplessly put it back in the heap.

Once I realized the memoir genre enabled ordinary people to search for their own stories, I knew I had to try. So even though I’d never written a single story, and even though the past still appeared like old rubble from an ancient time, I began picking among the random, inscrutable piles, looking for moments that interested me.

Then, I started writing. After making my first rudimentary stabs at describing what I’d seen, I placed each written piece into a growing file. Bringing them out into written form had a surprising effect. For the first time, my organizational (left brain) intelligence could look at the piece, and see where it fit in the larger sequence of events.

Through this process, I experienced for myself the power I’d noticed when reading other people’s memoirs. Shifting swaths of memories into the coherent form of a story made far more sense than those formless piles ever could.

This was the sublime gift of the memoir genre. By harnessing the structure of stories, my past began to take shape. I knew it would take time, perhaps years, to learn skills and to craft a readable story. But for the first time, I felt hope.

Leave a comment! I’d love to know your thoughts. Did you write a memoir? Are you writing a memoir? What puzzle do you want to solve?