Several years ago, I started teaching memoir writing classes. I quickly learned that most of the men and women who attend my classes have lived through some kind of trauma, and feel they simply must tell their stories, which are astounding. Fathers murdering mothers, oppressive religious cults, terrorist bombing, sociopath husbands, pedophile priests. The list, I have come realize, is as long as people’s lives are varied.
Strangely, students often worry that even with all the abuse, addiction, poverty, and violence they have endured, their stories are not really worth telling. There is so much suffering and drama in the world, that they wonder why anyone would care about theirs. So, I begin each class by assuring them that it is not possible to lead a less interesting life than mine. This, of course, is only partly true. My life holds great interest for me–that’s why I lead it. It’s just that my life has, from a certain angle, been relatively trauma-free. The worst thing that happened to me was writing a bunch of books I couldn’t publish, feeling–at times–like a failure. That’s it, really. No sexual abuse, no alcoholism, no suicide attempt, no homelessness. Just worrying that I might never know success.
Does this make it harder to teach writing to students who have lived through such headline-worthy experiences? Not at all. In fact, probably just the opposite. The worst thing a storyteller can believe is that his story is not worth telling: a belief almost always rooted in the notion that there is a hierarchy of suffering. Stories, after all, grow from conflict and challenges, from grief and fear, from loss. What if some grief is greater than some other, some loss greater than other loss? Would not the greater grief or loss be more worthy of a story?
To believe this suggests a fear that some lives, by comparison, are more worthy of being lived. If I have learned anything from teaching memoir writing it is that–in the end–all suffering is equal. Either I accept that life is inherently kind, or I don’t; either I accept that I am worthy of love or not. There is no hierarchy suffering, there is just the degree to which I reject kindness and love.
I know this because of the pain I inflicted on myself in those years when I felt like a great failure. I could send myself into a pit of unhappiness despite my marrying a woman I loved, raising two boys I adored, living in a comfortable home, and working a job that left me plenty of time to write. It didn’t matter. My mind can cross any threshold of pain in search of what I believe I need to be happy.
I thought of this when I interviewed the author Stephen Mitchell, who is best known for his translations of the Tao. He began studying, earnestly, in his twenties while living in Providence (post-breakup with a woman he had been seeing). As he told it, studying the Tao saved him from a depth of despair he had not known before or after. This is a fairly common story for spiritual authors and teachers like Stephen. Like his wife, Byron Katie, Eckart Tolle, or Gary Zukav, Stephen found himself compelled to go in a different direction after having hit an emotional bottom.
What I found unusual about his story–at least to me–centered around how banal I found it. I had grown up in Providence where I, too, suffered many ‘dumps’ by many girls and young women. For a time, all my relationships ended that way. Yet none of those breakups undid me. I got over them. I certainly didn’t believe being dumped meant anything about me or my value. Eventually, something turned and I was the one ending all my relationships until I met the woman to whom I’ve been married for the last 26 years.
This is why I love Stephen’s story so much. I know, experientially, that getting dumped simply means that the other person recognized that the relationship wasn’t working, first. That’s it. But I also know that suffering has very little to do with our circumstances. Rather, our pain always comes from what we tell ourselves about them. And if someone says, “I can’t live with you anymore,” and I believe this means no one would want to live with me, again, or that I am unlovable, or simply that I will never be happy again–then I will absolutely suffer. What could be worse than a life without happiness? I can’t think of anything, frankly. If I knew I’d never be happy, again. I’d kill myself. What’s would there be to live for?
By the way, I have also learned that almost every memoirist is telling more or less the same story, which goes something like this: I thought I couldn’t, but I could. I thought I wasn’t, but I was. This is everyone’s story. No storyteller should worry that some version of their story has been told before. We can’t hear this story often enough. We’re all on the same journey, learning the exact same thing. Though our circumstances and scenery are a little different, suffering and relief remains the same. It’s what connects and what makes us human.
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About William Kenower
William Kenower is the author of Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt, Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence, Write Within Yourself: An Author’s Companion, and the Editor-in-Chief of Author magazine. In addition to his books, he’s been published in The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, Edible Seattle, Parent Map, and has been a featured blogger for the Huffington Post.
