On Memory Archives - Memoir Magazine

How 90 Day Fiancé Helped Me Tell My Story as the Child of a Mail Order Bride by Katya Suvorova

I don’t have a mom who fell in love how I was able to fall in love. My mother is a survivor in a way most Americans won’t ever understand. I am honored to be th...

12 minute read/Escape/Grief/Loss/Love/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/On Memory/trauma

Atmospheric River by Cyndy Cendagorta

I never thought of our river as hungry until it swallowed Schafer whole, until he breathed water instead of air. He and some friends doused themselves in Jim Be...

10 Minute Read/Being Body/Divorce/Domestic Violence/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Inspirational/Institutions/Loss/Love/On Memory/Recovery/trauma

What To Wear To Bankruptcy Court By By Nan McKernon

How does one find self-worth standing before the evidence of broken dreams, unrealized potential, and past mistakes? This is what plagued me as I stared at the ...

10 Minute Read/Craft Essays/Family/Fathers/Grief/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Love/Memory/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay/Storytelling/writing

Burying the Cat by Teresa Sutton

Stories are my past. They bob along a lazy river waiting to be plucked up, cherished, and set back down to drift. But they are images, merely snapshots in free ...

5 Minute Read/Adversity/Black Memoirs Matter/Family/Institutions/Literature/Loss/nonfiction/On Memory/Refugees/Society/Survival

Memoir of a DREAMer by Magda X

When collateral damage becomes acceptable, the room dims. The brokenness of the world is no longer the problem of others.

20 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Featured/Family/Funny/Grief/Health/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Love/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay

Debris by Cindy Bradley

After hip surgery, my father’s memory is all over the map. As he recuperates in rehab, he tells us he’s been to Spain, England, Oakland and even Kabul, all in t...

10 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Family/Health/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/Regret/writing/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners

How to Write a Healing Story by Author Cameron Shenassa

I have a student who is failing my class. He wants to be writer, but he comes to me and tells me that he can’t write because he is depressed. He is wearing paja...

15 Minute Read/Family/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Love/Memoir/nonfiction/On Memory/Recovery/Regret/trauma/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners

Losing My Words by Author Evelyn Krieger

If recovery means you are no longer sick, or even that you are simply functioning again, then perhaps I have recovered.

12 minute read/Addiction/Funny/Inspirational/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay/Recovery/Society/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners

Being the Lie by R.J. Roberts

Everyone in rehab has a very serious neck injury. It’s the hardest injury for doctors to accurately diagnose, even with modern MRIs and cat scans, the neck is ...

10 Minute Read/Addiction/Featured/Family/Grief/Literature/Loss/Memoir/nonfiction/On Memory

Fifty Miles by Sheryl St. Germain

If I were a religious person, I would say something blessed me that day. But I’m not a religious person. Perhaps some part of me believed, as I still do, in the...

7 Minute Read/ACEs/Escape/Family/Funny/Literature/Loss/Love/nonfiction/On Memory

Going to Find by David Hensley

I was in the kind of love that puts a rock in your heart and stuffs your eyes with cotton, but you hold that rock and that cotton. Because that’s all you’ve got...

3 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Health/Institutions/Literature/Loss/Memoir/MeToo/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/PTSD/Recovery/trauma

Day 4: Mental Health Unit, Providence Hospital, Anchorage by K. Beth

She says she’s got Borderline Personality Disorder. That’s like the worst thing you can have, worse than Bipolar. I feel better being around her because suddenl...

1 minute Read/ACEs/Featured/Girls & Women/Haibun/Literature/Loss/Memory/nonfiction/On Memory/Secrets

Back to Jackfork Quarry by Stacy Pendergrast

This is the place I remember—with its pine branches, hung like lace canopies. There is the rock slab where they took turns, each first pounding his chest, then ...

2018 #Guns And People Runners Up/10 Minute Read/Childhood/Family/Guns/nonfiction/On Memory/trauma

No Loss of Life by Jennifer Fliss

“Do you want me to shoot myself?” My father asked me, thick metal in his thick hand—loaded, I knew. It was always loaded. After one or two drinks, the gun was d...

2018 #Guns And People Runners Up/15 Minute Read/Contests and Prizes/Guns/Literature/nonfiction/On Memory/Society

Arise Heroes! Dulce Bellum Inexpertis! by Seth Tucker

Ninety-one percent of domestic terrorists are white dudes, and they even manage to make up eleven percent of the jihadist terrorists overseas as well (yeah, whi...