Your Memoir, the Way You Want It

Reasons and Purposes for Writing Memoirs

In my latest blog post, I share a list of “reasons and purposes” for family reunions, which my father wrote in his journal when he was unable to attend our family reunion this year due to a brief illness. His reflections inspired my staff and me to create a list of reasons and purposes for writing memoirs:

Life review, or looking back as the end of life nears or in the face of a major life change
Self discovery, with writing as a path to identity formation or expansion
Taking pleasure in storytelling and the creative process
Healing, or rewriting/reframing personal history
Offering thanks
Documenting family history
Passing along life lessons
Stating values
Honoring ancestors
Addressing in writing topics that are difficult to talk about
Preserving a life story or legacy to be remembered by loved ones
Presenting oneself as a real person, including flaws, to one’s progeny
Educating readers about historical events
Improving family relationships by offering points of connection or reconciliation, or by trying to explain complexities in a family

These all strike me as honorable, positive reasons and purposes for writing a memoir, and my staff and I agree that the vast majority of writers who come to us with their projects are inspired by such motivations. However, five years ago, when my husband, Sean, and I purchased Modern Memoirs from founder Kitty Axelson-Berry, I was fearful about other, potentially negative reasons and purposes for writing a memoir, such as:

wanting to “set the record straight”
boasting about accomplishments/successes
trying to get others to do what you did to “succeed”
settling the score, or trying to get back at someone
making excuses for your shortcomings
obfuscating facts that might put someone in a bad light, or gaslighting someone who’s been harmed

“Our motto is ‘Your memoir, the way you want it,’” I said to Kitty, “but what if someone wants to publish something that seems truly harmful or objectionable?” Kitty was immensely reassuring, telling me that almost all of her clients’ projects emerged from a spirit of gratitude and generosity. “And if you sense a red flag before someone signs on, you can always say, ‘We are not the right fit,’” she wisely counseled.

Happily, I’ve found Kitty’s positive experience to be true of my own over these past five years, and only once out of hundreds of potential client inquiries have I felt I couldn’t accept a proposed project. And, when a contracted client’s work has veered toward obviously negative or harmful contents, the writing has seemed to come from a place of hurt or fear. In those cases, our sensitive editors have helped writers sort out what they needed to write for themselves versus what they actually wished to publish for others to read. Then, in the few times when manuscripts have gone to print with content that isn’t libelous but may risk opening old wounds or unintentionally hurting others, another piece of advice from Kitty has helped: “Seeing someone’s limited perspective in print might help readers confirm their knowledge of that person, maybe enabling them to stop hoping that person will change, and allowing them to meet the writer where they are.”

Ultimately, isn’t the truest, most basic reason and purpose for writing a memoir the desire to be seen and heard? Ideally, in writing about our own lives, we can see and hear ourselves more clearly, and we can give others the gift of revealing our true selves.

—Megan St. Marie

President

Happy 5th Anniversary to Us!

by Megan and Sean St. Marie

L–R: Company founder Kitty Axelson-Berry, President Megan St. Marie, Vice President Sean St. Marie, and Director of Publishing Ali de Groot toast the St. Maries’ purchase of Modern Memoirs, Inc., five years ago this month on July 16, 2019

In this 30th anniversary year of Modern Memoirs’ founding, this month we are also celebrating the 5-year mark since we purchased the business from founder Kitty Axelson-Berry. This throwback photo is from the day ownership changed to our hands on July 16, 2019. Since then, the company has enjoyed a period of growth, as:

our staff has expanded to add three new employees, Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg, Book Designer Nicole Miller, and Publishing Associate Emma Solis
we’ve engaged over a dozen freelancers
we’ve hosted five interns from three area colleges
and we’ve worked on just under 100 projects with new and returning clients

Please visit the “Celebrating 30 Years!” page on our website to learn more about Modern Memoirs’ history. We are poised to pass the 100-project threshold under our leadership in the coming months, and we invite you to contact us today if you’d like to talk with us about creating a beautiful book of your own as we envision continued growth and success in the coming years.

Featured Blog Posts by Our Staff

Family Reunions at the Homestead, a Place of Our Hearts

by Megan St. Marie

“Someday if I do write a biography of the homestead, there will be at least one chapter devoted to the Lambert family reunion, to record for future generations just how lucky we’ve been to have these gatherings in this very special place of our hearts..."

Read the Full Post

The End: Sometimes Authors Just Don’t Want to Finish

by Ali de Groot

“I’ve been trying to figure out for several decades why some people simply cannot seem to finish writing their memoirs...”

Read the Full Post

Paying Back: A Refugee Kid’s Thank You to America by Robert M. Kaufman, published by Modern Memoirs, Inc. (2013)

From Kindertransport to Doing Good

by Director of Publishing Ali de Groot

In light of Independence Day, it seems appropriate to showcase the book Paying Back: A Refugee Kid’s “Thank You” to America, with its generous yet deceptively informal title. Robert M. Kaufman’s narrative has never ceased to shine in my memory since working with the author in 2013. We have published a number of Holocaust survivor and Holocaust-era books, but this was a first-person account by someone who had been rescued by Kindertransport as a child in 1938.

According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, Kindertransport (“Children’s Transport”) “was the informal name of a series of rescue efforts between 1938 and 1940. These rescue efforts brought thousands of refugee children, the vast majority of them Jewish, to Great Britain from Nazi Germany.” In this way, young Robert Kaufman, separated from his parents at age 9, made it out of Austria to England safely. Within a year or so, he was reunited with his parents and sister and fortunately boarded a ship to the U.S., sponsored by a trustee of The New School in New York City who knew his father’s brother.

In 2012 Bob Kaufman came to Modern Memoirs with much of his life story already transcribed from recordings of talks between him and a friend, recorded in the early 2000s. We interviewed Bob to fill in the gaps, then edited and designed the book. I was drawn to the account of his early years, although the primary focus of the narrative is on his extensive legal career in New York City. On the latter topic, one can read much online, including his work with the New York Office of the Antitrust Division of the DOJ, with Sen. Jacob Javits of New York, on the City Bar’s Civil Rights Committee, and as the president of The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 1986–88, among many other accomplishments.

My first encounter with Bob in person was at his book-release party at one of his favorite restaurants, Le Bernadin, in Midtown Manhattan. It was a private gathering of his close friends, colleagues, and those of us who had worked on creating book with him. He kissed every woman and hugged every man who came to the dinner, a joyous event. A gentleman in every way, he has an unforgettable story. Just a few excerpts from his early years follow:

I remember my mother taking me to a railroad station and saying, “You are going to have a great adventure and a great trip and we're going to wait here for the train.” Then I got on the train and we went all day long and there were only sandwiches to eat. The train was sealed during the entire trip across Germany, and it was only in Belgium that they opened the train and a bunch of women came on board with soup and food and other necessities. We went from Belgium to Holland, and then got on the boat to England. All of the kids got seasick because none of us was used to being on rough water.

…

Susan [my older sister] came on the second or third train in January, but I never saw her from the time I left Vienna until the time we left together for America. She was in a school somewhere else in England.

…

When I first got there [to school in England], Mr. Wheeler [the headmaster] said there is no synagogue in Norwich. On Sundays, he said, some of the boys go to Catholic church and most of the boys go to the Church of England. You can stay at the school or you can go to either one of them, he said. …I knew that Catholic church had music and smelled good, so I said I wanted to go to Catholic church. Then some other boys I was becoming friendly with were going off in the other direction, so I asked if I could go to the Church of England. He said it was OK. So for the rest of the time I was there, every Sunday morning I went to the Norwich Cathedral and Sunday evening to the local parish church.

I always wondered why, when they passed the plate for collection in the parish church, first they’d ask for money for the poor and so forth, and then they’d pass the plate and ask for the “leopards” in Africa. I could never understand why we were collecting money for leopards in Africa, but I wasn’t going to ask. Years and years later, after I went back to the school and the old parish church was closed, there was an old tattered poster on one of the bulletin boards, and it referred to the lepers in Africa.

…

My father had been arrested in 1938 when he was roughly 52 and got out of Dachau, the German concentration camp, in 1939. When we came here, landing in the U.S. on December 30, 1939, he would have been around 53.

…

From the people who made it possible for us to come to America—the man who provided the affidavit to people he had never met, my uncle who pressured my father to get a visa, the families with whom I stayed during the holidays, the professors at Cambridge [UK] who set up the Cambridge Refugee Society—it was the most remarkable group of caring people, people who really don’t get credit—and the human race doesn’t get credit—for the fact that there are incredible people who go out of their way to do good things. And that’s really my feeling about life.

* * *

Postscript: In researching details for this piece, I was saddened to come across the news of Robert M. Kaufman's recent passing, on April 8, 2024.

View All Services

July Question: What is something you appreciate about living in the U.S.?

Write Your Response Here

Staff responses:

Megan St. Marie: The great diversity of people who call our country home, especially recent immigrants, whose faith in our nation inspires hope in me. And, in honor of my youngest sons: baseball!

Sean St. Marie: The National Park system.

Ali de Groot: Coming of age during the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s.

Liz Sonnenberg: Its deep and varied ancestral heritage, because, in the words of a 19th-century genealogist, the history of a nation is “nothing else than the collective history of the families that compose that nation.”

Nicole Miller: Opportunity.

Emma Solis: I can travel within the country and explore a breadth of incredible cultures and landscapes.

Memory Lane Stroll

We’d love to hear your brief personal reflections on the question of the month (at left). Write your response for a chance to be featured in the next edition of our e-newsletter!

A response to our June question: What memorial site would you recommend visiting?

“USS Arizona Memorial & Pearl Harbor.’’

—Terry St. Marie