SUZANNE SHERMAN

Three years into teaching memoir I met a woman who never lived the life she wanted.

Marge was a regal woman with a commanding presence, a deep, gravelly voice, and neatly swept back silver hair. She was new to the retirement community where I taught memoir on Thursday afternoons for the local community college. Her eyes were clear but she seemed a little confused, like she couldn't quite believe she had moved somewhere to live her last days, like she was really that old.

Marge said she had no idea how to write. But there were some obvious signs that she wanted to write: she had come to a memoir class and she carried a new legal-sized pad. After class, I suggested she write about her college days, since she had mentioned them to the group; she had said she hadn't written anything since her days at UC Berkeley in the 1940s.

At class the next week she read her first story. She wrote about learning that her year-old daughter had Tay Sachs and wouldn't live two more years. Chances were this next one would have it too. So she got an abortion. Right after that her husband was killed in a plane crash. "It was the worst time in my life," she said. She'd had an abortion, become a widow, and then her daughter died. "Why would anyone want to know all that?" I assured her they would.

In 1999 I was still learning how closely memoir is related to self-esteem. Who would want to know about little ol' me?!

I encouraged her to continue writing. The next week she wrote about remarrying and with that second husband adopted three children. Then he died of a heart attack in his early forties. She remarried for a third time and found herself raising three young stepchildren along with her three teenagers. "I raised six kids," she said, wearily. "If I hadn't had so many, I'm sure I would have done something with my life." She reeked with pain, her eyes just a little too big and bright for my comfort. A few weeks later I met one of those daughters. After class she confided in me that her mother had bone cancer and there would be no treatment. She brushed it off, her daughter told me, didn't believe it was going to get her, but I could see it was already eating at her, spoiling her from the core of her frame and collapsing her collarbones first. Her chest was caving in from the outer edges. She'd let everyone and everything press on her for her whole life.

"I see these female newscasters today," she told the class at the next meeting, "and I think, If things had been different in the forties, I could have done that." She had never told anyone this before. A few weeks later I overhead her telling one of her classmates that she would have loved to be an assistant to an anchorman. "Marge," I interrupted. "I thought you wanted to be the anchorwoman!" "Oh," she smiled. "I don't know."

Marge missed four or five classes and then showed up one day in a wheelchair, with a hospice attendant at her side. Her collarbones jutted out at an odder, even more pronounced angle. "I wanted to come back one more time," she said in her gravelly voice. Her hair was neatly combed off her face, but her eyes looked deeply tired. "I wanted to thank you for everything."

After she left, I thought about Marge. What did I give her? On top of the desk in her room she must have a pad of yellow lined paper filled with about eight handwritten stories. She ran out of time to write more. It helped to know I had given her a sense she had something to say and people who cared to hear it.

What will her children know about the woman who was their mother? She never wrote about that greatest desire, her road not taken, the thing she never even spoke of until three months before she died. She could have been an anchorwoman. Maybe even the first.

But because she wrote a little about her life, her kids will know something of the woman they never really knew. How she took the streetcar from downtown Los Angeles to Venice beach during the Depression when poverty drove the family to the only place they could legally hunt: the ocean. About life at Venice High School in the 1930s. About UC Berkeley in the days when living with her husband and two roommates won her a few inches in the school newspaper in a story about communists and renegades on campus, kids taking roommates and living together. Radical.

I wish Marge's spirit lightness. And I'm reminded how important it is to LIVE your story and write about it.

I learned great lesson once about writing memoir in third person.

A memoir student of mine wrote a piece about her family living out of a camper and squatting by a river in the South during the Depression. Other families squatted in that river canyon along with them. The kids played together and families ate their meals over campfires. Above the canyon, posh houses lined tree-lined streets. As a child, my student had to walk by these houses on her way to school and to the market. Sometimes the kids who lived in them would tease her or even stand at the top of the trail down to the river and make fun of them ("river rats!"). One day as she hurried past the houses, she tripped and dropped a nickel in one of the front lawns. It was a day she never forgot.

The student wrote the story in third person and read it aloud to the class. Her writing was good, and we appreciated the story, but no one knew the story was about her. How could we know?

The up-side of writing memoir in third person is it can be a way you can write a hard story. The downside is that readers don't know the story is about you and won't know the story isn't fiction.

When asked, about it, the student choked up. The story had been extremely hard to write, she said, and she had changed all the names, including her own, to make it possible to even write. She went back and wrote it again, this time using middle names for everyone instead of first names. Sadly, her story still didn't have that ring of truth to it, the sound of memoir. I suggested she consider that her feelings from 1932 may be rekindled through the writing, but the shame she had about it isn't relevant anymore, and her readers won't have the same feelings she had about it. This is writing the story, not living it again. This seemed a new thought to her, as the story had lived in her memory in the same way for so long. Now she was inspired to try to write her way into a different place with it.

The story grew. It deepened. It became more colorful, lost its tone of "hurt child" and became good storytelling, where the reader could see the hurt child and hear her more clearly because there was spaciousness in the tone now that it didn't beg for sympathy. Writing in first person opened the door to details from her inner world that added so much. Memoir wants reflection, and she gave some of that by being in her own story.

When she read the first-person draft to the class everyone was wowed by it. And she was glad she did it, too. She learned that shame can have a lifespan. It doesn't have to follow her all the way through her life. Writing about the hard stuff had put another layer between the memory of it and her present life. There was a healing she hadn't even expected.

Be brave and see what happens.

At 26 I led my first writing workshop, at the dining room table of my San Francisco flat, overlooking rooftops and traffic winding along Highway 101. The workshop was inspired by the fact that I could not find a writing group where I could write in workshop and also have stories from home critiqued. I created what I wanted, and gave groups of writers what I was looking for. When I moved across the country after two years of running the group, one longtime student wrote me a note I keep to this day: “Thank you for seeding a new tongue to flower.” The reward for becoming a teacher of what I love.

Ten years later I became a new kind of teacher, a memoir instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College in their program for older adults. I couldn't imagine what could be better than helping people get their life stories written down.

Fifteen years and over two thousand classes later I find that some days there is still nothing else I would rather do. Other days I want to be home writing my own stories and working on my own books or teaching writing to people eager to learn how to make their memoirs come alive, not spending time trying to help people who come to the community college class with the goal of getting down some stories “just for family.” (Is there such a thing as “just family”?) They don't want to do anything more with their writing than just get the words down.

On one of those mornings, a small, stooped woman shuffled into class. I greeted her as she took a seat at the farthest end of the table from me. When she was settled, she announced, “I’m hard of hearing.” I suggested she move up to the seat next to me, where she could hear me better, which she did while the class waited. Inwardly, I felt impatient. When she was settled the second time, I welcomed her. I gave her my name and asked for hers. “Alma,” she said.

“Alma,” I repeated, so others could hear. “Your name is unusual. Where is it from?”

“In Spanish,” she said, smiling, “‘alma’ means ‘the soul.’”

Everything around me lit up then. Of course. The soul. Thank you, Alma. Thank you for reminding me why I was there that day. Thank you for reminding me what all this writing is all about. Thank you for reminding me how important it is that every tongue find its flowers.

It’s like a new life, this season I haven’t seen in Sonoma County in so many years — summer! Bright mornings and long days, blue skies and still-warm evenings when I can watch the moon rise over the highest branches of the redwoods spanning the southeastern sky. Where I live, coastal mists usually drift through the meadows sometimes all through a morning and in time again to put a chill on sunset and draw a blanket over the stars.

In this new life there seems so much possibility. Time is not cornered by names like “Monday,” and the lace of a new spiderweb drawn across two branches of my rose bush is a joy to me. Beauty nourishes my soul and when my soul is fed I can live the way I believe is best — awake and kind and true to myself even if the clock is ticking while I study a new spiderweb beaded with morning dew.

In this new life I understand Mary Oliver’s days and don’t question how she could embrace being a poet against all odds but instead embraced that she was odd — she was a poet! — and all the rest just followed.

This lesson came home to me the other day in a town square park.

I passed a yellow rose bush and followed an urge to inhale the scent of one of its flowers. Not far beyond a man seated on a park bench called out to me, “You dropped something.” Near me, a folded piece of paper fluttered along the grass. “Thank you,” I said, picking up the paper. “That was nice seeing you smell the rose,” he said when I passed him. “Most people don’t take the time.” I noticed his clean-shaven, aging young face, a fat knapsack resting under his arm. “It’s a wonderful rose,” I said, and kept walking. “Have a good evening.” “Not too many of those anymore,” he said, with a sigh. “Girlfriend died last year.”

I wished him well and kept walking, remembering that it’s intention that matters most. I had wished him well. And I was reminded of how we rarely know how our actions will affect others — he was moved by what I did when I didn’t even think about anyone watching and that moment may have lightened one man's heart for a few moments.

It was a good reminder: be true to yourself and the rest will follow. Mary Oliver did it and look what has happened for her and for the rest of us because of it.

Robin Fisher Roffer, CEO of Big Fish Marketing and brand strategist for the entertainment industry and other industry powerhouses, called me one day with a question. Would I help her develop her next book, write her book proposal and ghostwrite the sample chapter for it. Now here was a big player, someone around my age who lived an entirely different life than me, someone with a guest cottage by the backyard swimming pool. You bet I said yes.

A ghostwriter / developmental editor gets to walk in a lot of different people’s shoes. It’s like being an actor: you have to sound like your client (or character), then help them sound even better. It’s how I’ve worked in so many fields when my one field, really, is language. It’s why I could edit The Birds Around Us for Ortho Books at twenty-five, tinkering with the words of renowned ornithologists, like Roger Tory Peterson. Healing the Rift: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Spirituality was a draft of a book proposal when it crossed my desk; Tantra Goddess: A Memoir of Sexual Awakening, was barely a new book idea for Caroline Muir. Now I would be helping create How to Be a Fearless Fish Out of Water, a book about being different and being especially effective because of it.

In ways, every time I start a new book project I am a fish out of water. I have to jump in and swim, translating “unfamiliar” to “new,” and trusting that I can help people find their voice, focus their story, refine their writing, and create a gem out of a rock. I have to get in fast and find and understand the core message, then write or co-create a book that will be everything my client has dreamed. The learning curve can be steep and there’s not usually much time to climb it.

For Robin Fisher Roffer I helped plan The Fearless Fish Out of Water then wrote the proposal and sample chapter that grabbed a William Morris VP; the proposal sold quickly and the book was published in less than a year. The next chance to jump in and swim came with a call from Caroline Muir, co-author of Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving and founder of The Divine Feminine—Awakened Masculine Institute. Could I help her write her memoir? Together, we conceived the narrative to tell the story she wanted told, then wrote the eye-opening book that will hit the stands this November, Tantra Goddess: A Memoir of Sexual Awakening (carolinemuir.com).

The list goes on as I learn from the experts in their field and do what I like best: writing.

Terry Tempest Williams wrote “Why I Write” (published in a collection of narratives on first-person writing, Writing Creative Nonfiction, edited by Philip Gerard). Her list inspired me to write my own.

I write to say hello to myself when the world is quiet and I can hear.
I write to connect with myself when the world is noisy and I can’t hear.
I write to take photographs.
I write to make peace. I write to find answers. I write with the hope of a new view.
I write because it is my first language.
I write to record exchanges that have already vaporized but help me when I remember what was said.
I write to give myself something to hold onto.
I write because just looking and listening isn’t always enough.
I write because the pale green moss clothing the redwood branches outside my window isn’t there for `only one reason any more than the shimmering hummingbird is there for a single reason, pointing its beak into the pink gladiola and beating its wings into a feathery blur.
I write to be a witness to what I have seen.
I write to tell stories that help me understand my life.
I write to give purpose to experiences that seem senseless.
I write because the rain is never just water falling from the sky.
I write because there is no higher moment than when language sends me skybound.
I write because it feels like a warm handshake.
I write because no one is listening and when no one is listening I am free.
I write because it is something I always have and so much is often out of reach.
I write for the scream of it. I write for the whisper of it. I write for the song of it.
I write to tell the story and give it new endings.
I write to take endings and turn them into beginnings.

Why do you write?

I met my writing buddy in 1998, in a writing workshop at a summer conference. We were given a writing prompt and 15 minutes to pour words onto a page before going around the circle to read them aloud. Susan Hagen was a volunteer fire fighter in the nearby town of Freestone, and automobile accidents were the most common calls. She had just been to one a few days before — a motorcycle crash — and she was the only one on the scene until the others could arrive. Her story about it was brutally descriptive and I hung onto every word.

Susan and I lived an hour apart, but we both wanted to write every day and wanted inspiration to do it. We agreed to trade writing prompts every morning five days a week for one year and to write at least 1,000 words each day to email each other by bedtime. The prompts, or "jump starts," we sent each other would be on topics about our lives. On Fridays we’d print out each other’s writings, highlight lines, even words, that struck us most, pen a few praising comments, then mail the envelope.

Susan and I wrote together five days a week for fifty-two weeks. Email was our place for connection, and writing, our lifeline. We didn’t know the color of each other’s eyes or the sound of each other’s laugh, but we knew each other better than sisters do.

Since then, Susan and I have enjoyed over a decade of friendship, witnessing and being a part of each other’s celebrations, trials, and journeys as writers and writing teachers, but something is different for us than with other longtime friends. Because of that single year of writing together every day in total trust and shared privacy, our bond is forever deep no matter how much time passes between visits or conversations.

That is the power of writing.