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Storytelling and sharing your stories (verbal or written):

• helps you better understand and heal from/learn to live with your past experiences
• helps you better understand your ongoing disabilities or conditions
• helps you accept and live with your past experiences, and your ongoing disabilities or conditions (i.e. assists in healing)
• helps you feel less alone when your loved ones read your clearly documented story, because they now understand you better, and can talk to you about your experiences with deep understanding. This can strengthen and grow positive  relationships with the people who read your story (and stronger relationships will help you be a stronger person).

Below are some ways in which life story or memoir writing can improve your emotional and mental wellbeing – whether you write it yourself, or whether you tell it verbally and someone else types and compiles it for you.

Writing about your emotions is therapeutic

Talking and writing about your experiences on an honest emotional level is therapeutic for just about everyone. Talking or writing about the emotional journey you have undertaken as a result of a traumatic incident, or as part of learning to live with a disability, or through making mistakes and learning from them, or through grief, can be particularly  therapeutic.

Whether you do the writing yourself then hire an editor to improve your story, or hire a life story writer to document your story in a coherent and ordered way, depends on your skills, wants and needs. Some people are natural writers and want to improve their writing. Others are better at talking than writing and just want someone to document their story for them, so they can easily share their story with others. Some people want to share their story with family and friends only; others want to share it with the public. Some people want their story produced as a ‘real book’; others just want their story typed into document they can print out or email to their friends.

You are the one who chooses which experiences to talk about in your memoir. But it is important to note that, in my experience, the aspects of the story that are most painful for the author to tell, or write, are usually the most important parts of the memoir or life story.

Some of the authors whose stories I have produced as self-published books have felt a great sense of relief after sharing their story as a book; they’ve said that now their story has been self-published, it’s no longer stuck inside them;  those painful past experiences they have lived through are no longer taking up their energy.

Writing your story helps you make sense of your life

Once an editor or life story writer has put everything into the right order and set it out clearly, the person’s stories which had been ‘messy’ (because their memories were fuzzy due to the lapse of time, or the impact of trauma) are now clear, and easy to read and understand. Time and time again, once I have produced the author’s life story or memoir as a self published book, they have  said to me, ‘Finally, that period of my life makes sense to me!’ or ‘This is the first time I have really understood what I went through during that time.’

Being able to read a clear account of your own story of a traumatic event, or of your childhood or other periods of your life, in your own voice and words (but arranged into a better order so they are easy to understand), does help you make sense of it all in a new way, and this can be very empowering. It can be especially empowering for a person with a disability or a condition like PTSD.

Writing your story helps you be positive

Importantly, while documenting the person’s story, I make sure it’s not just about the negative stuff.

When you have lived a hard life it is easy to focus on the negatives and forget all the positives that are also part of your story. The life story writer or memoir editor working with you may need to encourage you to focus not just on the negatives but also on those positives to makes sure your story is balanced, and uplifting, as well as emotionally honest. This is important not only for the people who are going to read your story, but also for yourself.

Finishing your life story and hiring a life story writer to finetune, edit and produce your story for you as a self-published book will give you the biggest buzz you can probably imagine. All the authors for whom I’ve produced a memoir or life story have felt immensely proud and happy to receive their boxes of beautiful self-published books, and to share their book with others.

Some common reactions I hear are: ‘It’s just like having a baby!’ ‘I couldn’t have done it without you!’ And, ‘It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life!’

‘Narrative medicine’

When a person with PTSD or other disabilities or conditions tells or writes their stories, it helps them not only make sense of their story, their life, but helps them heal as if the very act of telling that story and having it documented so it can be shared with others is a type of ‘medicine’.

Following are a couple of excerpts from articles about the healing nature of ‘narrative medicine’ or storytelling as a healing process.

‘In the last 20 years, medical practice has increasingly recognized the importance of what’s come to be called “narrative medicine” to the patient’s healing … Telling our stories helps us heal. It releases some of the energy the experience created and begins to externalize the experience ….’ Source: Can the simple act of storytelling help [war veterans with PTSD] heal?.

‘Traumatic memory is like a series of still snapshots … that reside in the right hemisphere of our brains. The left-side of the brain does the thinking. Emotional and cognitive disassociation between the two sides of the brain occurs during traumatic events  …. Neuroscience tells us that memory is plastic and dynamic. When memories are reactivated we are presented with an opportunity to integrate the experience and thus heal it …. When we share our stories, we can inform, inspire, and help create a more compassionate world.’ Source: Storytelling, neuroscience, and healing trauma.

For more about this topic, go to:

• Write to heal from trauma, loss and illness
• Sharing your story can be helpful if you have PTSD
• Storytelling and writing, as a healing process

Image by Kavowo, Pixabay