Life Story Links: December 16, 2025

“After a while in the process, you have some distance and you start thinking of it as a story, not as your story…. [It’s] something that has not just happened to me and my family, but something that’s happened in the world.”
—Edwidge Danticat

vintage postcard with illustration of snow-covered mountain peak mount rainier national park in washington state — Vintage postcard with illustration of Rainier National Park, Mt. Rainier and Paradise Valley, Washington, circa 1930–1945, courtesy Boston Public Library Arts Department, The Tichnor Brothers Collection (postcard originally from Tichnor Bros., Inc., Boston, Mass.).

Moments in memoir

FEEL YOUR WAY
“Your nonfiction or memoir book idea is already forming inside you; you do not need to hunt it down, you only need to listen long enough for it to reveal itself. The moment you feel both a little scared and a little relieved, that is the beginning of an idea that wants to become a book.”

PEOPLE ON THE PAGE
“By writing a memoir that serves as a magnifying glass to my own demons, I am also turning attention toward my mother.”

STORIES FROM LIFE
“I wrote from the heart, with as much honesty as I could. The problem is, you can only tell the truth you know.” Marion Witik on reissuing a memoir she originally considering releasing as fiction.

JUST-BARELY-OUT-OF-REACH
“This is no celebrity memoir. This is a woman extending a long hand and returning with news of her wanderings.” Beth Kephart on Patti Smith’s latest book, and on what the writer craves.

The power of personal storytelling

FINDING SOLACE THROUGH REMEMBRANCE
Because grief never goes fully, away—and is often stirred during the holiday season—I resurface this personal post from my blog every December.

THE COST OF UNSPOKEN STORIES
“Research has long documented that people tend to become more forgiving when they understand the origins of another’s pain. Storytelling allows each to see the other...”

MOSAIC WRITING
“When I tried to write my book the way I thought I was supposed to, in order, in clean arcs, in sustained sessions, I’d shut down. The story felt too big, too close, too alive. I could not stay present long enough to shape it. So I started writing in pieces...”

Miscellaneous

DELVING INTO YOUR LINEAGE
Watching shows like Who Do You Think You Are? can inspire a thirst for knowing about your own family history. Here, one of the show’s genealogists shares her top tips for researching your own genealogy.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN
“As strange and troubling as it may be to put aside our own moral precepts when looking at the past, this is the work of the historian, Bourke said: ‘to unpick the universal experience.’”