Recommended reading Archives - Write My Memoirs

How Dolly Parton Wrote About Her Life Without Revealing Everything

August 27, 2026 by Rosanne Ullman

Dolly’s Masterclass in Coy Memoir

Who isn’t sad that Dolly Parton has died? Apart from the music, movies, interviews and philanthropy, Dolly Parton also left a memoir collection. But even with four books about her life, she still managed to avoid revealing everything. In fact, “coy” is a word some observers use about Dolly’s manner of answering questions without telling you what she doesn’t want you to know. She told one interviewer that her mother advised her to always keep a piece just for herself.

Dolly was inclusive and a vocal supporter of LGBTQ, but conservatives still loved her. Women related to her despite that, between implants and subsequent reductions, by her own tally she’d spent more than $1 million on her breasts. Neither group seemed to mind that she carried on flirtations and more all the while with a loyal husband at home.

Thanks to personal songs like “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You,” movies like “Steel Magnolias,” and TV appearances, we felt we knew Dolly. We liked her self-deprecating style mixed with blonde-girl bravado, her hillbilly accent alongside enormous wealth, her extreme generosity coming out of a budget that included line items for wigs, plastic surgery, shoes and outfits that none of us could begin to afford.

But did we know her? She never endorsed candidates or talked about political parties, we never heard names of men attached to her, and at the end we didn’t know she had cancer. Earlier this month, Dolly released a video telling her fans that she was attending to her improving health but couldn’t tour or travel yet. I saw that video a week or so before her death, and I fully believed she was getting better.

Yet she wrote four books in the memoir space! In 1994 at age 48, Dolly Parton authored her full autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, tracing her early lean years growing up in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains through the dawn and progression of her career, her marriage, and her general thoughts on life. Getting creative with the memoir genre, she next released Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, a 2020 effort to explain her life in the context of 175 of her songs, including background for some of the storylines. She tackled her distinctive image and signature fashion style with her 2023 book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones. Then just last year, My Life on Stage was Dolly’s photo and text account of touring and performing.

The Dolly Dodge

If you want to write a memoir without revealing all of your secrets, you can study Dolly’s methods for keeping details close to the vest. One trick is to stay away from timelines and structure your memoir as a series of undated and largely independent stories from your life. Use humor to deflect. Tighten the writing and make your book a page-turner so people don’t notice what you’re not including.

Will that work? Probably not. If you’re not a celebrity, people aren’t waiting on the edge of their seat to read your memoir. The secrets, the hushed whispers throughout your life, are your best bet for getting your memoir published. Omitting them will keep you at arm’s length from the very readers you want to attract.

Still, a lot of memoir authors want to avoid libeling or hurting people. If that is your goal, I suggest you do take a look at Dolly Parton’s record of talking and writing about herself. In her world of music and acting and being a great person everyone loved, Dolly had a knack for staying private in some ways. The work she leaves becomes a masterclass you might want to check out.

To end this, I’ll join everyone else who’s been writing about Dolly: I will always love you, Dolly. Thanks for everything you gave us.

Here’s the One Word Holding You Back from Writing or Completing Your Memoir—

June 23, 2026 by Rosanne Ullman

Young woman hiding her face behind a black trash bag

And one sentence that will motivate you to start again.

Doubts are familiar territory to memoir authors, and they can occur at any and all points in the process. You’re either hoping to start writing your memoir, in the middle of writing it, or finished and maybe in the editing, publishing or marketing stage. Even if you’re in that final phase, you may be doubting whether anyone will want to read your story, and that uncertainty and insecurity can stop you in your tracks and keep you from completing your memoir. I am going to share the secret sentence that will motivate you to continue, and I’ll try to get you over the one word holding you back from connecting your memoir to readers. Just one word has the power to freeze you mid-project.

Alone or Not?

We live our lives in isolation in the sense that we know only our own truth. Our reality is ours alone; each of us has a separate and distinct existence with experiences that are unique because they happen in a moment at a location with specific people and, most of all, to that one human that we know as “me.”

But how many people are out there in the world? More than 8 billion. They’re all human, all somewhere between birth and death, many living under conditions similar to yours. There’s no reason to feel small; we each account for one important person in that sea of humanity. But there is a reason to pause and think about our uniqueness.

The Birthday Problem

A little math. I’m no math whiz and don’t understand why what I’m about to tell you is true, so hang in there with me. What’s referred to as the “birthday problem” illustrates how coincidences are more likely than we intuitively expect. This first part is easy math: with 365 days in the year, the chances are only 1 in 365 that a random person you meet shares your birthday. And yet it takes only 23 random people in a room to increase those odds to 50 percent that two will have the same birthday. It’s a paradox involving probability and various mathematical concepts too advanced for my little brain. But there it is, just 23 people for it to be 50/50 that you might run into someone with your birthday.

With that in mind, think about whatever is your biggest reveal in your memoir. Is that what’s making you doubt the desirability of your story? It may be a family secret or an avoidable mistake or an embarrassing medical condition. Perhaps your book is the first time you’ve shared your story with anyone, much less everyone. Now think of the 8 billion people and the birthday paradox. Certainly someone out there has been through what you’ve been through.

And that relatability is one reason you’re writing the memoir, right? Because somewhere in your mind you know that people will not only empathize but relate to the way you’ve faced your challenges. That’s the whole point for some memoir authors: to help the next person facing the same difficulties.

Finally, the Reveal

So the sentence that will motivate you to keep writing is this: You are not unique. You are not alone in this. Other people recognize your struggles. They’ve experienced them or know someone who has. And the word that will free you if you neutralize it is: Shame. There is no shame in however you handled a situation. There is no shame in the fact that something terrible happened to you or someone did something offensive to you.

Without making sweeping generalizations, I think the shame can play out differently for men as compared with women. Jordan Ritter Conn’s new book, American Men, follows the stories of four men who hadn’t previously let their guard down to talk about their challenges. Conn concludes that men don’t like feeling, much less showing, vulnerability. They compartmentalize, shove thoughts away from their conscious thinking, never talk about aspects of themselves even to the people they love most. Back to coincidences, actor Andrew McCarthy also has a new book—Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America—that tackles more or less the same topic.

Women have been conditioned to feel ashamed of all sorts of things. If they were sexually assaulted, it can become a big secret and they even can feel responsible for causing the crime by, for example, letting a man in their house. They can feel ashamed of sexual feelings of any variety, or of having ambition, failing as a mother, succeeding in a nontraditional industry, and on and on. Men can have shame around these same issues, and with their fear of vulnerability it can be doubly tough to get past the shame.

In Good Company

Writing a memoir is therapy. It helps you cut through shame. It gets you comfortable with feeling vulnerable. And when readers assure you that you’re not unique in the experiences you describe, you’ll feel a freedom that will be worth every minute you’ve spent writing.

Tips from A Selection of Memoir-Writing Blogs

May 1, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Top Memoir Blog badge for Write My Memoirs

With the Write My Memoirs blog ranked #4 among memoir-writing blogs, let’s look at what the rest are advising memoir authors.

When FeedSpot notified me that it had ranked the Write My Memoirs blog fourth among all online memoir-writing blogs, of course I went to FeedSpot to take a look. And there it was. I didn’t pay these people or do anything out of the ordinary, so fourth sounds pretty nice to me. Then I became curious: what are the other blogs like? If you’re equally curious about the advice other bloggers are giving memoir authors, to save you time I’ve curated tips from a selection of memoir-writing blogs on FeedSpot’s list.

Some of the memoir-writing blogs I went through mostly provide the blogger’s review of books and even movies. I’m not interested—I’ll go to Goodreads if I want reviews. But some do give advice the way I do, anticipating what memoir authors need to help them produce their books. I chose four to share some of their tips with you.

Marion Roach Smith

Seasoned writer and memoir coach Marion Roach Smith has roughly 2,500 social media followers, so I understand why Feedspot awarded her blog the top spot. Her strategy is to interview published writers to get their answers to questions such as how to keep faith in your own ideas. I think these are more or less transcripts from her podcast. But a recent blog post, “In Praise of Humility in Memoir,” departs from that pattern as Smith shares her own views.

From that blog post: “My father, a fine sportswriter, used to say that you should try to write everything like a letter home, a suggestion that’s both graceful and correct. In a letter home you rarely tell those people who raised you how very great you are, or right you are, or unique. You tend to write about the ideas you are trying on, or the things you’ve tried and failed; how scared you are, or how lonely.”

I think that’s pretty good advice, although that last sentence uses the semicolon incorrectly. In a sense, a memoir is a very long letter. Even if you view your book as part memoir and part self-help book, readers don’t want a pompous author crowing about success. As you may remember, I listen to a lot of celebrity memoirs. So the authors are, by definition, famous and usually incredibly talented and good at what they do. But the enjoyable memoirs are the ones that focus more on their insecurities, flaws and failed attempts.

Memoir Writers Network

Occupying the #2 spot is a blog that is updated only every six months or so. I have nothing against book author Jerry Waxler, owner of Memory Writers Network, but I’m not sure why a blog with such infrequent posts qualifies for that rank. Also, I noted some punctuation errors that are probably not simple typos. Still, I found some things of value.

Titled “Siblings Disagree: Family Feuds in Memoirs,” one post focuses on Waxler’s experience reading a particular memoir about a dispute within a family. He explains that as a reader, he doesn’t take sides but instead uses memoirs to inspire a thinking exercise:

“To get the most value from my memoir reading experiences, I ask myself questions. Who are these people? What makes them tick? What would I have done? How deeply did I feel, not just the emotions of the situation, but perhaps even more importantly, how did the author’s presentation lead me through moral, ethical, and emotional dilemmas toward resolution?”

This is valuable for memoir authors to hear. Wouldn’t you be happy to have readers be so affected by your book that they would want to ask themselves these questions?

Louisa Deasey

Down the list a bit is a blog written by Louisa Deasey, an Australian writer who coaches authors and helps them publish—a lot like what I do. She has a big pile of blog posts to choose form, and I looked at one called, “When You’re Feeling ‘Stuck.’” Her answer to breaking that barrier is to come back to your “why” of writing the memoir. I think that’s a great tip.

In the post, Deasey metaphorically compares writing a memoir to growing a plant, writing that “seeds need darkness and quiet time in order to grow. They require faith, vision and trust. We can’t be pulling them up every few days, demanding to see ‘evidence’ of their growth. We can’t be talking to everybody about what it looks like… because we can’t see. The most miraculous creations (in the plant kingdom and in our human lives) don’t look like anything for awhile, until suddenly…They exist!”

I like that comparison.

Write Your Memoir in Six Months

Linda Joy Myers, one of two founders of Write You Memoir in Six Months, wrote a blog post that even I could use to read: “Pushing the Fear of Being Sued to Where It Belongs—on the Backburner.” In Facebook memoir groups, this is a perennially hot topic. A lot of authors fear that the people they write negatively about will sue them, and fighting a lawsuit takes money even if you have confidence that you’ll win in court.

Myers reminds authors that there’s no point in worrying about offending people until you at least have a manuscript. She writes, “The first draft is for you—and it’s for you to sort out your story, what you need to say, and how you’ll say it. The job of the first draft is to give you space to write! You need to claim that space and time and put publication fantasies and worries aside.”

She cautions writers from trying too early in the process to get permission from the people mentioned in the book. As you continue writing, you’ll change and delete a lot of references, so wait. Also, you may not get the answer you’re hoping for, and that could set you back in your motivation.

Myers acknowledges that once your book feels complete, you should consult a lawyer to identify which parts or language will be defamatory enough to possibly generate a lawsuit. You may want to change names and all identifying characteristics of some of the people. But all of that is for later. If you want to write your memoir, just go and write your memoir.

I agree with this advice, too. So I think FeedSpot chose some good memoir-writing blogs for authors to explore. I hope you always come back here to number four as well.

New Book by Celebrated Author Anna Quindlen Promotes Memoir Writing

September 13, 2022 by Rosanne Ullman

Many people recognize the value of writing and sharing a memoir, but not everyone writes a whole book about it. In her 2022 book, Write for Your Life, celebrated columnist and author Anna Quindlen lists all the reasons to appreciate memoirs.

You have a unique, interesting story to tell, so please write it down, Quindlen urges. Write it for yourself, and write it to share with others. From Anne Frank to the Freedom Writers to anyone who’s ever found comfort in writing and, particularly, memoir writing, we have ample proof that expressing yourself through writing is a worthy pastime.

**Memoir Helps You and Your Readers**

First, the process of writing about yourself in your own voice benefits you. The continuum Quindlen identifies is that writing causes reflection, which leads to understanding, which leads to happiness. It’s simplified and overstated, but I love that she promotes memoir writing in those terms. Reflecting on your life and maybe interviewing people who know you, and then writing it all down, enlightens you in so many ways. And while I’m not sure Quindlen can guarantee that this new understanding will bring you happiness, I have seen memoir writing become cathartic for people working through trauma or just learning how they’ve arrived at a place in their life.

Quindlen points out that sharing your life story can help strangers who have faced the hardships you faced. For family, your story can provide a history of their own heritage. Friends will enjoy learning more about you. If you’re a woman or a person of color, writing your memoir is even more important, maintains Quindlen, who notes that nearly all the history we know was written by white men. It’s through their lens that we’ve been told the history of everyone. It’s time to pass the pen.

She notes that what gets written down gets remembered. This is so true. If you journal or enjoy corresponding with someone, you can go back and read what you wrote to make it come alive again. Sometimes we tell stories over and over, and then some years go by and we forget some of the details. Write down your family stories, and then you won’t have rely on one person’s memory.

Full Review on Goodreads

I take issue with Quindlen’s whining about the disappearance of handwritten letters. For me, neither the handwriting nor the hard copy carries enough benefits to outweigh the efficiency of keyboarding and email, not to mention how many trees we’re saving.

Click here to read the full Write My Memoirs review of Write for Your Life on Goodreads.

It’s Poetry Month! Can You Write Your Memoir in Verse?

April 8, 2022 by Rosanne Ullman

If you prefer to write poetry over prose but still want to write a memoir, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from writing your memoir in poetry. And you wouldn’t be the first by a long shot.

Like a series of stories, a series of poems can break down poem by poem to provide information about a point in time and, taken together, the series will build a full narrative. Poetry is the format, but the genre is still memoir. By the end of the book, the reader learns about a segment of, or significant event in, the author’s life.

So it’s not just a book of poetry by one author. The poems must relate to the topic of the memoir and proceed in an order that makes sense to the reader. As with any memoir, the chapters—or poems—do not have to roll out in chronological order. You can start in the middle, then cover earlier parts, and finish by picking up from that first middle part with a conclusion. You can begin at the end and work backwards, or you can begin at the end and then go to the beginning and follow through full circle. If you’re skilled enough to make it work, your chapters can even jump around. These considerations are no different whether you’re writing in poetry, in prose, or in customary nonfiction reporting.

Currently Memoirs Written in Verse

If you’d like to pick up books of memoirs written as verse, we have some suggestions for you. For some reason, these poet/memoirists are all women. Five of these are listed on bookriot.com.

Inside Out & Back Again
by Thanhhà Lai
A Vietnamese girl has a tough time growing up as a refugee in Alabama.

Memoir: Poems by Honor Moore
by Honor Moore
Reviewing this memoir by the poet Honor Moore, The Village Voice reviewer wrote: “Moore’s poems speak of a strong faith in hard work and in the land of working alone. Her poems mark out both the experiences she describes and . . . the experience of making a book of poems.”

Brown Girl Dreaming
by Jacqueline Woodson
The Black girl experiences of the 1960s-1970s fold out through verse.

Poetry for Men: A memoir written across three continents
by The Expiring Mind
Even this one seems to be written by a woman—perhaps it is her message to men told through memoir and poetry.

How I Discovered Poetry
by Marilyn Nelson
One of the country’s celebrated poets uses her craft in 50 poems to describe her 1950s childhood.

The Favorite
by Lucinda Watson
Through 64 poems, the granddaughter of IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr., paints a picture of complicated family relationships and growing up with privilege.

Under the Mesquite
by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Somewhat fictionalized, this poetic account tells of a child dealing with her mother’s cancer diagnosis.

Pocket Poetry Day 2022: April 29

April 29 is Pocket Poetry Day. To celebrate poetry, post your poet on social media with the hashtage #PocketPoem. We’d love it if you’d hashtag #writemymemoirs as well!

The 2022 poster shown above was designed by eleventh grader Lara L. from Saunders Trades and Technical High School in Yonkers, New York. Her poster won the 2022 National Poetry Month Poster Contest and features a line by 2021 Presidential Inaugural Poet and 2017 National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman.

Memoirs of Summer 2020 Have a Familiar Ring

August 11, 2020 by Rosanne Ullman

What do Jessica Simpson, Madeleine Albright, Ihlan Omar, Colin Jost and a whole lot of people you’ve never heard of have in common? They’re all authors of memoirs published this summer. Coming out of one of the strangest summers we’ve ever experienced, what’s different about these memoirs compared with previous ones?

Nothing.

People write about themselves for many reasons, but by the time you publish a memoir it’s because you think someone may be interested in reading about how you solved a problem, came out the other side of a challenge, managed a particular situation or just plain lived as you. That’s as true in summer 2020 as in any other time.

For celebrity authors, the book will sell well if there’s a big reveal. Hey, Jessica Simpson, what was it like to date John Mayer? André Leon Talley, what’s it like to be a Black, gay fashion editor at Vogue?

No matter how fascinating the life, for a memoir to be a good read it still must be written well. As a comedian, Loni Love has an easy time making I Tried to Change So You Don’t Have To entertaining. TV and movie director Barry Sonnenfeld knows how to stage a scene, so it’s not much of a leap to exercise a flair for description while writing Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother. It’s right in journalist Eilene Zimmerman’s wheelhouse to report on her husband’s addiction in Smacked.

Google “memoirs summer 2020,” and you’ll pull up a long list of autobiographical tales that all sound tempting to take a look at. Many of the authors are first-timers, and one summer you may find yourself on one of those lists. Meanwhile, keep writing! And keep reading. These memoirs will inspire you to craft your story as candidly and compellingly as you can.

A Teen’s Halloween Memoir Captures the Holiday’s Images

October 31, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

A few years ago, an anonymous memoir author recalled the quintessential Halloween and posted those memories on teenink.com. Write My Memoirs is happy to share this, titled “Halloween Memoir,” with our community:

In the middle of a numbing January freeze, or a deafening August heat, there will be an odd lingering sensation scratching for attention that can only be calmed by a world of pure discord. A feeling that is annually relieved by the pure bliss of hearing a tune about a man working in his lab late one night, by the aroma of pumpkin pie and glee in the air, mixed in with the smell of wet leaves from the downpour of excitement, and by the sight of children giddily gliding through the streets in sparkling and vivacious outfits as their eyes light up the engulfing night.

Bubbling cauldrons are at every door, seeping down doorsteps and into the minds of all who wander. There are doorbells that yelp at the sight of children singing happily of treats. Spells are cast in every which way and there is the distinct sound of despicable laughter ringing in the blinding moonlight. With the arrival of a glistening full moon there come werewolves howling for human flesh and yellow eyes that flicker all around you, as they begin to circle you. Frantic screams echo through the night and the wicked laughs of murderous clowns come from all around, for they are joyful in knowing that they are finally freed from the lethargic thought of serenity.

Of course, there are chocolates and candies downing throats at every given second. The delicious flavors battling to please candy-obsessed taste buds. Trapped within each and every wall are ghouls wailing, waiting to be freed. Then, there’s the pumpkin picking. The quest for the most perfectly plump, sensationally orange pumpkin in all of creation. The smell dances around in every nook and cranny, frolicking with jubilance to have finally been released to the world.

All of the smells lure children from the warm homes into the chills of an October eve with an enchanting autumn high. The satisfaction of knowing you have the best jack-o-lantern in town as you set him down to witness the complete and utter chaos that will be turning the corner at any given moment. Pumpkin fragrances ooze through the streets once again and rush and play and swing in every place they can possibly slither into. The squirmy guts and sinewy insides are transformed into brains as zombies come out, hungry, oh so hungry for the meaty, squishy taste they can’t resist.

The heavily anticipated darkness finally twirls the Earth into its beautiful black cloak with a menacing grin. The world is able to escape all the bad and all the good as the true meaning of being alive lightens the minds of all. No longer existing, no longer being, but living. Living for the candy and living for the frenzy that comes only at this special, haunting hour. Bags heavy with what only the heavens could supply, but nothing could stop the unraveling path of fate. Candy fills round tummies for ages, and the aches and hunger seem to last forever.

Arriving home and finally sitting down, but instead greeted with a flabbergasting fall into bed, perpetually falling into a bottomless rabbit hole of despair, for it is now well known that the night is over. Eyes are finally pried open the next morning and the vivid sensations of the prior eve circle around, reminding all that the night must be awaited for an agonizingly long period of time. Every glimpse of candy, the faint sound of a howl, or a terrified shriek, a mocking reminder of the thrill we long for. Now we await patiently, patiently anticipating the reveal of all evil and abnormalities within, as we free the caged monster that has been abstracted by the foolish term that goes by the name of “normalcy,” the caged monster that is crawling within us all.

5 Memoirs Released in Summer 2019

August 8, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

You still have roughly a month before Labor Day to get in some summer reading! Here are five memoirs that already have been released this summer or are coming out later in August:

All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir by Erin Lee Carr. The author, a documentary filmmaker, supplies a raw, honest analysis of her relationship with her father, the late New York Times columnist David Carr, and reflects on his legacy and influence on her own work.

Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World by Jeff Gordinier. This memoir goes beyond a foodie look at restaurants through the eyes of Esquire food editor Gordinier, traveling with famed chef René Redzepi, and provides insight into life.

One-Way Ticket: Nine Lives on Two Wheels by Jonathan Vaughters. Cycling enthusiasts especially will appreciate this memoir from Vaughters, a leading figure on the controversial playground of world cycling and one-time teammate to Lance Armstrong.

Thank You for My Service by Mat Best, Ross Patterson and Nils Parker. Funny and surprising, this memoir by a five-tour Army Ranger and veterans’ advocate takes the reader inside the military, laughing all the way.

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom. Frequent magazine contributor Broom tells her story as the daughter of a mom who bought a long, narrow “shotgun” house in New Orleans and how race, class and Hurricane Katrina shaped the family.

Get a DNA Test Before You Finish Your Memoir

May 29, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

In the process of writing your memoir, you’re probably researching a bit of your background. You may be checking your parents’ or grandparents’ birthplaces. Maybe you’re asking relatives to fill in a family tree so that you know exactly how you’re related to your cousins. This is what memoir authors have always done. Today you have another tool: the DNA test.

A memoir published earlier this year, Inheritance: A Memoir Of Genealogy, Paternity, And Love, addresses author Dani Shapiro’s discovery that the man who raised her was not her biological father. Shapiro traces her reaction from learning this information through fully processing it and then reflecting on it. She discovered this fact when she used one of the DNA testing companies such as the popular 123andMe or AncestryDNA. Shapiro wasn’t the product of an affair, so she didn’t have to deal with a parent’s infidelity or secret life. She’d known that her parents had sought help for infertility, and she’d been told that her mother had been artificially inseminated with her father’s sperm. It turns out that she came about through donor sperm; eventually Shapiro met her biological father. Her book explores the dynamics of parenthood and identity as she grappled with a fresh view of both.

So think about taking one of these tests. The company will give you the names of people who match you, and you may find out that you share DNA with someone you weren’t expecting to turn up as a relative. Perhaps you could contact the person and expand your knowledge of your biological family either just for your own background information or for inclusion in your story. Like Shapiro, you may decide that the new knowledge provides insight for you and has become an important enough piece of your identity to build the book around it—or maybe just a chapter. As commercials for these companies show, maybe you always thought your family hailed from one country and now you know that there’s a broader mix or you’re from a different part of the world altogether.

Also consider the health information available through these testing services. If you have a genetic condition you weren’t aware of, that could affect your outlook about the future or just become something you’ll want to share in your book. In all likelihood, the test will confirm what you already know, both about your health and your genealogy. But writing a memoir is a big project, and you might as well gather as much information as you can before you put your book out there as the truth about you.

Writing From a Place of Pain

February 24, 2021January 30, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

Thank you to today’s guest blogger Julie Ann Toomey, author of the memoir Failure to Thrive: My Journey to Mental Health. Julie Ann tells Write My Memoirs:

This book has been a long time coming. Even in high school I wanted to write a book about my life. I found myself writing down experiences in story form to use

later. I have always wanted to share what I went through so others might understand the struggles a person with mental illness deals with. The push finally came when a business mentor challenged me to do so. I’d been collecting stories for years—I figured it would be easy.

It wasn’t! Through tears, heartache and pain, there was realization, amazement and therapy. It was the hardest, most therapeutic thing I’ve ever done. I discovered so much about myself, but also about others in my life.

Failure to Thrive: My Journey to Mental Health is an emotional roller coaster you won’t want to put down. It’s raw. It’s honest. It’s hopeful. It’s also 100% true and accurate, as far as I could see the truth at the time. Mental illnesses cause the truth to become skewed in ways those not suffering have a hard time understanding. This book shows it. Truth is universal, but perception is everything. This shows the perception of the truth a mental illness forces you to have. Anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder are a real part of life. They need to be understood.

Read this book. Come to understand it. Use it to help others when they need it. Be the change this world needs.

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How Dolly Parton Wrote About Her Life Without Revealing Everything