“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.” Leonard Nimoy posted this as his last comment on Twitter before his passing into the great beyond this week… a place where he is probably right at home. OK, he didn’t specifically refer to memoir writing but his words are such a perfect description of how we can use memoir writing to keep our life garden blooming and renewing.

Our memory is a technological miracle. It records every experience we have. Before the age of two, most of these experiences imprint as a sensation that remains in the body, a feeling that may arise later without our thinking it’s connected to anything from the past. It is a somatic, pre-cognitive memory. Around two years old, our memories become more cognitive and our memory may include a feeling that arises as well as images, words, messages. I saw this happen for the first time when my grandson Bodi was almost 18 months. Being a twin, it was not that noteworthy that his brother Asher bonked him on the head with a plastic car. What was extraordinary was that I saw the original event, then about a half hour later Bodi came over to me and re-enacted the event accompanied by his adorable but unrecognizable vocabulary. “Eh, eh,” he said, grabbing the sleeve of Asher’s t-shirt. Then he tapped himself on the head with his fist in the very spot Asher has previously bonked. Aha, from being just in the moment to  moment experience to a narrative about something that occurred earlier. Cognitive memory!

Most of our memories just languish in the so-called subconscious, perhaps a great lake full of forgotten moments that lie on the bottom harmlessly letting time wash over them. Some memories remain with us because we took an interest when they occurred though they are neutral. And others are highly charged because they were pivotal moments and accompanied by strong feelings, positive or negative.

When we write about our memories, they emerge from their buried sleep and come back to life with a chance to evolve again. They are like the perennial flowers that seem to have died but awaken again the following spring. They draw their life force from a bulb or tuber stored in the ground over the winter. When they push their green shoots back into the sunlight, they keep their essential nature but can manifest in a fresh and new array.

Over and over in my memoir writing classes, I hear people say, “I haven’t thought of that in years,” or “I see it differently from this perspective,” or “I feel like I am right there living it again but I have my wise self with me.” When I wrote my own memoir about the search for my mother’s past, I felt like a re-opened my relationship with my mother and it got to evolve over the next decade and come to a new understanding and connection. By the way, The Woman in the Photograph is back on Kindle both for sale and free as part of Kindle Subscribe.

I will continue on this theme of how memoir writing can change your life in the months ahead. For now, thanks Dr. Spock. Live Long and Prosper.

Today is Veterans’ Day and with this occasion come many different news items that have to do with veterans and the contribution they make. But what touched me most personally today was a story about veterans, both men and women, expressing their experience of serving in Iraq and Afghanistan through tattoo art on their bodies.

“We all carry our stories. This is a way of telling the story without having to say anything,” one of the veterans reported. And the theme was repeated by everyone–whether a way to approach post traumatic stress, remember significant moments, memorialize loss, honor their buddies or express an identity that can’t be put into words.

A picture can say more than a thousand words. But sometimes there just are no words. When people are in a war or life threatening situation, we revert to the parts of our brain that focus primarily on our survival. Almost like a child’s precognitive state, we may not be registering our experiences in words, or even left brain thoughts. Yet they are being recorded on the body. I see the inherent harmony in using body art as a way to acknowledge these profound, often unmentionable experiences. The images work with our consciousness and over time our witnessing mind can begin to digest and integrate the information.

Some years after the Viet Nam War, author Maxine Hong Kingston led writing groups for Vietnam vets and others who served in Vietnam. She said that it takes about twenty years to look back on your experience and really be able to write about it. As a therapist and writer, I understand how the combination of time elapsed and the capacity to witness from some distance allows us to look at difficult situations from our childhood or our family history, without reactivating the traumatic feelings again. In memoir writing the witness can touch tender memories and yet bring healing with the perspective of wisdom gained over time. I experienced so much of this while writing “The Woman in the Photograph.” I had feelings but as the memoir writer, I had some control over my response to them. Perhaps that is what vets experience when they look at their tattoos, a bit of distance from the intensity yet a window to enter into reflection, integration and some resolution.

The War Ink project gives a new voice to our veterans, our sons and daughters, parents, siblings, friends who served. It is a site worth visiting. When you listen to the stories these veterans tell, whether with your eyes or your ears, you are also supporting them as they have supported us.

A photo of my mother also told me a story she hadn’t ever talked about. Today and tomorrow are the last two days to get The Woman in the Photograph on Kindle digital, FREE. Enjoy.

Not being a big hot dog fan, for me the best part about holidays is that you often learn something about history that you didn’t know. It is especially true this week when we get the Independence Day discussions on talk shows. Driving to the gym this morning I landed on KQED Forum where Michael Krasny was interviewing several historians about our founding fathers (miss those founding mothers) and our Declaration of Independence, which unfortunately didn’t quite give the same rights of independence to everyone. Maybe that’s why our lives are never done. We need to keep evolving and re-interpreting and making words from over 3 centuries ago relevant to our current consciousness. And although scientists say as a species we have evolved because of our flexibility and capacity to adapt to new situations, we have not shown ourselves to be so flexible regarding our old ideas. Could they let a few more of us on the Supreme Court please?

That said, do you love learning some new tidbit about history as much as I do? One of Krasny’s guests was Kenneth Davis, a historian who has written a book called “Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History But Never Learned.” He had me at the title, humming the old Sam Cooke tune by the same name. I always appreciate a good book title. Most of us know very little about American history. And the bare bones we get in school are often misleading and sometimes downright incorrect. I used to wonder why historians keep writing books about subjects that have already been covered, but now, as a memoirist myself, I understand why.

History writing is like memoir writing. History comes alive through an observer, and each observer sees differently and brings a new perspective. Pushing the comparison just a little, historians, like scientists, will claim ownership of hard facts: letters written by John Adams, records of significant meetings, drawings that show who attended, documents in the graceful hand of calligraphers on parchment paper. FACTS. But in truth, a historian, to be a good one, must be intuitive like a memoir writer, must listen to the stories one can gather and see the connections, understand the context, bring in the humanity, because behind every act or event there is person who drew from his or her past experience.

Perhaps “The Woman in the Photograph” is a limited, very personal piece of history. But sifting through the scraps of truth, the documents and photographs, the remnants of conversation, the memories of others, I discovered with new appreciation the art and craft of a good historian. Perhaps it is not objectivity that makes a good historian but just the reverse. Subjectivity that brings the characters to life so we can know them and be part of history. Thought you might enjoy my book trailer, with its wink at history.

I have found that realizing “I don’t know much about…” is the best starting point for a new adventure of discovery. Happy Fourth!

Readers and writers are in an intimate relationship, and don’t let anyone tell you they write only for themselves. Yes, sometimes one writes because the words demand to be expressed, without regard to whether they are popular with others. But guess what, you are also the reader of those words, learning something new and discovering what lurks in your own unconscious as you hear your own narrative. You can be both the reader and the writer, like one of those fantastic plants or insects that have both the male and female parts on one organism. (Here’s the call to my entomologist husband to give an example of this.)

Writing may be a solitary activity for hours, months and years, but there is never anything that is all complete in your head beforehand. No. Maybe a glimpse, but as you write, something get created. That is one of the reasons that memoir writing in particular can change your life. It is a stimulation and response experience within you. Something is evolving. It is a relationship. In my writing groups, we read segments out loud to each other. Do you think what is on the page remains the same when you speak it and are heard. I don’t think so. Something in the synergy opens new doors. Tell each other what is alive for you when you hear it. Notice your own voice when you read it.

So I propose that writing is a social activity.  Two parts of yourself, or two people create a new life. Like a child  This may sound dramatic, but try it. Start a writing circle with a couple of friends. Each week one of you can bring three or four opening lines and then everyone writes for 20 minutes on the one that has energy. What remains most vivid in my memory is…. The last time I saw him/her… I wish he/she had told me....Then read to each other and discover a whole fresh way of knowing each other.

I got a comment today on a blog I wrote last November after my 3-day free Kindle offer of The Woman in the Photograph in which 10,000 people downloaded my book. Seven months passed, then this week a reader picked up the story she had downloaded. And she had the generosity to send me a comment.

She said: I felt compelled to visit your site and explore it after I finished this book. I had downloaded it during this free period on Amazon and had it tucked away on my Kindle. I started the book on Tuesday and finished it Thursday morning. I loved it. Every minute of every page. I a second generation American, born of a mother whose German parents immigrated from Russia as children. Not Jewish but still German immigrants. What an interesting story you found. Thank you for sharing it.

Flash! Now I have the feeling of bonding, the oxytocin chemical that makes me feel like I am not writing in a vacuum, that we are sharing something far more universal than the particulars of my own story. I am part of her story and she is part of mine. Life is a relationship. Writing is a relationship. When you have a pen, or a keyboard, or a story to tell, you are not alone.

Pick up your pen, open your computer, your tablet, your mind, your heart. Write a phrase, a line, a paragraph, and read it to someone, or send it to someone, just for fun, just because words are a door. Enjoy.

Sunday is Father’s Day, an occasion which, when I was growing up, belonged to the other people but not myself.  I only had my father until I was eight, and his imprint seemed so light compared to my mother’s powerful impact on me. Now, as this holiday approaches, I find myself wondering if my father influenced me more than I realized. Or was it primarily his absence that marked my life with expectations of loss or disappointment that manifested differently, but distinctly, with each phase of my life.

More authors write memoirs about their mothers than about their fathers. Some are untangling the complex influences of a mother, as in Ruth Reichl’s For You Mom, Finally, or Mary Gordon’s Circling My Mother. (By the way, a decade earlier she did write about her father in The Shadow Man.) Others, like myself in The Woman in the Photograph, are searching for missing pieces of their mother’s life or character, driven to find the wholeness of this important feminine influence beyond the significant but defined role of mother. But fewer writers untangle the personal histories of their fathers. I wonder if it is more of a taboo to uncover our father’s secrets. Must we allow them to keep their positions of authority and strength, or even of blame and weakness, without really exposing their vulnerability? Certainly women have a longer history of self-revelation, and this might give us more permission to feel we are entitled to remove their masks.

Not quite trusting my own literary scope, I did a quick scan of memoirs. It confirmed my impression that fewer memoirs were about fathers, though there is a nice list of those on the Goodreads site. Here are two that called to me: Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Our Fathers by Roger Portman. Including commentary on 18 people who wrote about their fathers, the review says they become detectives, piecing together clues to fill memory voids, assembling material and archival evidence, public and private documents, letters, photographs, and iconic physical objects to track down the parent. The other is  And When Did You Last See Your Father? A Son’s Memoir of Love and Loss by Blake Morrison who raises the questions: Can we ever see our parents as themselves, or are they forever defined through a child’s eyes? What are the secrets of their lives, and why do they spare us that knowledge? And when they die, what do they take with them that cannot be recovered or inherited?

So as alway, my suggestion is take this opportunity to reflect on how your father played a role in shaping your own life. What do you actually know about him. If you are so fortunate, take this day to talk with him, to ask him the questions I so often wish I could have asked. Or speak to those who knew him. And most of all, celebrate his life and your own heritage for all it has taught you.

This year my son-in-law is a father of twin boys now ten months old and the importance and grace of his role fills me with awe. For the first time, I feel connected to the holiday. Happy Father’s Day Brett and all fathers.