Called to Write a Memoir? 5 Reasons Writing a Memoir Is Worth the Time and Effort

A memoir writer in one of my workshops recently asked me, “Was writing a memoir worth the time and effort?

“Yes,” I answered, without hesitation – which surprised me. Because where writing a memoir is conce
ed, friends and family will attest, I had been known to wax not so poetic over the years about the challenges of writing a memoir about a healing journey through chronic illness and childhood abuse issues, then going public with it.

But I am more than aware of and grateful for the gifts writing, publishing and publicizing a memoir have brought me.

Here are five of the main benefits you can receive from writing a memoir about a journey of healing, transformation and self-discovery – and not one of them have to do with “commercial or critical success” or “being on Oprah.”

1. You can answer the call to write a memoir – and find completion.

My own call was not casual.

I was called to write a memoir about a particular time in my life. It resounded in every part of my being until I committed to writing – then sharing the memoir by getting it published and promoting it. At various stages along the way, I hoped that writing the memoir (then stuffing it in a drawer, maybe after a few close, well-chosen friends read it) would be enough. Actually, I hoped that writing a rough draft of the memoir would be enough to free me from going all the way with this particular subject matter.
But it was not.

I realized I would not be free of the “call” to write a memoir until I shared my words, my voice, via a published book – and out loud in reading and telling my story.
Cradling that first published copy of my memoir in my arms, seeing it in local and online bookstores, giving my first reading and radio and TV interviews rewired my internal system. It emptied and filled me at the same time.

It completed something in me. I knew I had done one thing in this life I had come here to do. And I learned firsthand, completing what you start, following through on your dreams to write a book, does make a difference.

2. You gain personal healing.

Once I finished writing this memoir about life-altering events I had carried inside for so many years, it was no longer in me. Its energy was now literally outside my body in a tangible form I could pick up and hold – a book.
Writing the memoir removed the story from my body. It roto-rooted remnants of the trauma I had written about out of my cellular memory, out of my energetic being in a way that no therapy or other healing modality had been able to do.

The story, the past events that had loomed so large, that had seemed so overwhelming, so impossible, so challenging to write about, had shrunk from towering marble solid monument to flexible book size. I could hold and open and flip pages of this story in book form in my hand. I had transformed life altering events using the creative expression that had the most meaning for me – writing.

I had also created art and beauty out of a difficult series of experiences.

3. Your family and you can heal with each other.

One humungous reason memoir writers persist on that sheer rock climb to tell their stories, myself included, is to share them, to have them witnessed by others.

I did not fully understand the burden of carrying this story of challenges alone – until I wrote and shared my memoir with friends and family members. After all, I had spoken about what I faced over the years with loved ones, therapists and alte
ative healers. But never with the kind of physical and emotional detail and raw vulnerability and truth that a memoir conveys.

I was fortunate. Rather than alienating family members, my no-holds-barred memoir, written with the goal of deepening love and forgiveness, brought me closer to them, opened a deeper intimacy that continues to resonate and expand today.

4. You discover the memoir’s meaing and value for readers.
Having other people enjoy the memoir you wrote is wonderful enough. But when your words move them, bring meaning, change their lives, the feeling is indescribable. You know you are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

Every hour of memoir writing angst, every challenge flies out the window when you hear the words, “Your memoir changed my life” or “Your book gave me a whole new perception about my own situation, even though my circumstances were different than yours.”

Or, “I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading your memoir because I had to find out what happened next, because it moved me so much.”

Or, “Thank you for voicing what I could not about illness and abuse. And for sharing what you learned, too. Your experience gives me strength to face my own challenges.”

5. You step into a wiser, deeper self inside you.

Some much wiser, deeper self inside me emerged when I sat down to write my memoir. I got to hang out with that self for all the years I was writing the book and find out through that self’s perspective all I had learned, all the ways I had grown on my journey.

I let go to that higher self that emerged from the silence beyond mind chatter and “figuring it out,” and words poured forth to express what seemed inexpressible. In its wake, I discovered, knew, without doubt, in faith, the grace of every single moment of my precious life. While writing the memoir, I stopped pushing away any part of life, accepted all of it, said yes to all of it.

I knew with gratitude, that each event, each opening, each heartbreak, each gut wrench, each stuck in the muck, each breakthrough had led me to the truth of my being and to the love at my core.

And those are five of the many reasons writing a memoir is worth the time and effort.