Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D.
Author of Becoming Whole: Writing Your Healing Story and Don't Call Me Mother

When writing a memoir, you often get such comments like: "you are being self- indulgent, narcissistic, so focused on yourself. What does your story have to do with anyone else? How can it be important to anyone but you?"
Those are good questions. It is true that at first, during self-exploration through a rough, first draft, our story is all about us. It has to be. Many times we aren't even clear about what our own story is until we start writing it. The first draft of a memoir has to be all about you, with the appropriate navel gazing and reflection. It is a contemplative journey. Not only do we hear judgmental voices in the outside world, but the critical voices inside our heads admonishing us not to focus on ourselves so much, that we are selfish and somehow terribly flawed.
All self-examination requires that we to fling ourselves into our deep history. Spiritual disciplines require that a person spend long hours contemplating many things, one of them the nature and character of the self. It is from this root, self-knowledge, that true freedom springs.

When I began writing my memoir, I didn't set out to write what I now call a "healing memoir." All I knew then is that the stories of my mother and grandmother, the hard times and the losses I had experienced, had taken residence in my head and body and needed to come out. I had first worked on autobiographical material through painting and etching, then multi-media pieces, including photographs of my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and father. I used cloth, jewelry boxes of mementos, paint, photo transfer images, and zerox to give a voice to the lost person inside me, the traumatized child who didn't have a voice.
I realized the abstract and the indirect were not enough. I needed the precision of words to paint the stories that lived inside me. With great trepidation I began to write stories beyond my journal. As soon as I tried to create a story, a thick stick of self-criticism would begin the beating. I would end up demoralized, exhausted, tearful, and disgusted, afraid that I would be shamed aloud and publicly. But I kept going.
I first thought I could capture my story of abuse and abandonment through fiction. I was told by my readers in fiction classes that hearing my grandmother's ranting and ravings, all of which really happened, was quite difficult.
"But it's all true," I wailed.
"In fiction, the truth does not matter."
I was used to that voice-it had been part of me all my life-so I had no idea how disturbing it was. I realized first that I had to write a memoir, not fiction--because the truth was what mattered. And that I had to write "the healing version" of my story first. After that, I would write what the reader could bear-the edited version.
I am a therapist now and teach memoir-as-healing. I remind people of the path that I took, and how it helped me to complete my memoir.

-Start with the raw truth. This draft takes everything out of your secret closet and puts it on the page. This is grueling work, and often feels "too much" or too revealing, too negative, or burdensome. But the burden gradually peels off the writer's shoulders and onto a piece of paper, where it can live more objectively than inside the head and the heart.
-Tell yourself that you are healing, you are not being self-indulgent.
-Don't announce to family members that you are writing a memoir. Keep it yourself until your first healing draft is complete.
-Work to silence that critic. It is your only enemy as you begin to write your healing memoir.