What I'd Tell Myself (A One-moment Memoir)

There I was, lying on the acupuncturist's table, needles sticking out of my feet, legs, wrists, stomach, and forehead, trying to follow the suggestion that I breathe deeply and clear my mind, but my mind kept wandering to and fro, not anywhere very interesting, mostly to the land of to-do-lists. But then, without fanfare, I saw myself -- not the me lying on the table, but the 16-year-old version of me, my permed hair down to my shoulders, my pink glasses taking up most of my face, my long-sleeved purple tie-dyed shirt too big for my small frame. This wasn't a floaty, out-of-body experience. I didn't feel like I was time traveling or astral projecting or even having a particularly epiphanic moment. My mind had simply wandered there based the conversation I'd had with the acupuncturist before she stuck me and left the room. She'd asked me about grief, explained how it can show up in the physical body. I'd told her that I've lost some things -- not people, but beliefs, certain ways of understanding and being in the world. When I was 16, I developed a very particular worldview, and then around the age of 30, I lost it. I've been grieving that loss ever since, trying to come to terms with a never-ending loop of "what now?" So all of this was on my mind as I focused on my breathing and tried to clear my thoughts. And just like that, I saw the me I was before I'd lost the me I'd been. I imagined sitting down with younger-me, and saying...what? I have no idea. If this kind of time travel were really possible, what would that conversation be? Would I go back and tell myself that it all comes crashing down? Or maybe I could ask my younger self to give me something to believe in, something to take back to the future with me, something to hold on to until I caught up with myself. In my mind, I sat with my younger self for a few moments, each of us looking at the other with some amusement and confusion, and a surprising amount of love. There are things we want to tell each other, I'm sure of it. But we're just not sure the other is ready to hear them.

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"One-moment Memoirs" (formerly known as "Everyday Essays") are short pieces that capture a moment in time.

I've been writing these shorts for a few years, and now I've developed a guide to walk you through the process of writing your own.

Some experiences beg us to write about them, but we often feel overwhelmed when trying to capture the whole story at once. One-moment Memoirs (OMM) is a step-by-step process to guide you through discovering and telling your life's stories (big and small) in bite-sized pieces (perfect for blog posts and short essays). By using writing prompts and exercises designed to help you connect with the heart of your story, we'll dig into the details of a single moment. You'll then use what you find in that moment to write your very own one-moment memoir.

If you'd like to be among the first to know when One-moment Memoirs launches, please join The Word Cellar mailing list.

Comments

[Jenny Ryan]

Oh, yay-can't wait!

[Rae]

I cannot wait! This is just what I am looking for at this moment in my life.

[Kimberley McGill]

First, this: "I sat with my younger self for a few moments, each of us looking at the other with some amusement and confusion, and a surprising amount of love." Yep. That.

Second: YAY! I love the concept of OMM. LOVE IT!