On Writing My Memoir

For most of my life I longed to read a personal account by a woman whose mother died at a similar age to me. I wished to find myself, or a friend, in the pages of somebody’s story, to learn of their journey out of childhood and into womanhood without a mother. My memoir BRIEFLY I KNEW MY MOTHER explores how my mother’s prolonged illness, and death when I was eleven, shaped the course of my life and made me who I am today.

I’ve had some impactful realizations recently and these insights will improve what I’ve already written. They’ll clarify things for the reader as they have for me. This is how it is with writing. Especially memoirs. Since I believe in divine-timing maybe I needed to get to this place before my book was really ready. At the beginning I believed I was writing the memoir for Mam. I think she’d be proud of it, and I write it in her memory, but the story is mine. And the book is for readers who, for some reason or another, will find value in what I share. Mothers and daughters will recognize themselves – and each other – in these pages. It will resonate with fathers of motherless children, caregivers, teachers, therapists, and anybody who knows a grieving or suffering child.

It’s a lot of work to write a book, and there are many things I’d change about the process if I was to begin again. For one thing I’d make sure I had someone, a therapist maybe, to talk to while doing these emotional deep dives into my past. It has taken years for me to get to this place, and now I’m ready. Maybe 2023 is the year!

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~ Maya Angelou

Carmel Breathnach is a writer and former school teacher born in Ireland and living in Portland, Oregon. She holds a B.A. degree in English literature and Irish language studies from NUI Maynooth, and a Graduate Diploma in Education with honors from St. Patrick’s College, Dublin. Her writing centers on childhood grief and the long-term impacts of early mother loss. Carmel’s work has appeared in the New York Times, The Irish Times, Huffington Post, Upworthy, Scary Mommy, Voice Catcher, Modern Loss, Pendemic.ie, The Good Men Project, the anthology Hidden Lights: A Collection of Truths Not Often Told and on the National Alliance for Children’s Grief (NACG) website. She is currently querying her memoir titled Briefly I Knew My Mother.

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