Why You Remember Certain Moments Forever — And Why They Matter in Memoir

Why do some moments stay with us for decades while entire seasons of life fade into blur?

In this episode, memoir mentor and author Kerry Kriseman explores the fascinating connection between memory, emotion, and storytelling — and why the moments you remember most vividly are often the key to uncovering your memoir.

You’ll learn:

•  why emotional memories stay etched in our minds 
•  how defining moments shape compelling memoir 
•  why memoir is not about documenting your entire life 
•  how transformation creates powerful storytelling 
•  and why your strongest memories may hold the deeper thread of your story 

If you’ve ever wondered whether your life experiences matter enough to become memoir, this episode is your reminder that meaningful stories are often hiding inside the moments you can’t forget.

✨ Mentioned in this episode:
 Find the Story That Matters
A live memoir workshop designed to help you uncover the defining moments, emotional themes, and hidden story inside your life experiences.

📅 Wednesday, June 24
 ⏰ 2 p.m. ET

REGISTER HERE FOR THE WORKSHOP

Thank you for listening to this episode of Making Memoir Magic. To learn more about my course, Make Memoir Magic, click here. 

Join my free Facebook Group, Memoir Magic for Aspiring Authors, where we honor your story, provide tips, create community, and help you write the story you were meant to tell. Join here!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Making Memoir Magic, the podcast where we unlock the power of your story and guide you through the magical process of turning life experiences into memoirs that inspire and impact. I'm your host, Carrie Chrysman, a memoir mentor and storytelling champion, and I'm here to help you find the courage to embrace your unique story and share it with the world. Whether you're just starting out or refining your final draft, this is the place to be for practical tips, inspiration, and the encouragement you need to write the memoir only you can tell. Ready to make some magic? Let's dive in. Have you ever noticed that there are entire years of your life that you barely remember, but then there are moments that you can recall with startling clarity? You remember the exact room, the smell in the air, the sound of someone's voice, the feeling in your chest. It might be a phone call that changed your life, or a goodbye that you might still be reliving. I will never forget the moment an emergency room doctor walked into the exam room at the community hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, the acronym Chomp, and told me that I had a 20-centimeter tumor on my right ovary. I can still hear the tone in her voice and how she said the words as if she was just replying to a question like, What did you eat for lunch? So it seemed nonchalant to her, but it was like shouting to me and certainly shocking. And I spent many uh several years reliving that moment over and over and that conversation. So while I hope that you never have to experience what I did, I do suspect that you've likely had moments that you'll never forget. Maybe it was something less daunting or even exciting, like your first kiss, or it might have been something sad, like a betrayal from a best friend. Maybe you experienced a moment of courage, whether exhibited by you physically or internally, or received by you in the form of a savior who helped you through something hard. So either way, these kinds of moments in time, whether they're a conversation or they encompass a week or even a year, have made you realize that your life was moving in a new direction. That's a signal. So there are those of us, likely you included, who can't remember what you had for lunch last Tuesday. I know that's me sometimes. And human memory can be funny that way. But it's also incredibly revealing. The moments we remember most vividly are often the moments that shaped us. And if you're writing memoir or even thinking about writing yours, those moments matter more than you realize. So welcome back to the Making Memoir Magic podcast. I'm Carrie Kreisman. I'm a memoir mentor, author, and your storytelling champion because I believe in your story. And today we are talking about why certain memories stay with us forever and why those memories are often the heartbeat of powerful memoirs. One of the biggest misconceptions that people have about memoir writing is the idea that they need to remember everything. They think that memoir writing or writing a memoir means sitting down and documenting their life from birth to present day like it's an emotional census report. Now, our memories don't work that way. So if you're trying to sit down and do that, it's going to be hard, if not impossible. We don't remember our lives chronologically. If asked to state them chronologically, we certainly could. But that's not how we remember our lives generally. We remember them from the lens and the filter of emotion because our brains need to filter out information to keep us from being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data that we experience every day. So most ordinary moments, like the lunch from last Tuesday, get compressed, blurred, and filed away. However, significant moments earn their place in the highlight reel of our life. So the reason why certain memories remain throughout the years is actually connected to science. When something emotionally intense happens to us, the amygdala, which is the emotional center of the brain, is activated. At the same time, the hippocampus, which helps organize memory, starts encoding that experience more deeply. In simple terms, emotion tells the brain, pay attention, this matters. So emotion is the glue of memory. So that's why you remember where you were, what someone said, what you were wearing, how the air felt all during pivotal moments of your life. Those memories were tagged as important to you. And memoir lives inside those moments. Not because dramatic things happened within those moments, but because something changed inside of you. So that's the key to keep in mind when we think about memory and writing memoir. The best memoirs often contain a before and after with the pivotal moment or memory right in the middle, before the divorce, after the divorce, before the diagnosis, after the diagnosis, before the loss, after the loss, before you find your voice, after you find your voice. Even quiet moments can carry enormous emotional weight. So maybe it could be a conversation at the kitchen table, a drive home in silence, a moment standing in the grocery store, realizing your life no longer felt recognizable. Your memoir is not going to be built from events alone. It's built from the transformation that occurred as a result of those events and within the following events as you navigate from the before to the after. Okay, so your strongest memories are clues to where your story resides. So this is why I always tell aspiring memoir writers: if a moment still rises to the surface decades later, there's usually a reason. It may point toward a wound, a longing, a belief, a shift in identity, or a truth that you're still trying to understand. And that's where memories become powerful. Not when you list what happened, but when you explore why it mattered. The realization is often a huge relief for writers because so many people delay writing their memoir because they think that they don't remember enough or that their life is too complicated or they don't know where to begin. So writing a memoir, I want you to remember this, does not require you to have a perfect memory. It requires you to have a meaningful memory and to know how to access those memories and how to pay attention to them. So keep in mind, you are not trying to reconstruct every detail of your experience. You are identifying the moments that shaped who you became. So when I was writing my own memoir, Accidental First Lady, I realized something important. The moments that carried the most emotional weight were not always the biggest public moments, and often they were private moments behind the scenes in our home. And they were deeply private, right? They were quiet realizations. Sometimes they were small heartbreaks. Um, they were moments where I realized that I understood something new about myself. And I think that surprises people, especially when I wrote from the lens of a public life. Um, it wasn't always dramatic and exciting, um, and that's not where the biggest learning occurred. So we all a lot of people assume that memoirs must be dramatic to matter, but readers connect to emotional truth far more than spectacle. And this is exactly the kind of work that we're going to be doing in my upcoming live workshop, Find the Story That Matters. It's a guided memoir workshop designed to help you uncover the defining moments, emotional themes, and deeper stories hidden inside your life experiences. Because most memoirs don't begin with writing, they begin with remembering. Together, during this workshop, we will explore why certain memories stay vivid, how turning points shape memoir, and how to uncover the moments that truly belong on the page. So I'm gonna put details about this workshop in the show notes. Um and I want you to hopefully go there and check out the informational page where you can sign up and learn more about what's gonna happen in those 90 minutes together. I would absolutely love to help you begin discovering the story only you can tell. So until next time, pay attention to the memories that still tap you on the shoulder, the ones that return unexpectedly, the ones that still carry emotion years later. Your life may already be highlighting the story that matters the most. You just haven't followed the breadcrumbs yet. So keep writing, check out the show notes, um, you know, sign up for the workshop. I'd love to have you there. If you're not yet in my Facebook group, join it. The link is in the show notes as well. Um, it's a place for community, connecting, and um, as a member, you can attend my weekly memoir magic write-ins. And I will hope to see you either in the Facebook at the workshop or both. But keep writing and keep believing in your unique story. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Making Memoir Magic. I hope today's conversation inspired you to take the next step toward telling your unique story through memoir. Remember, your story matters and someone out there is waiting to read it. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps others find the show. You can also connect with me on my website at carryCreisman.com, on Instagram at carrie.chreisman, or join my Facebook group, Memoir Magic for Inspiring Authors. You'll get more tips and inspiration on your memoir journey. And each Wednesday, I host a memoir magic writing where you get to join other writers to accomplish the often arduous task of getting words on the page. Until next time, keep writing, keep sharing, and keep making memoir magic.