Educated: a memoir. From a NY Times March 2018 article, Tara Westover discussed her
writing journey. To prepare for writing a memoir:
"I read a handful of memoirs to get a sense of what the genre meant, I needed to learn
the fundamentals of the craft. I had never written a word of narrative. What is a tense shift,
what is a point of view? I didn't know any of it."
"...I wrote the book I wished I could have given to myself when I was losing my family.
When I was going through that experience, I became aware of how important stories
are in telling us how to live -- how we should feel, when we should feel proud, when
we should feel ashamed. I was losing my family, and it seemed to me that there were no
stories for that --- no stories about what to do when loyalty to your family was somehow
in conflict with loyalty to yourself. And forgiveness. I wanted a story about forgiveness
that did not conflate forgiveness with reconciliation, or did not treat reconciliation
as the highest form of forgiveness. In my life, I knew the two might always be separate.
I didn't know if I would ever reconcile with my family, and I needed to believe that
that I could forgive, regardless."
Forgiveness can be heavy baggage. Westover has shared her journey with us, and may
all of us leave 2018 by dropping what no longer serves us, and enter 2019 feeling lighter
and feeling freedom. Books enable us to share anothers journey. Come join the discussion
on January 3, 2019. Happy New Year to all!