Creating a memoir can tap into the
positive aspects of nostalgia, helping
to calm and ground us
Write your story
W
riting a memoir, whether about yourself or
another family member, can be a wonderful
way to bring positivity to nostalgia. Both an
emotion and a thought process, research has
shown that nostalgia has many positive
aspects, from helping us deal with stress and anxiety to deepening
our connections to people and places and helping to build stability.
“Any change, good or bad, is very stressful. So what nostalgia
enables you to do both emotionally and cognitively is keep track
of what has remained stable, giving you some sense of continuity,”
explains Krystine Batcho, professor of psychology at Le Moyne
College, New York, who has been researching nostalgia since 1994.
This can be true of adverse or unhappy memories too. “When
nostalgia is used in a healthy way,” she writes, for healthline.com,
“it can be like a crutch that grounds you in your past while you
figure out how to move forward. Whether it’s something extreme
like a new culture or less extreme like a new job, it can buy you
a little emotional time because it gives you the sense of security
to say, ‘I know I can do this.’ Then you can plan your future.”
The idea of writing a memoir can, however, be daunting, so
it’s helpful to think through the process a little, how you might
structure it and what personal stories to focus on. Having a rough
idea of what you want your memoir to accomplish is a good
starting point. Does your story relate to a particular event? Does
it have extra resonance because of something that happened to
you? Did something change the course of your life in some way?
Though based in factual events, this is still an act of creative
writing and it uses many of the same tools as any other form of
prose, imaginatively combining observation and experience with
how you felt and making use of characterisation and dialogue. You
could start with your birth or with some other event pivotal to your
life’s story. It doesn’t matter, it’s your memoir and you get to tell it
how you want to, starting (and finishing) where you choose.Words: Harriet GriffeyWhere to begin?
Start by identifying what for you is
a pivotal event on which your memoir
might rest. This could be something
to do with you, or someone else,
a parent’s death perhaps, or their
religious belief, for example, or the
birth of a sibling. It could be to do with
a political shift or a geographical move
to another country. For Damian Barr,
author of the memoir Maggie and Me
(£8. 99 , Bloomsbury), it was that his
parents separated in 1984 when he was
eight years old, on the night that UK
prime minister Margaret Thatcher
survived a bombing at the Grand Hotel
in Brighton. This pivotal moment
doesn’t have to be historically
significant, but it’s useful for it to be
relevant to you as it will provide
a focus, initially at least, to help you
formulate the structure of a memoir.creativity