Memoir writing was not a phrase I heard of until I had started writing my diary notes into what I hoped would become a book. I am still writing my memoir. Over the past three years, I have realised, memoir writing is not as simple as writing a diary. There are people you can hurt when you memoir write. There are things and events and people you can forget and when you try to get information, there is none, those people you need are gone, they are dead, or moved or do not want to discuss things of the past.

I find memoir writing to exhilarating, although at times it is sad, humiliating and full of anxiety. I don’t want to live through some of these things again when I write about them. But, I remind myself, I am memoir writing and everything or most of it is now in the past.