The Cliche of the Therapeutic Memoir

I recoil from it, I resist it, I scratch at it like a cat trapped in a cupboard. It’s ill-fitting – too cramped – too prescribed – too small.

And equally trite is my knee-jerk response, I wrote it to make the world a better place.

But I’ve yet to come up with a delicate delivery for an alternative perspective in the moment when a reader has just paid me the honor of reading and appreciating my work. So I’ve decided to take the time to explain.

If you’ve suffered childhood trauma and write a memoir, the most common assumption is that the purpose of writing was therapeutic – another tool in the journey to heal. I’ve grown weary of the refrain you wrote it for you even though it is always delivered with compliments and admiration and peppered with the words brave, badass, and courageous. I cherish those conversations and am humbled by my readers’ willingness to navigate the ugliness of my past and recognize the strength and courage, but I am also feeling compelled to help shift the perspective for myself and other memoir authors.

I can only speak for myself, but I imagine I’m not alone. I didn’t write my book for me nor as a part of a therapeutic process. I wouldn’t have needed to be so publicly bare and raw if that were the purpose. Justice and retribution were the initial driving forces. Education and solidarity were close seconds. The assertions that I wrote the book for me, feel reductive and dismissive. It has been eating away at me just a bit and I’ve been wrestling with how to convey it while also conveying the immense gratitude and humility I feel towards my readers who take the time to share and appreciate my work. True to the reasons that I laid my most painful experiences bare for everyone and anyone, I now want to encourage an expanded perspective geared towards voices like mine that encompass so much more than simply those of survivors on a lifelong journey to heal. They are voices imploring us to rise to the occasion of proactive movement in the direction of prevention rather than reaction.

Stories like mine are far too common and we need to do more to prevent them and to support survivors – that is why I wrote the book.

When my kids were tiny, I was on the table of a cranial-sacral therapist bawling my eyes out. She was asking what I was holding back and for some reason, I blurted out I don’t want to do it – I don’t want to write the book. I’m too tired, it’s too much – why does it have to be me? Someone else can do it.

And in true therapist fashion she insisted, then don’t. That is your prerogative. Release yourself from the weight of that expectation.

I lived with that permission for a number of years. I didn’t have the bandwidth to even consider the possibility of revisiting my lived experience and shaping it into an accessible narrative. And I did experience relief, but I also felt small and beaten, a sense, not of surrender, but of cowardice.

And as the years passed, I couldn’t shake the feeling of urgency that had followed me ever since I’d turned my back on my childhood nightmare. When it became obvious to me as a teen that the cult I was raised in needed to either change or be demolished, I instinctively felt the need to be a voice for the other kids. Whether this was a fabrication of my own outsized sense of responsibility or not, didn’t matter. As the oldest, I wanted to take the lead, take the brunt of the wrath and shield them if I could. Not that they asked me to or needed me to – they were all perfectly capable and powerful in their own right, but whether or not it was self-imposed responsibility, I’ve continued to carry it with me and have no choice but to remain true to it because it is who I am. It was that sense of responsibility that compelled me to write.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I possessed a unique perspective and the ability to share it and if I didn’t, I was failing to rise, failing to fill a very specific need, one of shining a light on the raw reality of stories like mine. If there was a chance that I could educate one person, make one person feel seen, inspire one person to grasp their own courage and find their own exit, I had to do it. I’ve always been an activist at heart, but I lack the personality to fill the space of politics or professional commentary. Writing has been a quiet, consistent mechanism by which I’ve committed to having some sort of positive impact on the world.

And so, I wrote.

And yes, it was cathartic, and yes, I grew to recognize my own strength which I had failed to do before, and yes, it helped me continue to heal – all remarkably welcomed side effects of reliving my story and shaping it into a consumable narrative. And those weren’t the only unexpected consequences of the process. I’ve become a better writer. I’ve discovered a passion for language and storytelling that I didn’t know was possible and I’ve grown even more awestruck by the power of words – and more cautious in the manner in which I wield them.

But it wasn’t for me – it was for all of us, for the most human and empathetic parts of us.

So while we celebrate the strength and determination of all types of survivors, let’s also acknowledge and appreciate the contribution they make to our collective knowledge and our collective healing and growth. Let’s embrace them as more than survivors, as members of society with a profound and deep wisdom to share.

All of you wonderful and compassionate souls who have read my book –

Thank you!!

Please continue reading and please share the stories of survivors that inspire you. We have all known pain, and we can collectively carry our pain and spin it into the lifeline that we throw to each other in times of need. It takes loads of courage to write, but it also takes bravery to read and vicariously bear the grief of others. Diving into these stories provides the opportunity to also share in the resolute nature of the human spirit and so the victory of coming through the storm belongs to us all. There are multitudes of survivors who, for whatever reason, are silent or silenced. I’m not one of them. I happen to love writing and am a firm believer that if I touch one person’s life in a meaningful way, I’ve made a difference in the world.

As cliche as it may sound, I’ve made the world better.

So you see, from my perspective and true to the character of the young girl in the book, writing was the right thing to do, but this time, doing the right thing was driven by empowerment instead of fear, and that is the true force behind the memoir.

I’ve had loads of people compliment my writing and storytelling with such sincerity. I cannot say how much that means. Writing can be a lonely passion, and it is more often than not difficult to judge how my words land. I encourage all readers to continue to appreciate those authors who leave an impact by telling them so and sharing their work.

Our readers give us wings.