Memoir - a way of keeping a loved one alive

Before I had any inkling that I would write my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living withHer Son’s Bipolar and Surviving His Suicide, I wrote to keep the memory of my oldest son Paul alive. It was almost an obsession. I continually wrote down everything I could remember. I didn’t want to forget one thing about him.

Possibly his last photo

It turns out my notes and journal entries were a huge help when I began to put my memoir together. My journals – even short entries – informed and rounded out my writing immensely. What else is memoir but memories?

Here is a list of memories I wrote down in the early days after Paul’s death. I’m especially glad to have them this month – my birthday month – one of the times I miss him the most.

• I’ll always remember he slept without closing his eyes all the way
• I’ll always remember he walked fast and way ahead of us
• I’ll always remember he had long, thick, black eyelashes surrounding clear blue eyes
• I’ll always remember he played the piano, legs crossed at the knees, leaning way down over the keyboard
• I’ll always remember he liked to wear second-hand clothes and didn’t mind if they were ripped
• I’ll always remember the way he stood at the pantry door munching almonds
• I’ll always remember he liked to climb—trees, rocks, up the highest diving boards
• I’ll always remember he was meticulous about his things
• I’ll always remember he could play almost any tune by ear
• And that he was always a loner
• And how much he loved Janet
• And wasn’t hugged enough after she left him
• I’ll always remember he was sensitive
• I’ll always remember he drove too fast and erratically
• I’ll always remember he got lots of parking tickets
• I’ll always remember he was in love with John Lennon
• I’ll always remember he liked Doc Marten shoes
• I’ll always remember he tapped his foot when he sat down
• I’ll always remember seeing him on the stone stoop drinking coffee at Starbucks
• I won’t ever forget the feel of his cool pale skin the last night I saw him
• Or the sound of his voice
• I’ll always remember his hair was thick
• I can’t forget he knew all the nursery rhymes by the time he was two
• I’ll always remember that he and his brother called the back of the station wagon, “the really back”
• I’ll always remember he loved to fish.

Why I journal

I just spent an hour with my friend and fellow journal writer, @DawnHerring chatting about journaling #JournalChat. Dawn hosts these Twitter chats every Thursday at two o’clock Pacific time. I hadn’t participated for the last few weeks, so it was good to be back today. The topic was Take Action. Before I get into that here’s a bit about my journaling history.

When I was in grade school I had one of those little leather (or faux leather) bound diaries that had a tiny key. Mine was a 5-year diary so I wrote down in teeny script my daily events. I think my parents must have thrown it out when they sold our house and moved to California because I never saw it again after I went away to college.

I journaled in fits and starts over the next forty years or so. I kept a journal when we lived in the South Pacific during the seventies, and some of those journal entries became a magazine article about our island adventures.

However, I began journaling regularly when my son Paul was diagnosed as bipolar in 1993 and after his suicide in September 1999. Writing became my therapy. It became a habit, and as it turned out, writing through my grief totally turned my life around. My journal entries during that period became the basis for my memoir Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide.

The page was always ready for my tears, my rants, my sorrow, my complaints, and my thoughts and ideas. And it still is. I journal regularly – at least every other day – usually on the days I don’t blog.

Also, I used to journal in long hand in a notebook. Now  I use the computer – the notebook went by the wayside after I left one on an airplane. The computer gives me the ability to have complete privacy – the key to honest and truthful journaling. I keep my journal entries in a password-protected locked document file.

Getting back to the Take Action journaling topic. It’s designed for us to take power and move from thinking into living and doing - not just waiting for things to happen to us. I like to make lists while I’m journaling. I regularly write down what I’ve accomplished in the past week or so, and I write down what I have to do in the next few days. This gives me a chance to revisit what commitments I’ve made, and which I should or shouldn’t be doing. Since I’m the one who’s made the commitment, I get to decide whether or not to weed some of them out. Of course I have to consider my accountability as well. Having an action journal holds me accountable – even if I’m only accountable to myself. However, an action can be as simple as writing something down and considering what I have written.

Of course there are other ways to journal, and I plan to go into some of them in the future. In the meantime it suffices to say that I find journaling very rewarding. And I love having a little group I can share with about the different ways to accomplish it.

WOW blog tour stop No. 14

A perfect segue to my blog post on marketing yesterday…

Today Women’s Memoirs has posted my answers to their questions about:

MEMOIR, BLOGGING AND PLATFORM BUILDING
 Marketing and Promotion on the Internet.

http://bit.ly/kp6bAC

They say, “As many of you well know, at Women’s Memoirs we are as interested in the marketing efforts that go into the promotion of a new memoir as we are in the actual writing. After all, in most cases, writing the book is only half the job. We need to get our work into the hands of readers. We need a platform to which we can draw potential readers and a variety of tactics for making our presence known.”

And they are so right. I’m finding the marketing of the book as much work or even more work than the writing.

I am so grateful to Kendra Bonnet and Matilda Butler for inviting to post on their wonderful Women’s Memoir site today about my book marketing experience so far and on June 22 when I answered questions about how writing a memoir helped me heal after my son Paul’s suicide in 1999. 

http://bit.ly/koJPP8

Kendra and Matilda have been most generous and caring with my story. Thank you so much to you both!

And another big thank you to Robyn Chausse and Jodi Webb at WOW Women on Writing for arranging my amazing blog tour.

WOW blog tour stop No. 10

I am so excited to be the guest blogger on Women’s Memoirs  today. Thank you Robyn and Jodi of WOW-Women on Writing for arranging this stop for me.

Kendra and Matilda of Women's Memoirs asked me a series of questions about journaling and writing my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, as they related to my path to healing after my son Paul's suicide. The post not only has my answers and recommendations for other women who need to find ways to heal, they've posted photos of Paul and our family and a wonderful piece of Paul's music played by him. The music player is inserted right there on the blog.


Please take a look at this wonderful and useful blog to writers of all genres.

http://womensmemoirs.com/memoir-book-reviews/memoir-book-discussion-leaving-
the-hall-light-on-by-madeline-sharples/