Your Memoir, the Way You Want It | | | |  | |
Checking In: On Needs and Wants, Appreciations and Obstacles
At the start of the year, Director of Publishing Ali de Groot asked me if we could add a brief “check-in” to the start of our regular team meetings. She suggested that each week everyone could briefly state a need, a want, an appreciation, or an obstacle they were facing. I thought this was a great idea. Although it’s a running joke that I nearly always forget to actually do the check-in when I start our meetings, I’m always glad when someone reminds me and we take a moment to listen to one another and to share of ourselves.
Sometimes the needs and wants we state are practical, while others are more personal. Our appreciations tend to be for each other and for our clients. Obstacles can arise from challenges in balancing family needs and work life, or sometimes from managing complications at different phases of client projects. In every case, however, our check-ins invite us to voice thoughts and feelings that might otherwise be lost in the busyness of our work together. In other words, these small moments let us regard each other as not just colleagues, but as whole human beings.
I don’t mean to say that before our check-ins started we disregarded each other’s humanity. But to a person, everyone on our staff is efficient, diligent, and dedicated. Given these qualities, how easy it could be to power through our workdays without really seeing each other or being seen. While jargon on resumés and in recruitment materials tends to value an “ability to work in a fast-paced team environment” (and I do think everyone at Modern Memoirs achieves that goal), I know we benefit from slowing down our pace to mutually reflect on our work and our lives, however briefly.
Such reflection is the stuff of memoir writing, which, of course, entails a process far longer than a “check-in.” But I think the prompts that Ali suggested for the start of our team meetings could prove good fodder for writers. What do you need or want at this stage in your life? And earlier? How were those needs and wants met or unmet? What obstacles have you faced, or do you face now? What or whom do you appreciate? Take a moment, if you can, and jot down some thoughts inspired by these questions. Then when you’re ready, check in with us if you’d like help turning your personal reflections into a book of your own.
Megan St. Marie
President
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[Stock image of purple fabric from Constant Contact]
“Far from keeping people living in the past, nostalgia can be a powerful resource both for coping with difficult times and for propelling us positively into the future,” said Erica Hepper, a lecturer of psychology at the University of Surrey in England and the author of multiple nostalgia-related studies. “Nostalgia is part of the fabric of everyday life.”
—Daryl Austin, “When Looking Back Helps Us Move Forward, Or How Nostalgia Can Be Good,” The Washington Post, 8/21/22
Thanks to company founder, Kitty Axelson-Berry, for sharing the Washington Post article quoted above. We love what it says about the power of nostalgia, and we invite you to read the rest of the article at the link below:
Link Here
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Featured Blog Posts by Our Staff | |
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A Comic, a Bomb, and an Essay:
Finding Stories in My Abuela’s Stuff
By Publishing Intern Emma Solis
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Reflections from Client
Dr. Robert Dillard
Interview by Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg
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Four Connor Generations in South Carolina, 1790–1920 by Joyce M. Bowden (publ. 2013) | |
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Take a Walk
by Ali de Groot, Director of Publishing
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This anecdote doesn’t have anything to do with the book but with the way a client can stay with me long after a book is finished. Joyce Bowden walked into my office one day, saying, “Help me make a book out of this.” She carried a leather briefcase and a 5-foot-long tube, the kind that holds rolled-up papers. It was about her height. She proudly unveiled several vintage maps of South Carolina that were too large to fit even the largest table at hand. After a few hours of our pondering, brainstorming, and other productive discussion, she packed up her maps and papers and we said goodbye.
I decided to walk her to her car down the street. Joyce, about 70 years old, walked briskly, the long tube in her arms bobbing up and down. “It’s a Zipcar,” she said when we arrived at a small red Toyota. “I sold my car when I discovered I had back problems—shouldn’t sit for long periods of time. Moved into the city and now I walk everywhere. When I need to drive, I just rent a car!” (I was impressed; this type of hourly rental car was a new phenomenon at the time.)
Twenty years younger than this wise woman, I took her words as gold. My back issues had put me out for months, and I was constantly in physical therapy to maintain my health. “I want to be like Joyce in twenty years. I want to be like her now!” I made a vow to myself.
Her book was completed a year or two later, a 354-page genealogical masterpiece with 745 footnotes and endnotes, 75 images, 10 genealogy charts, and 13 custom maps. But more importantly, I can always feel a hint of Joyce by my side whenever I walk briskly down the street, wherever I am.
|  | Custom map of Abbeville, Greenwood, and Laurens counties in South Carolina. Back cover of Joyce Bowden’s book. |
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August Question:
What is a memory that brings up nostalgia for you?
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Staff responses
Megan St. Marie: Midday Sunday dinners at my grandparents’ house—a tradition I’ve recently revived in my home.
Sean St. Marie: Playing soccer and baseball with my high school buddies.
Ali de Groot: Singing karaoke with my friends on our birthdays every year during the early 2000s.
Liz Sonnenberg: Music from the 1970s always triggers nostalgia for days when I was just a kid—when there were no worries, and summer seemed to last forever.
Nicole Miller: Visiting the Thornton Burgess house/museum in Sandwich, Massachusetts when I was a child.
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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!
[Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay]
Response to our July question:
What are some special names for grandparents or other elders in your family?
My sister Catherine and I spoke French as our first language. One day, when were were preschoolers, we saw our maternal grandfather and his father approaching the front door of our home, and we cried out in delight, “Mamma, c’est Gros Pépère et Petit Pépère!”
—Ray Lambert
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Stop by to see us in person or online:
495 West Street, Suite 1C
Amherst, MA 01002
www.modernmemoirs.com
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