Hearts, Cupid, and chocolates are all around, and I’m thinking about one of the main reasons people write memoirs and family histories: love. It is an act of love to pour your energy into writing, to delve into your psyche or the past—painful or distant or beautiful or conflicted—and record your memories, knowledge, or family lore. An account of feelings, reflections, or recollections is a gift to your loved ones, a golden gift that only you can give. It’s a window into your soul. It also can provide roots for family members or promote belonging, connection, and understanding among people.
However, writing can take so long, be so tiring, become so tedious. It’s easy to lose interest or momentum. Yet the rewards abound. Memory may not last, but books do.
Looking on the shelves here in our Modern Memoirs library, I can quickly spot titles that quite literally embody love. These are commissioned joint memoirs of couples, and I remember working closely and compassionately with these partners during their book projects. A few examples:
A Love Story: A Memoir—interviews with a family matriarch, augmented by stories and memories from her husband
The Hallam Family—interviews with an elder couple, including a WWII veteran’s war stories and photographs
Pam and Harry—interviews with a dynamic couple centered around family, family business, and community initiatives
Some memoirs include written contributions from family, colleagues, and/or friends:
Kaddishel, A Life Reborn—one man’s Holocaust experience, with extensive interviews of his contemporaries on three continents, conducted in a variety of languages and translated for the book. (Click on book cover or on title to read this open-source digital volume.)
An Unlikely Entrepreneur—narrative by a businessman diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, with additional chapters written by his wife
Conitex Sonoco 35th Anniversary: In Celebration of José Luis Artiga—company history and retirement gift to former founder/CEO, with written tributes from colleagues and family
And then there are the more varied styles of memoir, compilations of authentic journal or diary entries, letters, poems, even notes on index cards:
Walking Together: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey through Aging and Alzheimer’s—imagined letters from daughter to her mother during her final years
“No Excuses” Love, Dad—notes on index cards written by a father and stuffed into his son’s backpack every morning before school
A Grandmother’s Diary—journal writings about raising bilingual grandchildren
Eighteen Letters from a father to his daughter—a father’s letters written, but never sent, to his daughter, from birth until she went off to college when he shared this book with her
Reading Proust to My Mother—memories from childhood through sunset years with a literary mother
All My Love Always, Your Gampy—hundreds of letters from a grandfather to his grandchildren, though they are still too young to read a book!
In every one of these personal books, love shines through in the words of each narrator, in that unique way only seen in writing—with thoughtful attention to memory, detail, phrasing, relationship, and what Wordsworth called “the breathings of your heart.”
Perhaps you’ve thought about writing and not yet jumpstarted it. Perhaps your writing is just sitting on a desktop, idle. Try to get to the next step! Get the book done. Some day, somewhere, some family members or friends will be interested. And I’ll bet they will love it.