This is such a good question. You want to write a memoir or hybrid memoir and have a whole lifetime of stuff to write about. You already know that your whole life is an autobiography, and you wouldn’t want to be doing that because, let’s face it, no one’s whole life is that interesting.

When you have lived somewhere between forty and sixty-odd years – you’ve loved, lost, moved house, changed careers, buried people, raised people, started over more than once. And now you want to write about it – so you sit down, fingers hovering, and think: where on earth do I start when my whole life is the material?

Or maybe your problem is the opposite. You are not a blank at all, and there’s a flood of stories and lifetimes all competing with each other. There are twelve possible books, forty possible openings, and still you have no idea which slice matters, or why.

I’m not sure which is the best problem to have…

When you look at them, these look like different problems, but oddly they aren’t. They’re the same one simply wearing different shoes. And I am sure you have some shoe stories too; I know I do.

So let’s look at what’s actually going on. You’re standing at what you think is ‘the beginning’ – the birth of something, a wonky childhood, the wild teens and terrible twenties (not twos), and you feel like you need a proper chronological start. You want and feel compelled to try to write your life in order, like a CV with feelings and linked events.

Or you’re staring at who you are now: the work you do – your zone of mastery (not your zone of brilliance), the title on your website and socials, the version you can explain down the pub on a girls’ or boys’ night out – and trying to reverse-engineer a book out of it.

The problem is, my dear, that they both keep you stuck.

Both are the tidy version, and this version rarely has a heartbeat, and no amount of CPR will bring it to life.

The story that wants to leap out is rarely the neat one.

It’s the moment something rattled your cage and changed your life, and it may still be doing its work. And there, somewhere deep inside, is a story that changed your life.

It’s stories like this that often change your work too, and most certainly the reader as they make their way through your story and wisdom. But often you can’t find the beginning of this because sometimes this is where your defences live. I’m cringing because this is true for me.

I have such a book and story. I’ve tried to write it loads of times, and yes, it has been immensely healing – of course it has. I have many finished books on the subject, loads of stories and nothing I want to publish or do anything with.

Whenever I wrote this book, the stories started in childhood instead of the realisation point.

That point is when I am looking in the mirror a few weeks after my spine fractured. I forced myself to look at myself, bent almost double, stomach up around my boobs, skin loose as I had never exercised, and then my face grey, twisted in pain and full of hatred for my body.

I knew in that moment, although I had moments before, I really had spent a lifetime hating my body. And when I looked into my eyes, I knew I had to stop hiding the real issue, which was the thing that I had been avoiding.

And it still makes me cry to visualise this moment.

I always started with the abuse that I kept hidden instead of the impact and the realisation of that.

You’d expect that the abuse would be the hard thing to write about, but the mirror was. The abuse happened to me. I have it set in time in a house in Lincolnshire; there was a child before, carefree, a child after and the person who did it.

The mirror, the fractured spine, the distorted body, and making myself look are when I meet what the event did. And that is the real fracture.

I’ve come to realise that leading with abuse (in my case) does a job: it says this is why I am this way before you ask why I hide my body.

The cause is like a judgement that keeps me in the position of a ten year old that something happened to me rather than the woman in the bathroom choosing to look and explore. The child before had no sides; she ran around in pants and played unselfconsciously, after she was an object to hate.

I’m not a psychologist, but I imagine a child doesn’t say I was violated, so I am going to hide my body, but the body knows, and it protects you. Bodies keep us safe until one day they can’t hold on to the shit.

You can’t write about the hiding when you are still in it. Which is why my mirror is the opening and not the abuse. My ten year old couldn’t be seen and didn’t understand any of what was happening; older me has the tools and sense to know that while I couldn’t reverse decades of hiding and not loving myself, I could acknowledge and say thank you to my body for knowing how to heal itself.

So we’re not starting at the beginning today. We’re starting with a scene. And please, if you have anything come up and you need support, please talk with a therapist.

As I have already said – mine starts in the bathroom a few weeks after my spine had fractured, my body distorted, and I made myself look at myself.

You don’t write a life.

You write a moment.

Then another.

And the life assembles itself behind you while you’re not looking. The key is never in the grand arc – it’s in the small moments. The ones you’d walk straight past.

So let’s find you a small moment.

Feeling Overwhelmed by Writing Your Memoir?

Before we start, I want to give you some tips.

Come Back Into The Room

Stop, breathe. Slowly turn your head and look around the room. Name three physical objects out loud, noting their exact colour and texture (e.g., “Red notebook, cold brass lamp, rough wooden arm of the chair”). This simple act forces the brain to register that the threat is not in the room with you right now.

The Bilateral Tapping Reset

Place your left hand on your right shoulder and your right hand on your left shoulder (the butterfly hug), or simply rest your hands on your thighs. Alternate tapping left, right, left, right at a slow, steady rhythm for 30 to 60 seconds. Bilateral stimulation helps integrate processing across the hemispheres of the brain, down-regulating the amygdala and bringing you back into the present moment.

Ground Yourself

The freeze state often creates a feeling of floating, numbness, or dissociation. Press your feet firmly flat into the floor and push your hands down onto the desk or the armrests of your chair. Contract your leg and arm muscles for five seconds, then release. Remind your nervous system of the exact physical boundaries of your body and the solid surface supporting you.

Get Ready To Write Your Memoir Moment

Before we start to write your memoir moment, if you have a cuppa or anything that is distracting you – stop. Put the mug down and let your hands drop to your lap.

• Take a breath
• Bring your shoulders up – hold and let them drop.
• Unclench your jaw.
• Take one slow breath all the way down into your belly, and let it fall out again.

You’re not writing a massive book right now – nor are you planning it. You’re not choosing your opening chapter or working out the structure. You’re just a human being about to look closely at one moment. That’s all this is.

What Is The Question?

When did something change?

Not the whole era or decade. Just one moment. Perhaps it was a phone call, something someone said that you never forgot or, like me, a mirror moment. There is a second you knew. You heard the door closing or a look on a face across a room. Pick one – and start inside it. Set your timer for 5, 10 or 15 minutes.

The Rules of Soul Writing for this Prompt:

• No run-up. Don’t explain what led to it. Don’t write ‘to understand this, you first need to know…’ Drop straight into the middle of the scene, as if the reader is already standing beside you.
• Don’t tell me what it meant. Show me what was there. Not ‘it was a terrible day.’ The chipped cup or the rain pitter-pattering on the window. What you were holding or doing when the earth you were standing on rocked your foundations.
• Let it go where it goes. Start with whatever comes and follow the scene; don’t steer it, don’t stop to edit or judge.

At The End

Pen down. Breathe in… and let it go.

Now – how did that feel?

Two things might have happened, and both of them are ok.

If that scene pulled you forward – if you hit the end of the timer and your hand wanted to keep going – pay attention to that pull. That’s the story choosing you. That scene might be your opening, or your chapter one, or the small stone the whole book eventually grows around.

And if it went nowhere? If it sat there, flat, and fizzled out halfway through? That is perfect too, and it isn’t failure – it’s great information. You’ve had an opening into a scene that isn’t the one, which means you’re one scene closer to the one that is. Nothing you write here is wasted.

Then, go for a walk and take time to reflect.

And whatever you do, don’t reread it with an editor’s eye. Don’t decide yet whether it’s ‘the start.’ Meaning rarely shows up while you’re writing – it turns up three days later, over the boring washing up and when you least expect it.

Today is all about finding one moment, and looking at it closely. The beginning will find you.

Write with me again whenever you feel called to.

Join this 10-day Memoir Writing Experience or Discover The Writer Within and get yourself started. These are both hosted in The Soul Writers Lounge.

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Dale is the guide and facilitator for Memoir School and The Soul Writers Lounge. Come and join her for journaling and writing about life.