Are you writing a memoir? Many, many people are.
Did you know that there are different types of memoirs? There are the family legacy, personal struggle, military, spiritual, nostalgia, coming of age, travel, occupational, healing/recovery, self actualization, self help, tell-all and near-death memoirs. While some memoirs are meant simply to share a story, others become somewhat interactive, such as memoirs written in the self-help or how-to style.
Is your memoir designed to teach, inform, lead, help or just entertain? Often the memoir is more for the author—a way of remembering, purging or healing. In some cases, the author isn’t interested in anything other than telling his or her story and they believe others might be interested in reading it.
I wrote a memoir once. It’s called Quest for Truth and it is what I call a situational spiritual memoir. It is a story occurring during a period of my life—something impactful that happened in my life. In fact, it was rather life-changing.
It all started when I agreed to write a book about the work a local hypnotherapist, Don Clark, was doing in past-life regression therapy. He chose me for this assignment because I was
a local writer of note and because I had no previous experience within the realm of metaphysics. He said he wanted a fresh, unbiased approach to the way the material would be presented in this book.
I began my research by observing Clark’s hypnotized clients work through emotional and physical crises via past-life regression therapy. I interviewed these clients later to determine the true effectiveness of their sessions. I researched some of their supposed past lives to discover whether these people actually existed. And I reluctantly succumbed to hypnosis myself in an attempt to better understand the process.
More amazing to me than the supposed past lives I experienced—a hooker in San Francisco, a monk in Scotland, a teacher on the lost continent of Atlantis, an outcast transvestite Indian… and the research I did to prove the existence of these lives—was the personal transformation taking place as a result of my using hypnosis.
It was the calming effect hypnosis had on my usually high-speed system that motivated me to learn self-hypnosis. And I began to use it in ways that ultimately changed my life.
I discovered that through self-hypnosis, I could change my attitude at the snap of two fingers, turning failure into success both in business and socially. I found I could heal my relationships through karmic release—forgiveness—and let go of those relationships that no longer belonged in my life. I’ve also performed some amazing physical healings on myself, others and animals.
Through the use of self-hypnosis, I’ve exchanged a lifelong tendency to blame for newfound trust and forgiveness. I love more than I fear. I no longer harbor anger until it starts eating away at me, but I experience it and then release it. I more easily recognize when I’m receiving a nudge from God (intuition) rather than from my ego.
Well, after working with Don for eight months, he suddenly died. With no reason now to write his book, I stored all of my notes away, but I continued to use the techniques he taught me. About eight months later, when I realized how profoundly my life had changed because of what Don Clark had taught me, I decided to write my own book.
Most fascinating are the incredible hypnotic accounts of past lives and my telling research to verify that these individuals lived.
Quest for Truth is available at my website as well as Amazon.com and through many other sources. http://www.matilijapress.com/questpage.html