The Power of Memoir By Mary Garden

By Mary Garden

Writing my life helped heal me – and showed others they weren’t alone

I love true stories, especially memoirs. That’s what I write. I have now written three books, each exploring my past or my family’s history. Through writing, I’ve learned that memoir is not just a gift to readers but also to ourselves: it allows us to confront the past, make sense of it, and find strength we didn’t know we had.

Some people look down on memoir. They call it a diary, not real writing. But memoir is far more than that. It is a craft that shapes experience into something meaningful, not just for the writer, but for the reader too.

When I began writing The Serpent Rising, I didn’t realise how much I would also be writing my way toward understanding things that had happened to me. Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, who wrote the bestselling, deeply exposing memoir called My Struggle, says: ‘writing is a way of getting rid of shame. When you write the whole idea is to be free.’ That’s what The Serpent Rising was for me: freeing.

First published in 1988, The Serpent Rising tells of my years in India in the 1970s, entangled with an abusive yoga teacher who saw himself as a reincarnation of Lord Krishna. It was one of the first books to expose the dangers of Eastern cults and giving away your power to gurus who claimed they were enlightened. When I first began writing, I was ambivalent towards the teacher at the centre of my story.  I thought maybe it was my bad karma, my fault, and that I wasn’t ready for a spiritual awakening. By the end of writing, I’d woken up. He was no enlightened guru, but an abusive conman. 

I remember writing a passage about one particular meditation session when he publicly shamed me for questioning him. At the time, I felt powerless and blamed myself, but revisiting it on the page allowed me to see clearly what had happened. I even laughed out loud at him. What an arsehole. And forgave myself for being so blind. 

Even today I am interviewed about this book; readers tell me it helped them recognise manipulation in their own lives, or reassured them they were not alone.

Years later, I turned to my father’s life in Sundowner of the Skies: the story of Oscar Garden, the forgotten aviator.  Writing his biography was not just about him; it was also about me, threading memoir through history to make sense of our shared past.

My father would not have been happy about the skeletons I uncovered, nor my mention of his failures as a father and husband. He would have only wanted people to know about ‘the good bits’ ‒ his life as a pioneer aviator, and later ‘the boss’ of Tasman Empire Airways, during the second world war.

Yet uncovering his history, including his traumatic childhood in north Scotland with an alcoholic and sometimes violent father, became a healing process. Digging up his past helped me understand, in part, why he became who he was. It also illuminated the ways trauma is passed down through generations, the choices we make, and the behaviours we inherit or resist. 

Until I wrote Sundowner of the Skies, my father remained largely forgotten. But his story reached far and wide. The book was even shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier’s History Award for a book of international significance. The judges said, it was a ‘profound exploration of intergenerational trauma and its effects on individuals, families and their shared memories’. 

My Father’s Suitcase took that process further. As a survivor of childhood abuse and later family violence, I wanted to give voice to something that has for too long been silenced. Sibling abuse is the most common, yet least acknowledged, form of family violence. Writing this memoir was empowering. It allowed me to explore experiences that were confusing, painful, and often hidden ‒ giving both myself and readers a way to understand and process the impact of trauma.

Writing that book was revelatory. I was angry towards my late sister ‒ her betrayals and abuse of me ‒ but by the time I had finished, I felt a deep compassion for her. She had suffered from mental illness (schizoid affective disorder) throughout her life and did not get the help she needed. Writing helped me understand both her and my brother in ways I couldn’t before. 

As memoirist Blake Morrison writes in Two Sisters, his wife sometimes tells him he is ‘stuck in the past’, which was something my brother sometimes told me. Wallowing, he called it. Morrison does not see himself as stuck. The point of revisiting the past, he writes, is that you find new things each time you go there ‒ things you missed, didn’t understand, or failed to see the significance of, which as you get older, you begin to grasp. ‘If I am addicted to the past,’ he tells his wife, ‘It’s because it hasn’t passed. I am still there, still working things out.’ I could say the same to people, especially my brother.

Together, these three books, in different ways, have been journeys of healing that helped me move on.   

But books are ultimately for readers. The true power of memoir is that it makes people feel less alone. I’ve literally received thousands of letters and emails from readers thanking me, telling me that my book helped them understand themselves, or someone they knew, better. Others said it gave them courage to face their own abuse. Others said it reminded them they were not crazy, not at fault, and not alone. My story has helped them make sense of theirs. 

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Mary Garden is a freelance journalist with a PhD in Journalism (USC). Her writing has appeared in a range of publications, including The Australian, Meanjin, The Guardian, New Zealand Herald, Newsroom (NZ), and The Humanist. She is an award-winning author of three books: The Serpent Rising, a memoir of her years with various gurus in India in the 1970s; Sundowner of the Skies, a biography of her father, Oscar Garden, a pioneer aviator; and My Father’s Suitcase, which has won multiple international book awards.

MY FATHER’S SUITCASE

A gripping tale of resilience and survival that offers hope to others who have experienced family violence and suffered at the hands of a sibling.

A deeply personal and heartbreaking memoir that explores the troubled relationship between Mary Garden and her younger sister, Anna. (Anna died in 2023, after a short illness.)

Mary unpacks her life of growing up in New Zealand in the 1950s and ’60s, before making Australia home. She reveals complex layers of intergenerational trauma, including the baggage of her eccentric, deeply flawed father and the secret her mother kept from all of them, revealed only after her death. Mary deals movingly with her sister’s long battle with mental illness and how she once saved Anna’s life.

As she unravels these narratives, Mary touches on the guilt and shame familiar to anyone who has had to deal with secrets, violence and ‘madness’ in their family.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing