Why Do So Many Memoir Writers Focus on Trauma?
When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.—Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Besides being a paragraph from one of my favorite books of all time, I love the truth of this paragraph. And it makes me smile. Now, while I have Irish ancestry on my Cahill side, I certainly did not grow up in Ireland. Nor was my family Catholic. But I had an interesting childhood—and adult life.
Perhaps an ordinary, happy life may not be worth writing about. Because, after all, in the oft-quoted words of my mentor Marion Roach Smith, “Memoir is about what you learned from what you went through.”
And let me tell you, many of us have been through some shit. And all of us have experienced loss, death, and difficult times that pushed us to the limits. And we’ve all learned stuff. Perhaps not in the clouds shifted, and the brilliant sun illuminated the landscape, revealing previously hidden beauty, blah-blah-blah sense.
Sometimes, it’s a subtle inner change or acknowledgment that our breakup wasn’t entirely the other person’s fault.
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