We memoirists are obsessed with memory. We not only rely on memory to tell our stories, but we constantly question its veracity. We know memory is malleable, that its nature is to alter slightly with every recollection, and this is why we are also obsessed with research, interviews, photographs, and documents that may support what our minds tell us is true.
What we ultimately rely on is the emotional truth of our memories. Researchers have found that “memories of events evoking strong emotions, especially fear, selectively persist,” and that “emotional memory may have an independent neural background; the encoding, recognition, and consolidation processes involved in emotional memory may differ from those involved in episodic memory (Learning and Memory 2010 17: 130–133).
In other words, we trust our emotional memory. If our first bite of pizza made us happy, we may misremember what the toppings were or if we ate it at home or at our aunt’s house. But we remember well how it felt to eat it, and the feeling may be tied up with the memory that we shared that pizza with our brother. The fact of our brother’s presence may be more reliable because of the strength of our emotional response.
The prompt for today is to write a poem fueled by your first memory, or any of your earliest memories which is vivid to you. Spend a few minutes getting back into that emotional space. Remember who was there, what space you were in, what you were doing. If you were inside, what color was the carpet? What were you wearing? If you were outside, what was the weather like? Were you on the grass, under a tree, walking on pavement?
The purpose is to trust yourself. Don’t worry if you have every detail correct. Trust your memory to fill in details however it comes to you. It’s the emotional context you’re after. Find the language to put that emotion on paper and see what happens.
