(342  words – 3 min read)

I am happy to announce I have surpassed 100,000 words on my writing journey. During the past year, I have been writing steadily despite the obstacles of life. However, I have been worried whether I wrote judgmentally until I read this: “When I went to my heart, I began to write from a desire to discover and explore my life, rather than to justify and explain it.”

I was very lucky to get to meet so many wonderful people at the Magic of Memoir Conference in Oakland. When I received blog updates from Peter Gibb, a gentleman I truly enjoyed talking to at the event, I was excited to see when his memoir is coming out. Visiting his blog led me to read the essay he wrote that was published in the book “Magic of Memoir”. In this essay, “The Shower and the Fish”, he talks about how he overcame the obstacles of writing and the journey he took to write his memoir “King of Doubt”. The essay is beautifully written but that one sentence really got me. It answered my question to whether I am writing judgmentally or not.

In the journey of memoir writing, we might get trapped in justifying our past. We do get to so many points that we don’t know how to write a part of the story because we blame ourselves or others for the cause of the event. When we put aside rational analysis of the cause, understanding everyone’s role and the dynamic of the situation through our heart, we are able to look at the event compassionately. We can then see what happened rather than why it happened. When the heart uses its compassion, it enables us to look at life non-judgmentally. It helps us to stop blaming all the characters of our story including ourselves. A compassionate heart helps us to see we needed all those characters and all the stupid things we have done to become who we are today, to move forward with less judgement, and to liberate our soul.

Celebrate life!

Shabnam

Editing Credit: M. Curtis

Picture Credit: https://pixabay.com