Why Write Memoir Right Now | Jane Friedman

Writing is a great portal to self-discovery. Specifically, writing memoir provokes the kind of discovery that often eludes us. As anyone who has experienced trauma will tell you, healing begins in having words for the experience. Name it and we begin our way home.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when I read Gwyneth Paltrow's suggestion that this would be a great time to learn a new language, I spit my tea right onto my computer screen. No one I know is capable of conjugating in Italian as we scramble to survive. What we can do, though, is share our humanity across the virtual back fence by writing what we know. It's not that writing memoir will fix what's wrong. But writing what you know will give you the kind of insight that begets control, and if you show us how you got some control, we might find ways to get some, too.