A Memoir’s Journey: One Writer’s Process by Margaret Whitford

In the aftermath of my mother’s death, I wrote in response to my complicated grief, not only for my mother but also for the maternal relationship I’d hoped for but did not have. Within the blank pages of my journal, I tried to fathom why we were not together during her final days. 

My need to understand the origins of the distance that had characterized so much of my mother’s and my relationship proved to be the catalyst for my memoir, though the idea that I might be writing a book did not occur to me until four years after my mother’s death. I wrote essays in the first few years, believing I could unravel the mystery of my mother and me in under twenty pages. 

A 2016 writing workshop at Vermont College of Fine Arts with Sue William Silverman helped me realize that the dense sixteen-page essay I’d submitted for comment only scratched the surface of all I needed to explore. Sue helped me see that those sixteen pages contained opportunities for multiple essays, and, quite possibly, a book-length memoir. 

I decided to work with Sue as a writing mentor to help me discover my narrative’s major themes and to improve my craft as a writer. She agreed to work with me on my memoir-in-progress over two postgraduate semesters, starting in summer of 2017. 

I spent the year in between the workshop and the beginning of my first semester immersed in my mother’s past. My work benefitted from the fifteen interviews I’d conducted with my mother during the last decade of her life, many of which I’d taped. I supplemented my mother’s accounts with research on the Second World War, as it unfolded in Latvia and Austria, as well as readings about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its complicated legacy. 

My earliest drafts focused almost entirely on my mother’s history, especially the years of the Second World War. In some ways, this was easier because it kept me at an emotional distance from my own material. Telling my mother’s story felt safer than exploring my own. 

A writer friend once told me that the only way to learn how to write a book is by writing a book. In that sense, it’s a bit like learning to swim. At some point, you have to get in the pool. In crafting my memoir, and especially with Sue’s help and that of other mentors, I entered the pool. 

Working with Sue helped me improve the quality of my writing through revision, in the sense that I deepened the material by incorporating her recommendations. I developed scenes to tell the story and introduced sensory details to reveal the interiority of the characters on the page. I also started to weave reflection into my description of events, and in that way made myself, as narrator, more present in the memoir. 

By May 2018, I had eleven chapters or essays—I was not sure what to call them—for a total of 180 pages. Themes and motifs had started to emerge, but I still had not identified the arc of the memoir nor its optimal structure.

After my two semesters with Sue, I continued to work on the memoir but not as consistently or as effectively. I found myself revising the same 180 pages. I had two-thirds of a draft and had written myself into a corner. In retrospect I’d done that because I’d not allowed the writing process itself to reveal where the memoir needed to go. I tried to impose, rather than discover, the memoir’s arc. 

Frustrated by my lack of progress, I decided to work with Janna Marlies Maron, a book coach, in a nine-month program focused on helping women writers complete their manuscripts. I began the program in January 2021 and completed a full draft by that fall. 

Janna helped me initially by describing my memoir-in-progress as a collection of linked essays. That gave me a container for my work. Once I started to think about each chapter as an essay I had a lens through which to look at the material. The essay form invited me to engage with my writing in a way that encouraged reflection and deepened the work. 

One of the reasons I had difficulty moving into the last third of the book was because I had a fixed idea that this final section had to be an exploration of my marriage. If my mother’s and my relationship reflected a failure of intimacy, my marriage would demonstrate success. When I let go of this assumption and allowed myself to be carried forward by the work, I was able to finish the book. 

In the end, the process I have described is applicable to my debut memoir; another book might require something entirely different. I have learned, however, that the answers—related to structure and arc—are found in the act of writing. That is where I put my faith. 

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Margaret Whitford’s writing often explores the theme of refuge—how we find shelter, both physical and emotional, for ourselves and those we love in an unstable world. She is especially drawn to personal essays for their expansive literary possibilities and to memoir as a way to interrogate personal experience and illuminate what it means to be human. Before turning to writing, Margaret spent twenty years in leadership roles within the nonprofit sector, including a decade working to advance social justice. These experiences continue to inform her writing, particularly her interest in the intersection of identity, belonging, and community. A dedicated Francophile, with her husband, she divides her time between Concord, Massachusetts and a small village in Provence.

THE HISTORY WE CARRY

For fans of Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, a memoir for daughters who recognize that to truly understand themselves and the patterns of their lives, they must first understand their mothers and the forces that shaped these women.

When Margaret Whitford’s mother was dying, she told those present that her daughter “had her history.” This was true; Margaret had conducted interviews with her mother during the last decade of her life. But this didn’t end their estrangement, and Margaret chose not to return to her mother’s side during her final days.

In this memoir, Margaret confronts this decision by unearthing in her mother’s traumatic history the roots of the emotional distance between them. She explores how a history marked by the devastation of World War II in Europe, a violent childhood home, and sexual assault accumulated into complex PTSD that shaped her mother and the way she parented Margaret as her firstborn and as a daughter—and, in turn, how Margaret carried her mother’s trauma forward in her sense of self, in her relationships to others, and in the ways she navigated her world. Indeed, Margaret not only had her mother’s history—she embodied it.

Ultimately, The History We Carry confronts the legacy of intergenerational trauma with wisdom and compassion, revealing how familial history shapes each of us but need not be wholly determinative of whom we become and how we choose to live.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing