NBCWA Workshop: Becoming the Author of Your Own Life (Memoirs)

In mid July, as part of the NBCWA Writing Festival, I attended a workshop with my mom: Becoming the Author of Your Own Life (Memoirs) with Elisha Rose, who has written two memoirs herself, I Am Worthy and the prequal Time to Wake Up My Love, about addiction, truth, lies, secrets and love.

    It wasn’t quite what I expected. I mean, I was thinking that it would be a workshop on how to write a memoir, and it was, but with some specifics versus generics. It wasn’t even a workshop that I wanted to take for myself because a memoir isn’t anywhere on my radar, but My mom has been talking about writing her memoir for several years, and I wanted to support her journey (and nudge her along), and thought that this workshop would be a great for that. And we got some mother-daughter time.

Elisha’s presentation was well organized with main Talking Points interspersed with Writing Prompts and Deep Thought questions. Elisha talked about the cost of memoirs, the secrets that they tell, wisdoms the world would be without if your story isn’t told, and how to be the main character of your own story. She asked us to think about where you are in life, why your story matters, and are your happy with where you are.

It was a great workshop. Until she lost me at the end.

Part one: Why memoirs are.

              Question posed by Elisha Rose: If your story had never been written, what wisdom would the world miss? And what is wisdom? It’s the balance of intelligence with love because intelligence without love is just arrogance.

              We all know people who are arrogant—those people who impart knowledge but leave you feeling less-than afterwards. And we all know people who are wise—elders with infinite patience teach you in ways that uplift you.

Prompt: Where are you in the story of your life right now?

              Exhausted. That’s where I am. I’m tired of Fear. Tired of not doing things that I want to do because I’m too afraid. Regarding writing, I’m afraid of failure. What if I’m a failure, and what if people hate me? And why am I so afraid of people considering my writing time as unproductive time? Probably because I LOVE writing, and it feels a bit like a guilty pleasure. This one probably also stems a bit from small comments made by adults in my childhood. “Writers don’t make any money.” “Don’t write thinking you’ll be an author. Writing is just a hobby.” (This one was said by someone who wrote great poetry himself.)

              It would have been more kind if someone had said, “OK. What are the realities of being a writer? Is getting published hard? Rejection is okay—what do you have to do to keep trying (and then encouragement to keep trying). And what do you have to do to become one? How do you make your dream a reality?”

This is now something that I try to do for my kids. I would rather encourage their dreams and push them to be real about them in order to succeed vs pushing them to be real about them to discourage them from trying.

My Dream was to be a travel writer. Fear kept me from doing either traveling or writing, at the start. Life choices, none of which I regret, have made this Not the Time. Maybe retirement will see fulfillment of that dream. In the meantime, I’m blogging more (which is writing), and I’m currently sitting with a group of writers, listening to the clack of keys while I write longhand [except for right now while I type this in, of course]. And it is productive.

I’m at a place in my life where I want to have no regrets, even if that means Revising, Editing, and Proofreading my Bucket List. And I’m at the age where I don’t care what people think. Or so I tell myself.

Part two: Secrets and Shame 

According to Elisha Rose, it isn’t Fear that holds us back. Shame holds us hostage because we are ashamed. We are ashamed of the things that we do wrong, the things that go against the values of our upbringing, and the things that make us different. “They’re all going to laugh at you.” (the movie, Carrie, and Adam Sandler.)

And Shame? Shame stems from pain. The pain of criticism, the pain of regrets, embarrassment, and self-doubt.

But we’ve all made shitty mistakes, she says. Being unkind to a friend, failing to communicate well, being unprepared for something important. Rolling a car on a gravel road when you were sixteen, for example. Marrying the wrong person (not a mistake I’ve made) or spending too long in a relationship before getting out.

We just need to be honest about it. And who, Elisha asks, is more honest about their pain? An unhoused addict, or an “influencer”? Be honest, she says. Regrets fester into shame, so not having regrets lead to letting go of shame.

When you are honest, you are unbound form the secret, and therefore free from the shame. That is the Why of a memoir. Catharsis. Because you matter. You can’t keep secrets and be free. You can’t keep secrets and be the main character of your own life.

Secrets cause damage: isolation, disassociation, and silence lead to intensification, and onward to cyclical trauma (think Generational). Elisha spoke of how the generational trauma that she experienced as a child kept her quiet in class, afraid and ashamed of her dyslexia, something she proved to have risen above by openly asking for help spelling words while writing them on a flip chart in the workshop. Until she let go of her secrets and her shame, her work ethic, self confidence, and self worth suffered.

She describes trauma as what you make of a situation. Picture yourself as a mountain, she suggests. Trauma is someone throwing rocks at you. Maybe they’re pebbles that you can ignore, or maybe an avalanche starts. Or maybe the rocks are as big as boulders. Do you let the water flow around them? The expression “it’s all relative” when talking about hardship makes more sense now.

Prompt: What is our most painful memory, and is it a secret?

              When asked what title we will give the next season of our lives in relation to our most painful memory, I was feeling hard-pressed to find a memory painful enough to be memoir worthy. Oh sure, I’ve done some stupid shit (I was in my twenties once upon a time after all), and some of it I feel bad about to this day (to be fair, I still have the odd nightmare about the first time I returned a library book late as a child), but does any real shame come from it. I mean, I’m not going to tell you about any of it (at least not today), but more because it feels a little more First World problem and less what will the world think of me?

              This prompt was hard.

Part three: The Main Character and Self Trust 

              That being said, it’s all relative.

              And the important thing is that whatever your trauma or shame is, be Authentic. Be Yourself. Be the Main Character of your life. Instead of Becoming, think of Being.

              The main character doesn’t ask for permission to be themselves.

The next few prompts asked Why we want to tell our story, Why our story matters, and what is the Why to being the Main Character in your story?

I personally cannot find a great answer to these. Like I said above, I have a lot of first-world problems. The best I can come up with is that if one person were to read my story, I hope that it would make them laugh. I hope that it would inspire them to be themselves—to hold onto their own values and to express themselves as they feel fit. To have more self worth that I ever did.

But as I sit here typing this up, I can say that there were times I was authentic to myself. As a teen I wasn’t cowed by peer pressure to drink, cheat on homework, or steal. I never really fit in because I didn’t wear the styles of the day, or makeup (in a time when it was caked on). The first bit was a hold on values. The second may have been a bit of laziness, but more likely is the refusal to change who I am just because Cosmopolitan told me I was worthless if I didn’t wear blue eyeshadow and tease my bangs up high.

Elisha asked us, what are we willing to become? What do you have to give up becoming that? Do you love what you do, and what does being more mean to you?

Self love equals Authenticity. I love that I put boundaries in place on people who expect me to be perfect; I’m never going to be perfect, and trying to be makes me so anxious (this may be topic for another post). I can be kind and supportive to others, but only if I’m also taking care of myself.

Towards the end of the evening, when discussion was opened up, Elisha asked, what is your self-trust price tag? One participant replied that she doesn’t have one; you can’t buy her—you have to earn her trust.

Elisha then suggested that we don’t act cheap (in the dating world). What exactly does that mean? A lot, and honestly, this, too, could be another essay for another post (she was hinting at dress and actions). But quickly, for me, what it boils down to is this: when I became of dating age, my dad told me that if a guy came to pick me up and honked the horn instead of coming to the door, I wouldn’t be going out with him. I was worthy of someone coming to the door.

How do you be more in your own story, she asks. All I wrote down was “The strengths I wish I’d had.”

As you can see, I’m still struggling with all the prompts. I’m still not here to write a whole memoir. Maybe I’ll do a few essays on what determines your self worth, or on how to be yourself and not give a shit about whatever anyone else thinks.

I’m just here for my mother. She’s the one with a great story to tell, and this is my way of supporting that process.

Part four: The Cost of Honesty, and lost. 

What do you lose, Elisha asks, when you write about your trauma and your shame?

She actually asked and answered this earlier in the evening, but I feel like it closes this post well.

What did she lose? Everything. Your family, your friends, whoever is affected directly by your Authentic Honesty, will be the first to reject you. They’ll project their own trauma and insecurities and shame onto you. But once you’ve been honest and said it all, what are they going to be able to say about you? So, long story short, Elisha Rose is Free, and therefore she is Happy. Her fears surrounding her memoir were of being rejected, but the happiness that comes about by being rejected by the Wrong people and being accepted by the Right people, is freeing, and she is happy. (She’s probably not going to the family Christmas dinner, but you don’t have to dig too hard online to find stories about why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though.)

 

And then, this is where she lost me.

Elisha described herself as a masculine woman. I never once looked at her or listened to her words and thought masculine woman. Strong, yes; absolutely and without a doubt.

She summarized the facilitation of the abuse that she suffered as being permitted by her mother being a weak feminine woman, and her father being a strong masculine man (one not being able to stop the abuse of the other).

Elisha calls for a balance of the masculine and feminine in both men and women, and sure, that’s not necessarily wrong. But stopping abuse, in my opinion, has less to do with masculine and feminine, and more to do with strength. Saying that you have to be more masculine to be strong is insulting and dangerous; I’ve known strong femininity, and I think we need more of it.

This is a whole other essay, too.

In the End 

However you look at it, memoirs are stories that give the world some information, insight, inspiration, and even representation that it would be without had they never been written.

If you write a memoir, what is the wisdom that you impart? If you write a memoir about your suffered childhood abuse, does it help others like you feel not so alone? Does your memoir put your life into perspective?

I’m still, decades later traumatized by Angela’s Ashes, and I still think about it when my own life sucks at a particular moment. Sure, my garden sucks, but I didn’t starve; I don’t depend on my garden for survival, so I’m not suffering; I’m just frustrated. Perspective.

Which brings me to another internal thought:

Must all memoirs be melancholy and morbid, harrowing and horrendous? Are there any inspiring and wise memoirs that are also funny and make you feel good?

Marley & Me, perhaps. Until it isn’t.

 ~