Life story writing creates a passage back to lost loved ones, making them real again and knowing lost loved ones helps us to know ourselves.

This huge life story writing power was driven home to me twice this week. First, during my favourite TV show, Outlander (time travel and historic fiction colliding – what could be better?). Roger, who lost his father as a young lad, says to Brianna:

“I have a few memories of my father … but the reverend told me a story about what he was like as a child. How he made a martin house, but he made the hole too big and a cuckoo got in. It’s a silly story really but he made my father real to me and knowing my father has helped me know myself. Everybody needs a history.”

Roger’s words highlight how through telling and hearing stories, we connect and it’s that connection that we all need and crave.

Later, I was reading Mariella Frostrup’s article in the Good Weekend Magazine about Bono’s (of the band U2) new memoir, Surrender. Bono’s mother died when he was only fourteen and he told Frostrup that writing Surrender brought her to the front of his mind:

“It was beautiful to write my way to her and to find her. The memories were so joyous, all of them.”

Thank you Bono – I have never heard the process of life story writing expressed so meaningfully.

Helping my clients carve that passage back to their loved ones is one of the things that makes me race to work each morning.

Happy holidays to everyone! With love from life story writing land 🌟