Writing Our Life Story: Why It’s Hard (and Why It’s Worth It)
Writing our autobiography sounds simple, after all, we have lived the life. We know the wins, the failures, the secrets, the heartbreaks, and the unforgettable joys. But the moment we sit down to write, we realize something deeper: telling our life story isn’t just about memory. It’s about meaning. It’s about desire, what we want to say; and dream, what we hope our story will become for the next generation.
If we’re writing a family autobiography, a community memoir, or even a personal narrative, it helps to pause and ask a vital question: What do I want my life story to do? With this question our autobiography writing becomes intentional and purpose-driven, going beyond simple recollection of life moments and milestones.
Telling the Truth, but Which Truth?
We often assume that autobiography requires telling everything in a neat, chronological timeline. But memory doesn’t work that way. We don’t remember our life like a calendar. Instead, we remember moments, faces, emotions, conflicts, and turning points that shaped our deepest desires and dreams.
Writers who reflect on autobiography writing reveal that many authors, especially those crafting legacy narratives, use fragments, loops, flashbacks, and intentional silence as part of their strategy. These choices allow them to skip painful periods, rearrange chapters, or leave out people and relationships, depending on their social location, cultural background, and personal context. Ideology also manifests in autobiographical writing, shaping how we choose to tell our story. Our biased worldview will inevitably influence our interpretations of the past and reveal our evolving or limited understanding of reality.
Learning about this gives us our first insight: our life story doesn’t have to be written seamlessly in strict chronological order or include complete, exhaustive details. In fact, it may not reveal everything; it can be non-linear, reflective, selective, and honest without being fully exposing. We aren’t aiming for a courtroom testimony, but for a narrative shaped by our desire, our dream, and the life lessons we hope to pass on.
Life Pages we are Silent About
One of our hardest choices in writing our life story is deciding what to keep private. We all have regrets, failures, betrayals, trauma, relationships that didn’t end well. We might worry that this will hurt someone, or that we will be judged or misunderstood. When we resort to silence we aren’t being cowardly or weak, but sometimes silence is dignity, protection, maturity, and grace.
Writing autobiography challenges us to discern which memories deserve the light and which can remain in shadow. Not everything needs to be retold in full; some moments can be softened, abbreviated, or quietly set aside. We do not owe every intimate detail, but we do owe the insights that reveal our heart, our growth, and the significance of our chosen paths.
Writing With Purpose is not Mere Recording
When we stop treating our future readers like strangers, our autobiography becomes more than a timeline. It transforms into a guide, a family scrapbook, a lesson we wish to pass on, a love note, and a bridge connecting our life to theirs. We write not just about what happened, but about why it mattered, imagining our readers as people who know us, carry our name, or share our story. We are eager to pass on courage, humility, humor, love, faith, identity, and belief. We long for them to understand the things we chased and cherished, to grasp the dreams we held onto even when they slipped through our fingers. It is these desires and dreams that anchor our story, turning it from a mere record of events into a warm, personal reflection worth remembering.
The Hard Questions Worth Asking
In the end, writing an autobiography isn’t about recalling every detail of our past, but about choosing the one moment that shaped us and asking the hard questions that reveal what our story really means. It takes courage and honesty to revisit old memories, but doing so can preserve our family history, explain misunderstood choices, and give voice to parts of our lives that might have stayed silent. We don’t need to write everything at once; we can begin with one lesson, one person, one turning point, one desire, or one dream. Our autobiography needs that one moment, one insight, one dream that says, “This is who I was, and this is what mattered.”
Interested in seeing how these ideas of desire, dream, and lived realities take shape in storytelling, poetry, and testimonies? Explore our anthologies:
- Paglalakbay – Short stories of OFWs, inserted as testimonies in Magandang Balita Biblia.
- 100 Ways to Live the Word – 100 testimonies of coming to God’s word.
- Narito – Testimonies of living in spaces; reflections on presence and belonging.
- Hugos – Poetry capturing lived realities of commuters, offering snapshots of ordinary life.
You Might Also like to Read some Critical Works about Autobiography Writing
- Lejeune, Philippe. On Autobiography (1973) – Foundational work on the autobiographical pact and life-writing theory.
- Gilmore, Leigh. Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self‑Representation (1994) – Explores identity, memory, and self-representation in autobiography.
- Concepcion, Mary Grace R. Writing the Self and Exigencies of Survival: Autobiography as Catharsis and Commemoration (2018) – Examines autobiographical writing by political prisoners and trauma survivors in the Philippines.
- Santos, Bienvenido N. Memory’s Fictions: A Personal History (1993) – Filipino-American writer’s autobiographical reflections on memory, identity, and diaspora.
