Nin Mok

Thankful for Memoirs

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

Because November is National Memoir Writing Month and since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, this week’s blog post is dedicated to some of the memoirs I proudly count as part of my personal library. I think memoirs are vital to humankind. And I’m not just saying this because I write memoir and personal essay.

Memoirs are more than books — they are lenses, they are keys, they are light. They help us see, they open doors, they make visible what we didn’t notice and/or understand.

Readers of memoir gain insights and knowledge about situations and experiences they otherwise may never have known about. 

Memoirs promote empathy, allowing readers to get a closer look at diverse author backgrounds and life situations. 

Memoirs can inspire and motivate, comfort and reassure. Within its pages, a memoir speaks to a reader of shared challenges and journeys — you are not alone.

Consider this post, my heartfelt thank you note to the talented authors who bravely shared their stories with the world. 

Some of the memoirs I read this year include:

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

Your True Self is Enough by Susanna Peace Lovell

Glow in the F*cking Dark by Tara Schuster 

Suddenly Silent and Still by Nin Mok

In the photograph above, there are a couple of memoirs I purchased earlier this year but have not yet read:

26 Seconds: Grief and Blame in the Aftermath of Losing My Brother in a Plane Crash by Rossana D’Antonio and

Sit, Cinderella, Sit: A Mostly True Memoir by Lisa Cheek.

 And one memoir, The Taste of Anger by Diane Vonglis Parnell, I read last year when it was published. But, I remember reading early pages of Diane’s manuscript and am so very proud of Diane for getting her story out into the world, that I wanted to include her memoir in this list.

Friends, have you read any memoirs this year? I invite you to share the memoirs you keep thinking about, the memoirs you recommend to readers on a regular basis. I’m always adding to my want-to-read list and would love recommendations.

Please note: I am including a link to buy the books that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.

Suddenly Silent and Still

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I recently finished reading Suddenly Silent and Still: Finding Joy and Meaning Through Illness, a memoir written by Nin Mok. From the back cover: “In a life-changing instant, Nin is thrown into chaos by the onset of sudden hearing loss and violent vertigo.” 

Because Nin and I are Instagram friends, reading this book felt even more like a conversation between the two of us. This is not just a memoir written by some unknown author. This is the story of another woman, another mother, whose life was forever changed by a sudden illness.
 
My copy of Nin’s book is full of sticky notes. Because though our medical conditions vary, though our life circumstances differ, many of the emotions she wrote about really resonated with me. 
This week I’m pleased to share some of the excerpts that most touched me:

“I have no idea why I was certain my turn would come at the end of my life. I imagined being old and frail before discovering I had an incurable disease. I would then be afforded a moment of introspection before being shown the exit, like a happy-go-lucky partygoer who leaves when the music and fun are over. Never once did I imagine that I would have to stick around after the celebration for the long and arduous clean-up.”

“Jet and Jade were five and three when I got ill. They don’t remember their healthy mother, the one who chased them through the parks, raced them to the car, and sang aloud, albeit out of tune. They just know this mother. The one who struggled to make it through the day. Jet and Jade constantly needing my help and attention made my recovery more challenging, but at the same time, they made my recovery possible.”

“And what about all the other vital organs that I had only one of, such as the heart, liver, and brain? What if they suddenly failed too? My once safe world now felt fraught with unavoidable threats.”

“Why me? What did I do to deserve this?”

“My family relied on me as a co-breadwinner to keep a roof over our heads. This was a matter of survival. I was also our home’s central processor, who organised and coordinated our activities. Lives would fall into disarray if I remained incapacitated.” 

“It was this attitude that made me feel insecure about writing this memoir. I questioned whether my suffering was big enough, whether my misfortune was dramatic enough to warrant a book. Ridiculous, really.”

“Trauma has no size. Rather, trauma is like light, capable of filling the entire room regardless of its wattage.”

“I now lived in a world that was no longer made for me; it was made for the able. I no longer felt normal here.”

“The life I had planned, was looking forward to and counting on, was upended for real.” 

“Returning to work would have rubbed the comparison in my face. By keeping every facet of my life exactly as before, I would know for certain that my life had got worse. I would lead the same life, but now as a disabled person. Returning to work would make the downhill trajectory obvious.” 

“Young people were supposed to recover from illness, not remain ill indefinitely. Worse, I couldn’t rest as one might expect a sick person to. I was not retired; my children had not left home. I couldn’t curl up with a good book all day. I still had to put food on the table and my children through school, all while being sick.” 

“I could see the date creeping in from a distance. It marked the unhappy anniversary of my downfall. That date took the life I loved, chewed it up and spat back out something unrecognisable. It was the day I took a tumble and never stood back upright. That dreaded date will forever be remembered.”

“I no longer compared myself to the previous Nin, nor did I keep measuring up to her. I only cared about where I was now, and where I wanted to be, not where the former me wanted to be.”

“I went from feeling unlucky that this happened to me to feeling lucky that only this happened to me.”

Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.