Learning Curves: Writing My Memoir

I’m circling the edges of memory as I wake from a dream that seems to allude an important message that I can’t grasp. Maybe writing it down here will help.

The woman looked familiar as she attempted to speak. She came rushing towards me mouthing her words then faded out again before I could understand what she was trying to say.

She rummaged around on the ground digging up clumps of earth with her hands. I held out my upturned palms and she poured the soil into them. As she poured, I noticed tiny crystals shining through the soil, like glitter on a Christmas card. We sifted through it together, choosing which of the crystals we wanted to keep and tossed those we didn’t back onto the ground. It’s as if we were sharing our memories as we looked through the dirt of our past.

She disappeared.

When I called out for her to come back into the dream she revealed herself to me as my mother and smiled. She gave me a piece of crystal, the final memory from her life and said.

‘This is your life, not mine. It’s time to stop raking around in the past and live your own story to write down.’

Then she was gone and I’m left with an unfinished story of her life.

But I think I get the message now.

Someone else’s memories have no place in my life story.

I need to write my own truth, find my own way home.