Jan Marquart's Blog - Posts Tagged "memoir"
When Writing Hurts
From childhood most of us are taught and trained not to hurt the feelings of others. The saying: sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never harm me, is not true. Every child knows that.
As adults we can honestly say that even with good intentions to never hurt anyone -- we do. We all know the sting of words. But we also know the healing power of them. And we know that the written word is particularly powerful.
Sometimes we must confront, confess, and reveal, and despite every precaution to hurt we can wind up hurting someone. So whose problem is it if someone gets hurt because of our words? No one really escapes culpability despite the best of intentions. But this fear of hurting someone is fatal to a writer.
Take it one step further. You desire to write your memoir. You have lessons to pay forward; you have memories to share; you have secrets to get off your chest in order to heal. But I ask you: are you not writing because your decision is based upon the fear of not taking the courageous stand to speak your mind about you own life? Memoirs, just like the act of living itself, demands courage, integrity, dignity, and moving on.
When I wrote my memoir, The Breath of Dawn, I had every good wish for my friends because they had helped me recover from a stroke and had supplied me with great love and devotion for whatever I needed during the entire process from hospitalization to rehabilitation to home. I had every intention of praising them and even mentioned outright what angels all my friends were. I was so excited to write a positive book about the help they gave me that I sent each of them a copy with a heart filled with joy.
Nevertheless, I had one dear dear dear friend who mentioned how hurt she was. She thought I had portrayed her in a bad light. I was stunned and thrown off balance. I had not one cell in my body that wanted to cause her pain. Instead I wanted everyone to feel the special person that she was.
My point is that even in the best of circumstances people will read your memoir from their own perspective. There is no way to circumvent that. If you want to write your memoir and you absolutely for certain know that someone will be offended, just mention in your sentences that your honesty is not meant to hurt anyone. And study your words before printing. If in all honesty your words slander and you have the intention to get even, get back at, or make publicly known something someone did -- then you reap what you sow. Change your words if they do not match your intention.
Introductions to memoirs are a great place to state your intention for writing what others are about to read. Preface the purpose of the book. Then write what you want to write.
Readers learn from memoirs. We not only enjoy reading about the lives of others, we need it. Memoirs give us examples of how to live and allow us to re-think our own thoughts and actions. Often people who wind up with hurt feelings eventually come through to their own healing because of it. Often good comes from honesty that stings.
There are many ways to heal and overcome hurt feelings. Trying to prevent hurt feelings is living in fear of an outcome that didn't happen yet. This is dangerous to any healthy person let alone someone who needs to write something to heal from the inside out.
If fear is what is tripping you up from writing your memoir, here are a few suggestions that I've heard other authors do:
1. talk to the person suspected of getting hurt about the book first, or
2. allow the person to read it before printing and let them suggest changes that might be made in order for them to feel better, or
3. promise the real name of the person won't be revealed, or
4. omit the painful part if it wasn't crucial to the purpose of the book.
I'm sure you can come up with other solutions but those are some of the few I've heard when I attended book signings by authors who had problems with writing their memoirs.
Go pick up your pen -- your life is worth telling. You just might have learned a lesson we all need to hear.
Until next time,
Jan
www.JanMarquart.com
As adults we can honestly say that even with good intentions to never hurt anyone -- we do. We all know the sting of words. But we also know the healing power of them. And we know that the written word is particularly powerful.
Sometimes we must confront, confess, and reveal, and despite every precaution to hurt we can wind up hurting someone. So whose problem is it if someone gets hurt because of our words? No one really escapes culpability despite the best of intentions. But this fear of hurting someone is fatal to a writer.
Take it one step further. You desire to write your memoir. You have lessons to pay forward; you have memories to share; you have secrets to get off your chest in order to heal. But I ask you: are you not writing because your decision is based upon the fear of not taking the courageous stand to speak your mind about you own life? Memoirs, just like the act of living itself, demands courage, integrity, dignity, and moving on.
When I wrote my memoir, The Breath of Dawn, I had every good wish for my friends because they had helped me recover from a stroke and had supplied me with great love and devotion for whatever I needed during the entire process from hospitalization to rehabilitation to home. I had every intention of praising them and even mentioned outright what angels all my friends were. I was so excited to write a positive book about the help they gave me that I sent each of them a copy with a heart filled with joy.
Nevertheless, I had one dear dear dear friend who mentioned how hurt she was. She thought I had portrayed her in a bad light. I was stunned and thrown off balance. I had not one cell in my body that wanted to cause her pain. Instead I wanted everyone to feel the special person that she was.
My point is that even in the best of circumstances people will read your memoir from their own perspective. There is no way to circumvent that. If you want to write your memoir and you absolutely for certain know that someone will be offended, just mention in your sentences that your honesty is not meant to hurt anyone. And study your words before printing. If in all honesty your words slander and you have the intention to get even, get back at, or make publicly known something someone did -- then you reap what you sow. Change your words if they do not match your intention.
Introductions to memoirs are a great place to state your intention for writing what others are about to read. Preface the purpose of the book. Then write what you want to write.
Readers learn from memoirs. We not only enjoy reading about the lives of others, we need it. Memoirs give us examples of how to live and allow us to re-think our own thoughts and actions. Often people who wind up with hurt feelings eventually come through to their own healing because of it. Often good comes from honesty that stings.
There are many ways to heal and overcome hurt feelings. Trying to prevent hurt feelings is living in fear of an outcome that didn't happen yet. This is dangerous to any healthy person let alone someone who needs to write something to heal from the inside out.
If fear is what is tripping you up from writing your memoir, here are a few suggestions that I've heard other authors do:
1. talk to the person suspected of getting hurt about the book first, or
2. allow the person to read it before printing and let them suggest changes that might be made in order for them to feel better, or
3. promise the real name of the person won't be revealed, or
4. omit the painful part if it wasn't crucial to the purpose of the book.
I'm sure you can come up with other solutions but those are some of the few I've heard when I attended book signings by authors who had problems with writing their memoirs.
Go pick up your pen -- your life is worth telling. You just might have learned a lesson we all need to hear.
Until next time,
Jan
www.JanMarquart.com
Am I the Only One?
Am I the only one who has had a relationship that created confusion and angst?
I will answer my own question: I don't think so. When there is disharmony in a relationship everyone wants to claim how right they are. People say they want harmony while they stand in their corner of the boxing ring waiting to beat the other person, convince them to think the way you do, convince them to make peace, to behave as you want, and to accept the part where they are wrong. These tormenting relationships are rich with lessons just awaiting the healing process to deeper understanding of yourself and to learn how to forgive and let go.
FYI - forgiveness is not the same as giving approval for someone's actions. Forgiveness is not about the other person. Forgiveness is what you want to do with the pain inside your own heart. Allow them to stand in the boxing ring while you step out of it and walk on in spiritual development.
We cannot move on, in peace, without forgiveness. What does this mean? It means that even though we might think we are moving on because we have made a self-promise to not let the matter bother us, forgiveness doesn't fully work without a resulting inner peace. If you still hold a grudge or resentment, you have not moved on. Peace does not cover up the pain with the mind; peace comes through the heart. The mind's natural state is to grab hold of the situation and work it so that we can understand how to make ourselves right in the eyes of the other person. But that has nothing to do with forgiveness. It simply has to do with being good at manipulation.
When you examine the relationship in your mind and heart from all angles, it becomes easier to employ understanding, compassion, and empathy. Then what winds up evolving is an altered pain. Remember the other person has had a life of experiences that impacted them to behave and think the way they do. Unless they want to accommodate you; they won't.
Peace comes without effort, especially when you realize that the actions of the other person had nothing to do with you; their actions or reactions had to do with their choices and the continuity of their lives. Of course, we influence each other and in that light we make them react. But we don't change them through it.
Psychologists will tell you that you can't make people feel anything. That's psychobabble designed to empower you. Of course we make people feel certain emotions. If I told you that you just won $50,000 I can make you feel happiness. If I stalk you, I can make you feel nervous. If I take your purse and run while you are walking down the street I can make you fearful around blondes who walk past you. But then what? What you do with that because whatever it is, is up to you, completely. That is where we disempower the harm others cause us.
All relationships are partnerships. When you decide you don't want to be in a partnership that hurts you, then you can make a decision more objectively. When you find yourself feeling detached compassion, impersonal compassion for someone in that position, then you have set a seed for your own freedom and the readiness to forgive. Forgiveness is an intricate process. It doesn't just happen because you want to be free of the pain.
When you have opened room to forgive, through a deeper understanding, you know that you have overcome, triumphed, and are standing on fertile ground to forgive. At that point, you are free to have your energy and mental powers for other things. You can forgive, not condone, and let go and move on with your own life.
What did I do about my situation? I did what any writer does: I wrote and wrote and wrote. The result? The Basket Weaver now an ebook on Amazon, or it can be ordered at: www.createspace.com/3553668 in paperback. Writing heals. I haven't felt the pain of this relationship since the book was completed.
Find that voice within. Pour it out on the page and don't stop until you are done crying, fretting, understanding, employing compassion, and screaming. Let it all out.
Until next time,
Jan
I will answer my own question: I don't think so. When there is disharmony in a relationship everyone wants to claim how right they are. People say they want harmony while they stand in their corner of the boxing ring waiting to beat the other person, convince them to think the way you do, convince them to make peace, to behave as you want, and to accept the part where they are wrong. These tormenting relationships are rich with lessons just awaiting the healing process to deeper understanding of yourself and to learn how to forgive and let go.
FYI - forgiveness is not the same as giving approval for someone's actions. Forgiveness is not about the other person. Forgiveness is what you want to do with the pain inside your own heart. Allow them to stand in the boxing ring while you step out of it and walk on in spiritual development.
We cannot move on, in peace, without forgiveness. What does this mean? It means that even though we might think we are moving on because we have made a self-promise to not let the matter bother us, forgiveness doesn't fully work without a resulting inner peace. If you still hold a grudge or resentment, you have not moved on. Peace does not cover up the pain with the mind; peace comes through the heart. The mind's natural state is to grab hold of the situation and work it so that we can understand how to make ourselves right in the eyes of the other person. But that has nothing to do with forgiveness. It simply has to do with being good at manipulation.
When you examine the relationship in your mind and heart from all angles, it becomes easier to employ understanding, compassion, and empathy. Then what winds up evolving is an altered pain. Remember the other person has had a life of experiences that impacted them to behave and think the way they do. Unless they want to accommodate you; they won't.
Peace comes without effort, especially when you realize that the actions of the other person had nothing to do with you; their actions or reactions had to do with their choices and the continuity of their lives. Of course, we influence each other and in that light we make them react. But we don't change them through it.
Psychologists will tell you that you can't make people feel anything. That's psychobabble designed to empower you. Of course we make people feel certain emotions. If I told you that you just won $50,000 I can make you feel happiness. If I stalk you, I can make you feel nervous. If I take your purse and run while you are walking down the street I can make you fearful around blondes who walk past you. But then what? What you do with that because whatever it is, is up to you, completely. That is where we disempower the harm others cause us.
All relationships are partnerships. When you decide you don't want to be in a partnership that hurts you, then you can make a decision more objectively. When you find yourself feeling detached compassion, impersonal compassion for someone in that position, then you have set a seed for your own freedom and the readiness to forgive. Forgiveness is an intricate process. It doesn't just happen because you want to be free of the pain.
When you have opened room to forgive, through a deeper understanding, you know that you have overcome, triumphed, and are standing on fertile ground to forgive. At that point, you are free to have your energy and mental powers for other things. You can forgive, not condone, and let go and move on with your own life.
What did I do about my situation? I did what any writer does: I wrote and wrote and wrote. The result? The Basket Weaver now an ebook on Amazon, or it can be ordered at: www.createspace.com/3553668 in paperback. Writing heals. I haven't felt the pain of this relationship since the book was completed.
Find that voice within. Pour it out on the page and don't stop until you are done crying, fretting, understanding, employing compassion, and screaming. Let it all out.
Until next time,
Jan
Meant to Triumph!
I believe we are meant to triumph. What does that mean? I believe that the challenges we get are meant to bring out the best in us, even though the journey to get there might be unwanted. If you were to read memoirs of individuals who were faced with a terrible illness or another kind of disaster you would find that the stories did not stop at the disaster. The stories kept going until, at last, there was some kind of triumph.
These memoirs are inspiring, but more than that, they offer hope that you too are capable of getting through challenging times with success. By writing about your triumph, with your head held high, your words have the power to become food for someone else's aching soul.
Memoir is a powerful way to bring out that inner voice of experience, the one that hurts, that conquers, that gets reborn. Memoirs are about all types of experiences. They can speak to the power of a relationship, illness, adventure, divorce - the list is endless.
What experience did you have that brought you to triumph? Don't judge it as being too insignificant to others or that it isn't worth writing. Write it anyway. The pen has no judgment of what you write.
Until next time,
keep the pen moving - Jan
These memoirs are inspiring, but more than that, they offer hope that you too are capable of getting through challenging times with success. By writing about your triumph, with your head held high, your words have the power to become food for someone else's aching soul.
Memoir is a powerful way to bring out that inner voice of experience, the one that hurts, that conquers, that gets reborn. Memoirs are about all types of experiences. They can speak to the power of a relationship, illness, adventure, divorce - the list is endless.
What experience did you have that brought you to triumph? Don't judge it as being too insignificant to others or that it isn't worth writing. Write it anyway. The pen has no judgment of what you write.
Until next time,
keep the pen moving - Jan
