Why I Wrote and Published My Memoir

I sat down with a stranger for coffee yesterday. Well, not a stranger entirely. She and I both share the same publisher and public relations firm and happen to live in nearby towns. We were introduced via a project manager. The project manager had a family emergency and handed me off to another project manager. I mention it because changes occurred frequently enough that it made me wonder whether, like therapists, people in the book industry are also burning out—the staff fluctuations potentially symptomatic of a rapidly changing landscape saturated with meeting the demands of people like me, first-time authors, nervously embarking on a steep learning curve.

(The Messy House of Memoir.)

I bucked any remaining social anxiety that has lingered since my son Christopher died nine years ago and set up a meeting with a woman I didn’t know, to gather up some perspective since she is further down the book publishing path. As with my grieving journey, it has benefited me to look to the women walking ahead. I arranged to meet with her at a local coffee shop. Watching her take a sip of her latte after swirling it with cream, I listened to her describe how she shifted her life’s course from being miserable in her banking career to becoming the writer she dreamt she’d become since she was a little girl. It turns out, that to write, publish, and market a book, although increasingly commonplace (in fact, I’m beginning to wonder if writing a memoir has become a rite of passage for all midlife women) throws you into a world without a roadmap.

I took a gulp of my americano and looked across at her wizened hazel eyes and recognized immediately that she too had embarked without having any idea what it would look like. I soaked up her validation as we agreed upon the importance of asking for direction and support along the way. Like me, she didn’t need her hand held but wanted help navigating the necessary, bountiful, and varied resources available to writers. Writing courses, writing communities, writing groups and partners, writing retreats, writing editors and coaches. The two of us alternatively nodding our heads concluding that writing and publishing a book demands devotion, commitment, passion, and purpose to see it through. And money. And time. And more money.

We chuckled as we homed in on the fact that the writing path asked us to adapt to unforeseen setbacks, learn to advocate for what we needed, integrate feedback, and spend more years writing than we could have anticipated. Writing my memoir took seven years of writing and crafting alongside grieving, parenting, and working full-time. And at least a year of editing and design to prepare it for print, along with jam-packed preparation to market it by discerning which suggestions to follow, getting a head shot, procuring blurbs, and trying to become technologically savvy enough to prepare to promote it on social media with flare. No wonder, I told Nancy, when I was finally ready to release my sacred work into the world, my soul laid bare, I asked myself, not for the first time, “Why am I doing this again?”

As Nancy told me she is about to market her third book, the answer to that question began to crystallize. I have developed close friendships with my writing partners whom I met eight years ago at a writing retreat. We have laughed, cried, and shared our stories of surviving trauma and heartache. I have had the privilege of getting to know a cohort of women publishing with my publisher. We have cheered on one another as each book has launched. Nancy, whom it feels like I’ve known for a lot longer than the hour we sat together, told me writing taught her to get to know herself more intimately. She writes to commune with nature and relate her observations about what getting deeply present reveals to her. Writing has taught me so much, taken me to the truth, and given me strength in my vulnerability in hopes that the tears in my words might help anyone hurting feel less alone.  

The question of “Why?” will vary for each of us who contemplate putting a book into the world. But for me, my son is my reason. May “Reaching for Beautiful” honor Christopher, capture the story of his life and help his spirit shine on. If you knew him when he was here, you get to remember his brightness. If you didn’t, I get to brag about it. Writing my memoir, even had I not decided to publish it, was healing for me and ultimately needed to be shared. It connected me to my child when I entered the darkness, enabled me to express and move through every messy iteration of my grief, reflect on my firstborn’s life and reconcile every decision I made as his mom so I could make meaning of my seismic loss and survive it. Despite not knowing what it would take to get here, my writing journey has offered so many unexpected gifts beyond the healing of connecting to myself and my son. For anyone embarking on this writing journey, may you walk the winding path alongside a community of fellow women travelers.   

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