The first draft of my memoir was overwritten and empty, all underpainting without meaning. The next drafts brimmed with plot and crime scenes, but these too were all content without reflection. I read books on the craft of writing; and still, my story unraveled. I stumbled over words, each draft worse than the one before it.
I slammed my computer shut. If it was meant to be, writing memoir wouldn’t be this hard. Why relive my wounds, draft after draft. Let her rest in peace.
What I didn’t understand then is that a blank page for memoirist is an invitation to go deeper. It’s an invitation to reflect, to process, to grieve. I had focused on the content of my memoir in excruciating detail. On what happens next. On the “crime scenes.” But memoir is more than a list of things that have happened. It’s an exploration into the depths of who we are, into our very identity.
Like the mythological La Loba who gathers bones scattered across the mountainside and brings her creature to life through her song, so too, the memoirist searches for all her lost and exiled parts. She gathers the younger versions of herself to her bosom—in all their sadness and shame. She enters a deep cave of intuition and reflection, stepping deeper and deeper into grief. This is the hardest part of the process. The dark night of the soul. The blank page starting at you, all these parts desperate to be made whole again.
Before she sings, La Loba reconstructs the bones into a complete skeleton. This gathering, this assembling, this naming. Trust the process. When the memoirist sits a while without turning away, asking her scared six-year-old self what she needed, what she wanted to say but couldn’t because she was too afraid, too alone, too unseen—this is when the tears flow. This is when the story unfolds. The song echoing and reverberating through the cave is what makes the skeleton whole.
Ten years passed before I listened.
I returned to my memoir not to indulge in my trauma but as a creative act of healing. It is daunting, scary, at times excruciating—but I don’t journey alone. Relinquishing my self-reliance, I call on compassionate guides and coaches, the spirit of La Loba. Each one offers their presence, their righteous anger, their lamentations.
We grieve and sing, together.
My memoir flows now, upswells really—not from grit and tenacity, but from tending and community.
The more I give words to younger versions of myself, the more integration and wholeness I experience. This is the beauty and power of memoir writing. As we journey further into our stories, we not only remember who we were—we choose who we want to be. We bless old patterns that once protected us and no longer serve us. We grieve our wounds and losses. And in this process, we remember who we always were before we forgot. We create ourselves anew.
Anique Mautner is an author, yoga instructor, and storywork coach for memoir writers, offering strength and kindness to her clients as they embody their stories of trauma and tend to their broken hearts.
*For further reading about La Lova, see Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola Estés.