Writing ourselves home

Making sense of it all

I’m very passionate about the benefits of writing our story when we are older. Call it what you like — a memoir, a personal history, a record of your life’s journey, or just a short snapshot of experiences. It doesn’t have to be grand, long, or literary — it’s important to just get it captured, either in written form or recorded as spoken word. It’s a wonderful legacy to leave for your family and it can be an enormously meaningful activity to do for yourself.

A painting of me out on a walk by my very talented sister, Shauna Aroney

I had many cathartic moments when writing my memoir in 2018, The Snake Around My Heart, which at its core is the story of my reunion with my son 23 years after he was adopted out at birth.

While writing the manuscript I remembered being a 16-year-old pregnant schoolgirl embracing my father goodbye at Sydney airport. I was flying out to New Zealand as, in those long ago days of worrying about what the neighbours thought, I was being sent to stay with relatives until my baby was born and could be adopted out. I turned back to look at my father once more and saw that he was crying. I had never seen him cry before.

Decades after this event, when I was typing in the words about my father’s anguish, I could no longer see my computer screen because of my own tears. I had to stop and weep until no more tears would come.

Writing the story of my teenage pregnancy gave me not only many healing moments like this but also the opportunity to make sense of what had happened. I did a lot of research into the changing Australian society I grew up in. This enabled me to step out of my own enormous self-shame and trauma. In time, I came to understand that societal fractures led to the record number of teenage pregnancies and adoptions in Australia in the late 1960s and 1970s.

This was a period when the pill was not available to unmarried women. Sex education was rudimentary, yet, at the same time, society was rapidly changing. Conscription had come in and young people everywhere were demonstrating about the Vietnam war. All the old structures were breaking down. Like me, many of my friends were sexually active at sixteen. No wonder so many school girls fell pregnant. (In Australia the number of babies put up for adoption rose dramatically to peak at 9,798 in 1971-72.)

I also researched the experiences of the adopted children born during this period, Most grew up longing to connect with their birth parents and understand why they had been given up. However, legislation allowing access to birth records didn’t happen until the 1980s and 1990s.

As a result of researching and writing my book, I was able to develop compassion for myself and even self-respect. Somehow I finished school and started my career after the birth of my son (although with quite a few bumpy patches in the first decade after I gave him up).

Six years ago my husband’s first wife was diagnosed with a terminal illness and I asked her if she would like me to do an oral history of her life. Over four sessions I taped our conversations using my iPhone. She absolutely loved these occasions and I could tell she really got a lot out of telling the stories of her life. There was a lot of laughter and I am sure these experiences were as valuable to her as the end product. I transcribed the audio files and lightly edited the words before printing out a few copies for her and the family of the printed manuscript.

Since then I have done three more oral histories, and each has shown me what a life-affirming experience it can be for people who either have terminal or life-limiting illnesses to talk and reminisce about their lives.

I recorded the amazing life story of a Chinese man, who was abandoned repeatedly by his mother as a child in Hong Kong and literally had to fend for himself from about the age of seven. He died a couple of years ago in his early sixties of AIDS-related kidney failure. Sadly, he had wanted his life story written up primarily as evidence of his existence.

Next, I recorded the life story of a local Hobart woman, who has a great singing career and has had a wonderfully exciting life.

Most recently I have been recording the life of a delightful man in his early sixties who has early-onset Alzheimer’s. Both he and his wife are incredibly animated when talking about their life together. I get as much out of the experiences of facilitating these oral histories as the participants do.

Next post I’ll delve into how to write your memoir or capture your own oral history and provide some ideas on how to structure your work. These days most word-processing programs have voice-to-text capabilities so it can be as easy as sitting at your computer and just talking ...

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