Why my story matters, and yours does too

On Personal Memoir Writing; This is the third post of the five-part series about my tryst with a writing community and personal memoirs

“....In this situation, write a diary entry in 200 words” read the ashy white chalk on the blackboard during my English class in junior school. My charismatic teacher turned around to explain the format of this assignment to us. It was a eureka moment! I could speak to my notebook using my pen, I deducted. A bulb went on for me as I amateurishly learnt of the power of writing, one that continues to light up my life even today. 

As a middle-class Indian girl, I never had any reason to believe that my ordinary life was worth being spoken about, let alone be documented through writings. I assumed that only extraordinariness deserved exclusivity and only its opulence brings worthiness to the act of record keeping and sharing. “We are here to live and not waste too much time on reflecting over the living” is a general notion fed to us. We have all heard this from others through words, actions and covert signals, “You are not special. You are not so important. Get going with life rather pausing to curiously look at its nuances.”

Yet, naively, I kept writing- class notebooks, rough-registers, handmade-paper diaries, daily journals and then the Google keep app, I-phone notes app, Evernote, word documents - any and every place that could accommodate words. Regardless of the container which housed my words, the essence of what I wrote was the same. I always had something to say- my thoughts, experiences, observations and introspections. All of these turned into stories I wanted to tell. If you pause and genuinely reflect, you will have something to say too. When you observe it closely, you’ll see that what you say becomes a story in itself. 

I have a story. I have many stories. You have a story. You have many stories. We all have stories. We all are stories. We are stories worth telling. We are worth receiving others’ stories. Stories matter. Stories matter to us. Stories save us. Stories empower us. Stories make us who we are. Stories break down who we no more want to be. Stories simplify our complex emotions. Stories reveal the pretence of our sanitised selves. Stories are powerful. Stories take away power from difficult emotions which assault us. Stories speak truth to power. Stories nourish our souls. Stories heal shattered souls. Stories put together this world for us. Stories make sense of this broken world. Stories validate lived experiences. Stories create a vocabulary for hidden experiences. Stories come to us when we need them the most. Stories come from us when we need to release them the most. Stories are the resilience of a tormented mind. Stories are the strength of the victorious mind. Stories reshape perceptions when endurance is the only way through difficult times. Stories assert the truth when authenticity is the last line of defence against cosmetic times. Stories hold our heavy human existences gently. Stories set free our mortal selves firmly. We write our stories. Our stories write us. We are our stories.

Here in lies the infinite power of personal memoir writing. When I first enrolled for a workshop by Natasha and Raju, I joined the first session in trepidation. What will I even write about from my personal experiences? What in my life is worth writing about which I can share with my co-writers? I haven’t lived an accomplished life enough to write even a fragment of a chapter, let alone write “memoir”! To my surprise, countless meaningful stories flowed out of my ordinary life like water from a spring in the mountains. Once the dent was made, there was no stopping. It was a divine act to write and to become a vessel for stories demanding to be told. As others related to what I wrote and found solace in my words, I knew that writing is a gift. A gift must be honoured. A gift must be shared. A gift needs the act of giving and receiving. Hence, I decided to practise personal memoir writing and sharing.

Yet, reflecting over one’s life is not easy. We are too used to seeing ourselves as photoshopped and filtered to appeal to our ill-trained eyes. We only know how to look at our lives in the form of aesthetic, attention-grabbing reels of the highlights. Looking up from our curated screens of the phone towards the raw reflection in the mirror requires immense courage. Honesty to oneself is demanding and toll-taking. But, the good news is that once we take the first step it is also liberating and empowering.

Even so, building stories out of our experiences, events and emotions is a tall ask. We question our worth, wondering if there is something even worth writing about. We ponder over what aspects qualify our life as deserving of personal memoir writing. We yearn for the craft of writing, letting the lack of some far-away skill come in our way. We think of ways in which sharing our stories will make us vulnerable and how an act of vulnerability is perilous in a world of carefully held together facades. Yet, there is nothing more enriching than to write down our stories and nothing more rewarding than sharing them with others. Like most beautiful things in life, the power of personal memoir writing can be understood only by experiencing it.

Try it once. Write about something personal. Share it with one trusted person, share it with a group. The beauty of shared-experiences, human-connection and all-encompassing generosity will come surprise you.

We honour our journeys by documenting them. Writing personal memoir is an act of honouring ourselves. On the other hand, we serve others by sharing our stories with them. Sharing personal memoir writing is an act of service for others, and by default for ourselves too. So, my story matters, and yours does too!

We all have this one brief life. Why not live it fully? By living “writefully” and immersing in our lives through our words. We write of our experiences as we have lived them and in doing so we let those experiences re-write themselves in fullness. A full life is one that is lived with earnestness and documented with authenticity.

As you ponder over stories, I leave you with my favourite words by Dostoevsky

”But how could you live and have no story to tell?”

Tune in next Monday to find out about what happens to us when we read the stories of others and what personal memoir writing can do for us as a society