When Stories Meet: Memoir Writing by the Sea

This week, I’m cruising the Eastern Caribbean, teaching my two-part Memoir Writing by the Sea series. In this class, there were about thirteen women. Most of them were educators, most of them were Black, but each woman brought her own unique story, shaped by her perspective, her background, and her life’s journey.

There were women ranging from 25 to 72 years old—great-grandmothers and women just starting their families. Some were from the South, some from the North. Some still have their parents with them; others have laid theirs to rest. There were women who carry the weight of strained relationships with their mothers, and women who are still closely tethered to theirs—sometimes measuring themselves against their mothers in ways they may not even realize.

In this class, each woman was invited to remember her story. Her full story, not the polished version, but the layered, living truth.

There’s a common belief that writing something so sacred, so personal—something that invites deep vulnerability like memoir writing—should be done in solitude. Alone at the kitchen table, late at night, when everyone else has gone to bed. Surely not around people you just met, people you’ve only known for a few days.

But the truth is, memoir writing often requires us to peel back many layers of ourselves. And sometimes, we need to be in different environments and new settings to access those layers.

Writing in community offers something solitude can’t always provide. It gives us the courage to keep going.

Hearing another woman recall a pivotal moment in her life might awaken a memory in you—one you’ve tucked away for years. Witnessing someone else’s bravery on the page might be exactly what you need to find your own.

Writing in isolation isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, it’s in community—among those who also desire to heal, to tell the whole story, to leave a legacy—that we find the courage to begin and the strength to keep writing.

Summer J. Robinson

Publisher. Filmmaker. CEO. Building Silver Bangles Productions, a multidisciplinary storytelling agency committed to telling and elevating stories that inspire Afrikan diasporic intergenerational healing. We do this through book publications, TV, Film, and Documentary productions, programming, and education.