{"id":17749,"date":"2022-03-10T08:49:57","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T13:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/?p=17749"},"modified":"2024-08-27T16:58:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T20:58:00","slug":"memoirs-without-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/2022\/memoirs-without-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Memoirs without memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        Memoirs without memory\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<p>My mind is in a quandary. I signed up for a course on memoir writing because I am helping my elderly mother write her memoirs. Except, after just one lecture, I have discovered that she is not writing her memoirs at all. She is writing an autobiography and I am simply helping her put her words down on paper and trying to organize them into something approaching a chronological order. There is no emotion in her story, no sense of what she felt or how life has shaped her. Instead it is her story of \u201cI was born, I grew up, I got married and had children, and I am approaching the time when I will die\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So now what do I do? Obviously my mother will write her autobiography and not her memoirs, but will I write mine? In the first lecture we were to brainstorm a list of teachers and I was stumped. I couldn\u2019t remember anyone. Can I write memoirs without memory? Past trauma has stifled a lot of my memory, yet my brain feels full to bursting. I desperately want to write, to share the emotion, the experiences, the good and the bad, with myself and with others. Yet I am afraid it will be like opening Pandora\u2019s Box and I am afraid of being overwhelmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a side note, I looked up \u201cquandary\u201d because I wasn\u2019t sure of the spelling and google provided me with this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>quan\u00b7da\u00b7ry<br>\n\/\u02c8kw\u00e4nd(\u0259)r\u0113\/<br>\nnoun<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a state of perplexity or uncertainty over what to do in a difficult situation.<br>\n&#8220;Kate is in a quandary&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even Google knows I am in a quandary!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mind is in a quandary. I signed up for a course on memoir writing because I am helping my elderly mother write her memoirs. Except, after just one lecture, I have discovered that she is not writing her memoirs at all. She is writing an autobiography and I am simply helping her put her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoir"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17751,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17749\/revisions\/17751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}