Believe Your Story Matters: Seven Lessons from Writing a Memoir by Ebony Walden

A few days ago, I was sitting on my couch, typing away on my laptop, when I heard four heavy thumps. I looked out the window and saw the UPS man leaving. On my porch sat four boxes of my new book. I lifted one of the thirty-pound boxes, carried it inside, and opened it to find my official copies. “I am a published author,” I said to myself. What a journey!

My book Where I’m From: A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents (She Writes Press) comes out on September 8, 2026. It’s a memoir of my eight-month solo trip around the world, where I wrote “Where I’m From” poems with new friends across five continents and fifteen countries. Ultimately, it is a story of finding home within and connection abroad. The story began long before the book arrived.

This book is sixteen years in the making. Sixteen years since I boarded a plane for my around-the-world trip. Fourteen years since I put together a presentation, exhibit, and poetry performance after I returned home. Twelve years since I took my first six-week memoir writing class. Nine years since I finished a second year-long memoir class with a completed manuscript. Two years since I decided to pursue publishing. And now, here we are.

As I sat flipping through the finished book, I found myself thinking about what those years actually taught me about writing and about life.

Believe Your Story Matters

A few months ago, I was on a writing panel. One of the audience members asked, “How do you get past thinking no one will want to hear about your life?” I replied, “I don’t have that problem, sir. I fundamentally believe people will want to hear what I have to say.” The crowd erupted in laughter, but truly, that is the first step: believing you have something to say. Your story is worth telling.

Find a Community

 Becoming a better writer happened one class at a time. Taking classes gave me the structure and accountability that helped continue when I would have stopped. Workshops, feedback, retreats, and beta readers were priceless. My fellow writers helped me find the deeper story I was trying to tell. That is much harder to do alone.

Be a Student of Craft

Over sixteen years, I read at least fifty memoirs, starting with Eat, Pray, Love and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I not only paid attention to what I enjoyed, but how they actually told their story and what made it compelling.

Reading books on craft was also critical. Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoir, The Art of Memoir, To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, and Save the Cat! are a few that have shaped my ability to tell stories.

Build a Book Map

This was the single most useful tool from my memoir classes: an outline of chapters, central ideas, scenes, characters and conversations. Mine came together easily because the container was already there, my eight-month trip. Each country became a chapter. Within every country I asked who the key people were, what the key scenes were, and what dialogue would support the story. My writing process was essentially following that map.

Editing Is the Hardest Part. You Can Get Through It

 The hardest thing was deciding what to cut. There were adventures, stories from childhood, and meaningful moments from the trip that never made it into the final book. Every memoir contains the book you didn’t write, and letting go of some of my favorite parts came with grief. I also had to remove the full length “Where I’m From” poems that were central to my original story because I couldn’t get permission to reproduce everyone’s words. That loss became its own craft challenge: how do I help readers get the gist of the poems without showing them the poems word-for-word?

I also revised the manuscript seven times over several years, through beta reader feedback, sensitivity edits, full rewrites of the poem sections, and multiple rounds of copyediting and proofreading. Writing a book is not glamorous. Editing it is worse. You can get through it anyway.

Let Your Story Create New Conversations

What I’m most excited about now is being in conversation with audiences, especially women, about the core themes and questions of the book: What does it mean to travel alone as a woman, as a Black woman? How do you find peace within your own story? How do you become present enough to let people around the world change you? What life lessons does global travel offer?

My book tour starts on September 8, including twelve cities and twenty events. It will be a sprint, and I plan to carry everything this whole journey has taught me into it: stay present, keep an open heart to the beauty and challenges that come my way, learn from them, and rest when I need to.

Trust the Fullness of Time

If you are sitting on a story you want to tell, here is what sixteen years taught me: trust the fullness of time. Only you know when it’s the right time to start, to stop, to continue. The day I took my book off the shelf, I was writing a book proposal for what would become my award-winning travel documentary series Black Beyond Borders, and the Spirit said, “You already have a book. It’s time to take it off the shelf.” I did. Nearly two years later, it will be in stores near you.

Stop when you need to. Listen to your inner voice. And keep going.

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Ebony Walden is an author, filmmaker, and speaker who has traveled to nearly fifty countries and all fifty US states. She is the founder of Ebony Walden Consulting, a racial equity–focused consulting firm, and the creator of Black Beyond Borders, a documentary series and podcast exploring culture, creativity, connection, and cuisine across the African diaspora. Ebony also writes Beyond Borders, a weekly Substack newsletter on travel and transformation. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Where I’m From: A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents―A Memoir

Perfect for fans of Eat, Pray, Love, this soulful travel memoir blends poetry, global adventure, cultural connection and personal transformation with reflections on race, identity, and belonging.

In 2010, twenty-nine-year-old poet Ebony Walden quits her job to go to on an eight-month solo journey across fifteen countries and five continents. Propelled by a sense of purpose and adventure, she moves from teaching English and volunteering in places like Guatemala and India to conducting poetry workshops in Kenya, walking the ruins of Machu Picchu, and paragliding over the Swiss Alps.

Along the way, Ebony writes “Where I’m From” poems with the people she meets—intimate reflections that capture family, identity and culture, weaving their voices into her own unfolding journey. But each destination also challenges her in unexpected ways, forcing her to reckon with the hardships of growing up in New York in the ’80s and ’90s. Through breathtaking landscapes, unexpected setbacks, and profound encounters with strangers, Ebony begins to understand that travel is not just about seeing the world—it is about allowing the world to change you.

Part travel memoir, part coming-of-age story, Where I’m From invites readers to take their own journey beyond borders and come home to themselves.

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