How do you write a fair memoir?

As I finish editing my memoir, the idea of fairness comes to mind.

Finally, after hours of deliberation with myself, I decided to write only of the

dead and to spare the living any mention in my book. A memoir differs from

autobiography because its focus is a part of a person’s life.

I will leave out the living and let them rest in peace and rile up the dead. It is a

story of trauma, loss, spiritual courage, and generational resilience.

How people carry the trauma load from one generation to another is a subject

for debate. It is a thread that runs through our lives, but is just a sliver.

Researching the effects of trauma on behavior and relationships has been a

hobby of mine for years. For my master’s thesis at UPenn, I focused on using

writing and the humanities to heal trauma. In my years of conducting

qualitative research as an educator, I witnessed my students’ transformations

through expressive writing and using the arts as a prescription for sadness,

inertia, and hopelessness.

Hurt people hurt people