Writing about your life is not a selfish act

Writing about your life is an act of generosity, period.

When I meet someone new and the inevitable question, “What do you do?” comes up, I get two very different types of responses when I say, “I help people preserve their stories.”

Some people are intrigued and excited: “Oh wow, I never heard of that—how fabulous!” and “I wish I had captured my parents’ stories!”

Others are baffled and even, sometimes, indignant: “I don’t have any stories that would be of interest to anyone else” or “I’m not a celebrity, so why would I tell my story? It’s so narcissistic.”

I’m here to tell you—with confidence and years of experience to back me up—that your stories matter, and it is NOT narcissistic to tell them. In fact, sharing your stories is an act of generosity.

Here, two distinct ways to think about writing about yourself as a positive endeavor rather than a self-centered act:

Flip the script: It’s selfish to withhold your story from your descendants.

Are there things you wish you knew about your grandfather? How would you feel if your mother passed on a book of stories and photos about her life? Can’t you imagine your own kids engaging with stories of the great-grandparent they never had the privilege of knowing?

It’s a rare gift to receive such a legacy from a loved one.

“To share our story with someone is to say, you matter to me,” Rabbi Steve Leder writes in For You When I Am Gone.

So, I ask you to consider how blessed your descendants will feel when you take the time to preserve your own life stories for them. Let them know you as a full person with lots of lived experience, not just as their father or grandmother.

“Yours may be the words that relieve another’s isolation, that open a door to understanding, that influence the course of another’s path,” Tristine Rainer writes in Your Life as Story. “If you write an autobiography for a great-great-grandniece not yet born, perhaps she will find it in her mother’s drawer, and she will be altered, perhaps even saved, through the wisdom you have sent her.”

Give your descendants this gift.

Your life is worth considering—for you.

“What a poorer and less beautiful thing life would be without the stories and values of the people who loved us and whom we loved most to carry us when they are gone,” Rabbi Leder says. Indeed.

But you know what? Carrying those stories within ourselves has value for us as individuals, too. Self-reflection—which is very different from self-aggrandizement—allows us space to look back on our experiences as growth and learning experiences.

Our lives are works in progress; and while our own story is continually being written, it is worthwhile to dive in RIGHT NOW to bear witness to our own journey, to allow our stories from the past to guide our decisions in the future, and to help us make sense of our experiences.

Barbara Haight, a foremost expert on the study of life review, asserts: “For many who reminisce, the story—the end product—is the most important outcome, but for others it is the therapeutic process of revisiting and reconsidering memories which is more important.”

So consider writing about your life for you. Write towards meaning, without thought for publication or sharing. Discover pieces of yourself on the page, and find joy and purpose in communing with your past selves.

If you’d like help with your life writing, please reach out to see how we can work together. No matter where you are in your personal history journey, I can help support and guide you.