The Unexpected Healing

What memoir writing is teaching me that journalling can't

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Dear friend

What’s news and how is your week going? I ask these questions wishing we could pick up a conversation, just have a chat, because right now I’m finding writing quite cumbersome. Which isn’t like me at all. So I’m sat here quietly hoping my writing lull shall pass.

As you may well know I’ve been a devoted journal keeper for years. And you’ll also know that I’m constantly sharing the therapeutic benefits of putting pen to paper, the way journalling can help process emotions, gain clarity, and help us find our way out of the calamity and chaos of life. It’s been my go-to wellbeing ritual for anyone seeking a deeper connection with themselves, it’s kind of become my mission and my purpose in life.

But lately, as I’ve been knee-deep in writing my memoir about my connection, my long distance love affair with Cartrefle - the beach house I call home but will never own - I’ve discovered something unexpected. That memoir writing is offering me a completely different kind of healing, one that journalling for all its gifts, and there are lots, simply can’t provide. Something I never thought I’d admit to, or share publicly on here, because journalling is my oxygen.

Something happened last week while I was trying to get my daily writing count up to 500 words, I noticed there was a difference between processing and shaping. When I journal, I’m usually writing for myself, in the moment about the moment. It’s immediate, raw and very unfiltered. Most mornings I’m working through feelings as they arise, catching thoughts as they float by in-between my daily dose of day dreaming. No matter how scrappy my journalling gets, there is something beautifully therapeutic about the real time processing, it’s like having a conversation with myself where I’m both the speaker and the listener.

But my memoir writing? That’s something else entirely. Well, I guess it’s going to feel different because I feel like a real rookie at the moment, my inner critic having a song and dance about whether I should or should not be writing a memoir. All I’ve come to realise is that I’m not just processing my experiences, I’m starting to shape them. I’m taking the scattered fragments of my memory and emotions, and weaving them into something coherent, something that someone else might understand, not just what happened, but what it meant.

One of my most surprising discoveries these past few weeks, has been how the act of trying to craft narrative, has created a healthy distance from some of my painful experiences. When I write about my complex relationship with Cartrefle, the joy of belonging somewhere so deeply, coupled with the grief of knowing I’ll never truly own it, I’m not just reliving those feelings, I’m examining them, turning them over and over like sea glass, looking for the light that shines through.

This distance doesn’t diminish the emotion; I think it transforms it. In my journal, I might write “I feel such a yearning to stay longer in Cartrefle. I want to live here now and forever! But the time has come, again, for me to leave. I have such a heavy heart.” But in my memoir, I’m exploring what that sadness actually is - is it about ownership, or belonging? Is it about security, or identity? The way I’m crafting my memoir seems to be forcing me to dig deeper, to find the real reason and truth beneath my personal pain.

Here’s the thing, my journalling practice helps me make sense of my day-to-day life, but so far my memoir writing is helping me to make sense of my life, full stop! As I write about Cartrefle, I’m not just chronicling my love for this beach house, I’m discovering what that love reveals about me, about home, about the way we attach ourselves to places that hold us.

Each page I write is like holding up a mirror to a different part of myself. This process is asking me: Why does this matter? What does this mean? How does this shape who I became? These questions aren’t like the prompts I typically ask in my journal, they’re too big, too complex for my type of daily processing.

Perhaps most surprisingly of late, my memoir writing experience has taught me about the therapeutic power of imaging a witness. When I journal, I’m writing for me alone. But when I’m in memoir writing mode, I’m writing for you my reader, because you may see yourself in my story, you might find comfort in knowing you’re not alone in your own complicated relationships with place and belonging. Please say hello or share a comment if this resonates.

This shift in understanding my audience has been profoundly healing. It seems to have moved me from “Why did this happen to me?” to “What can I learn from this that might help someone else?” This change of thinking for me has been more therapeutic than my early days of wrestling with Morning Pages when I tried to journal about the same experiences.

Speaking of finding meaning in stories, I’m currently reading A Long Field by Pamela Petro, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. Petro writes about the Welsh concept of Cynefin, the sense of belonging to a place that has shaped you, or as I see it, a place where one feels they ought to live. Her memoir is teaching me so much about how to write about place with both specificity and universality.

What strikes me most about her writing is how she makes Wales feel like home even to readers who’ve never been here. She’s showing me that memoir isn’t just about telling your story, it’s about finding the threads that connect your particular experience to something larger, something that speaks to the human connection. I’ve absolutely loved reading her work while writing my own. It’s almost like I’ve had a master class in memoir craft.

By sheer luck, timing and a good dollop of serendipity, I’ve recently become good friends with

Julia Forster

who knows Pamela well. Julia managed the PR for A Long Field and is herself about to start writing her own memoir. Isn’t life just so utterly and extraordinarily beautiful sometimes?

Between reading Pamela’s memoir and sending many voice notes back and forth to Julia, I’m learning how to honour the specific details of a place while exploring the deeper questions of belonging, identity, and what it means to call somewhere home. It’s all been such a steep learning curve, and I don’t want to suggest for a minute that memoir writing is somehow superior to journalling, but I do want to highlight the fact that they serve different purposes, and I need them both.

For the foreseeable future, my journal remains my place for immediate processing, for working through my daily mess, a mixed bag of emotion and thought. But my memoir writing practice has become my place for deeper excavation, for finding the gold hidden in the sediment of my life experiences.

If journalling is like tending a garden - daily care, immediate attention to what needs watering or weeding, then memoir writing is like being the archaeologist of my own life, carefully brushing away the dirt to reveal the artifacts that tell a larger and quite frankly fascinating story.

If you’re someone who journals regularly, I’d encourage you to consider whether there’s a story from your past that’s asking to be examined more deeply. Not every experience needs to become a memoir, but perhaps there’s one thread you keep returning to, one theme that keeps showing up on the page. What would it be like to take that material and shape it into something larger? To ask not just “What happened?” but “What did it mean?” To write not just for yourself, but for the person who might find healing in your honesty, in your story, in your unique adventures?

The therapeutic benefits I’m discovering in my memoir writing aren’t replacing what journalling gives me, it’s simply adding another layer, another tool in the toolkit of self-discovery. And perhaps that’s the most beautiful thing about writing in all its forms: there’s always another way to find your way home to yourself.

Until the next time

Take care and stay safe xx

The second series of The Bibliotherapsists podcast is out now. In which all of our guests, all of whom are writers on Substack, share their favourite books including some brilliant memoirs. You can tune in here and listen to our first conversation of the series with Clover Stroud.

If you’d like more information about the retreats and workshops I’m hosting this year and in 2026, or you’d like to join the waiting list, please don’t hesitate to email me at hello@easeretreats.com

Every Thursday at 1pm via Zoom - “Journal with Ease Club” with Tanya Lynch

25th July 2025 - “Drive Through Journalling by the Sea” with Tanya Lynch

19th August 2025 - “Rage on a Page” Online Journalling Series with Tanya Lynch

26th September 2025 - “Blueprint Your Season” Day Retreat with Tommy Ludgate

2nd - 5th October 2025 - “Rest + Read” Weekend Retreat with Lucy Pearson

17th - 20th October 2025 - “Digital Detox” Weekend Retreat with Tanya Lynch

April 2026 - "Substack with Ease" Day Retreat with Claire Venus

May 2026 - “Creative Unblocking” Weekend Retreat with Emma Gannon

12th June 2026 - “Finding Your Voice” Day Retreat with Laura Pashby

PS. Bring your unfinished stories.

Bring your wild dreams.

Bring yourself.

Because here ‘with ease’, you are always welcome.