Writing about Dark Days as Well as Sunny Times

When we write our memoirs, our narratives about our lives, we need to include the dark days as well as the bright and happy times. 

Our lives are made up of good and bad, fun and not much fun, pain and joy. We all have failures that teach us and we have successes that help us teach others.

I would not like a book that is filled with nothing but bad happenings unless the writer is telling us how she turned those dark times into brightness. In the book, Educated, the author paints a clear picture of her father and mother, and their unusual and sometimes cruel behavior toward their children. It doesn't all come at the reader in one chapter, however. Through the story of her childhood, we see the weird behavior of her father who doesn't want the kids to go to school. He has an absurd fear of education and the outside world. But we see the determination of the author and her brothers to get an education and leave that strange home. The writer shows us the good times as well as the most dangerous and fearful happenings. 

In my life, I don't remember difficult times until I reached fourth grade. From then on, being in school was a trial by fire for me. Only recently have I learned something about myself that has opened a window into that darkness. I was a highly sensitive child, although no one knew that 20 percent of our population is highly sensitive. They have different needs and they experience life differently from others. 

Gay Council - the cutest little girl

In third grade, I lived for the last half hour when Mrs. Chapman read to us from a book called Miss Minerva and William Greenhill published in 1909. Because I enjoyed that book so much, my teacher sent her copy home with me so I could finish it and experience the happy ending. 

I had a big learning experience that year when a fellow classmate and I exchanged notes during class and Mrs. Chapman caught us. I was never so ashamed or afraid of public embarrassment. 

Since she was a good teacher and only wanted to make a strong impression on me to mind her rules, I got off with a note home and a fear that I would have to face the principal. To my relief, it was not even mentioned when I went back to school the next day.

I have written about many of my difficult times as a child and a teenager, but the terrible days in my life, the painful days that I will never forget, are often too painful for me to write about. In my diaries, I wrote about everything, but when I go back to read them and write them, I cry like it was all fresh and new. 

I admire writers like Joyce Carol Oates who wrote a memoir about her husband's illness and subsequent death. My digital friend, Kathy Rhodes, who wrote an excellent memoir about her life after her husband's passing, amazed me with her details and grieving.

I can't write about my Mother with any ability to make my readers see the marvelous person she was and what she became after an aneurysm destroyed part of her brain. I want to write about the person who loved me so tenderly that she hurt when I was sad. I want to tell about this ideal mother who put her children ahead of everything and made many sacrifices for them. She wore the same worn house dresses, never buying herself anything new because she wanted her little girls to look good, and never be shamed by others for their homemade dresses or hand-me-downs. 

Being country girls and living miles from town, we already felt ostracized by others. We could not take part in after-school events because we had to ride the bus home and it didn't wait for anyone. 

Our friends were other country girls who lived on the road that ran past our farm. As little kids, we were allowed to go across the road and through the woods to play with them. Later as teenagers and when I received my driving license, several of us girls would pack into the front seat of Daddy's old truck on Saturday night and drive to Sylvester, a town about ten miles away where we met boys at the skating rink. I never dated a boy from my high school, only boys from other towns. 

Gay and I with our friends across the road and from Acree, the little settlement nearby. We were at the 
county fair held every fall. We were not in Jail.

When we begin our class on January 23, I will give my students suggestions on how to begin a story, what we want to write about, and what we might leave out. I will encourage them to write about both the good and happy times as well as the saddest times in their lives. 

We still have room for a couple more to sign up for this course of three classes online. I use Zoom for my schoolroom. My students sit at home and take part. We make lasting friends in these classes and we all learn how to entertain, enlighten, and inform our readers. 

Join us: Tuesdays, 6 - 8 PM, January 23, 30 and February 13.

Email me at gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com for registration information. Put writing classes in the subject line.

Get motivated to write. Take a class. No one else can write your unique story.