I signed up for a workshop to learn how to write a memoir through myth. Not because I want to publish a memoir or because I have a clear story to tell, but because I’m circling something and it isn’t clear. The promise of the workshop was simple: instead of trying to force a narrative, you let a story—an existing one—help you find the shape of your own. This felt good so I signed up and dove in.
We were asked to start with questions:
What makes you most excited about writing your memoir?
What makes you most scared?
My answer came quickly. What excites me is the possibility of connecting with myself at a deeper level. Not just understanding what happened, but understanding how it shaped me. What scares me is the people inside of it. The idea that telling the truth might hurt someone. That my voice, in its most honest form, might have consequences I can’t control.
Why do you want to write your memoir?
To heal myself.
I was quite pride of myself initially. “Look! Look how well I know myself! Psh. This is easy.” I was saying inside of my head.
The facilitator gave us two lines to hold as we worked.
Excitement is the antidote to fear.
Pain is the catalyst for healing.
Then she asked us to choose a story.
The Little Mermaid
I did my best to ignore this initial message because this isn’t a story I particularly liked. It’s boring. It’s overused. I need something less well-known. It feels too obvious. Too overdone. Too easy to dismiss as something childish or overly romanticized.
But, the message, as they do, kept showing up, and as my brain sorted through other stories like Cinderella, Snow White, and anything else Disney redrafted into animation (because after all, I am a child of the 80s and 90s), there was a voice exploring almost forgettable moments that didn’t feel accidental.
I grew up in Carlsbad, California. In the water. On the shore. Entire days spent moving between ocean and land like there wasn’t a clear boundary between the two. I loved the beach.
When I was four, my dad went dumpster diving behind a movie theater to pull out a life-sized cardboard cutout of Ariel for my mermaid-themed birthday. It wasn’t just decoration. It was the centerpiece. A surprise. I was elated.
I’ve named things “Sebastian” more times than I can count. My computer. The anatomical skeleton at the Pilates studio. A side character that keeps getting recast into my life without me fully noticing why. I loved the indignant little angry character that would fight tooth and nail for Ariel, someone he loved.
If I’m visiting my niece, she insists that we play a game with the seashell necklace I wear every day. She plays Ariel. I play Ursula. We reenact the scene where her voice is taken. We sing it. Over and over again. It’s slightly annoying, but I also love it because I remember hearing that song and playing it over and over and over again… drawn to the witchy spell that these two were casting together.
None of these moments meant much of anything on their own except in retrospect, when I spool it all together and listen to the message telling me The Little Mermaid is the fairytale I should visit. So instead of ignoring it, I followed it. Ugh. With the “I hate this story” narrative still lingering in the back of my head.
We were told to map the story from memory. Not perfectly. Not accurately. Just what stood out. I didn’t bother to write out a timeline as we were instructed because I was actually in the shower, so I could only think in fragments while washing my hair and prepping for work. Here’s what I recalled:
A voice that was known. Valued. Recognized.
A decision to give it away for love.
A contract. A betrayal.
A transformation that required becoming something else entirely.
A girl who leaves one world for another, believing something better is waiting.
A body that doesn’t quite fit the environment she chose.
A father who doesn’t understand.
A mother who isn’t there.
Sisters who reflect expectation more than connection.
A private space filled with collected treasures.
A pattern of crossing boundaries she was told not to cross.
A deep connection to animals.
A sense of being both supported and alone at the same time.
A first kiss that doesn’t go the way it was supposed to.
A longing that overrides logic.
And underneath all of it—anticipation, loneliness, curiosity, relief, and a kind of quiet confidence that moves forward even when it doesn’t know what it’s doing.
The facilitator read off a long list of events that happen in human lives and asked us to take notes of the ones that resonated.
For me, the rites of passage included marriage, loss, first kisses and sexual encounters and deaths that felt more disorienting than defining. Overall, I kept thinking that moments that were supposed to be communal, but for me they felt isolating. Decisions that changed the direction of my life included leaving home, moving states, not having children, and changing my name. These felt like I was always choosing a path that didn’t follow expectation. Lastly, we explored external experiences that happened to me, such as being hypnotized as kid with dad to fall asleep, medicine journeys, a Vipassana silent retreat, finding out what my mom was previously married, developing debilitating sciatica, getting fired from jobs, and a whole laundry list of moments.
I didn’t organize them and I didn’t create a timeline, which was the next assignment, because I was in the middle of driving to work, but we were told to place this fairytale timeline next to our own in literal, symbolic, and personal ways. We were told to look for patterns. To braid timelines. To notice where attention pulls. Since I couldn’t find time to sit, I don’t have a clean arc yet, and yes, I get the irony of right now, I have time to sit, but apparently I’m in the marinading stage first. A structured timeline or a clear beginning, middle, and end will come later… maybe.
What I have at the moment is a story that keeps resurfacing. A pattern that feels familiar, even when I don’t want it to, and a question that hasn’t let me go: If I didn’t shape my voice around what it might do… Who would I be? And what would it change?
