Why write memoir?

Every so often I feel sort of guilty about being so enchanted with writing about my life--my childhood, my religion, my heritage, my family, my values, my, my, my, and me, me, me.

However, as a race of people, we are intrigued by our history and by our personal journeys through this life. We write to preserve our experience, and we write to understand and make peace with our past, and we write to share what we've learned.

Anne Lamott writes: "There is a door we all want to walk through, and writing can help you find it and open it. Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can help you wake up." (Bird by Bird, 1995)


Prompt: What "door" to the past do you want to open?