Crones liberate memoir from a literary nomenclature erected for pedantic, authoritarian purposes. We infuse the genre with the life blood of mammalian diversity. Explode the delimiters of diary and recording purported chronological order. Replace such strictures with genre fusions and improvisation. Inhabit memoir as the threshold, the arc of truth, that it is. Own it. Shape it into a full-bodied wisdom stream, a woman of stature with as many arms as she needs and legs that straddle the universe.
A memoir is a fractal; an eternity of womb lineage. A memoir is a wavelength transmission, and like a woman’s orgasmic potential, it can have as many iterations as she desires.
We take the prerogative to shape memoir into as many forms as our embryonic intelligence directs. We extract holograms from a labyrinthian treasury, the libraries of our bodies. De-categorize the very concept of memoir. Give it movement. Let your storytelling be unpredictable. All art deserves to be contextualized by precise cultural fabrics. Memoir is not a noun. It is an animal.
You do not need prompts to write your memoir. You need a strong dose of ownership elixir. Workshops and classes are external scaffolding. What makes memoir sing is your unprecedented voice. No one can teach you that. But you can absorb inspiration through mentorship and mirroring to articulate your Original Brilliance. That Original Brilliance knows how to write. You are the conduit of many stories, told in every tongue. Crone memoir is simultaneously unique and universal.
You are the many armed expressive goddess, the ever unfolding, ceaselessly articulating voice of embryonic intelligence. That voice is there right now, without any prompts. It is in claiming it, using it, refining it, elevating it, nourishing it, and daring to be heard, that we step forward as who we are, into a place from which there is no turning back. This is when you are adorned with the crown of the crone.
Here are some excerpts from several of my memoirs in the making to serve this purpose:
This excerpt sums up the thrust of the memoir I have almost completed in the form of a screenplay about my experience as a political activist.
True revolution is not destruction. It is never murder or guns. It is truth blooming; an eruptive rose refracted into a prism of light on the floor of ignorance where politicians stand, grinding their heels into the faces of the people who voted for them. Revolution is full, complete emergence from the jaws of exploitation.
Below is a memoir poem from a virtually complete novel that is a memoir. The main character in this novel is a woman named Refugia.
Song of Refugia’s Return
Just as a river spews its waste
She arched backwards
Out of the entrails
Into which she had been thrown
Like a rat tossed into a sewer,
Dodging gunshot aimed for her tail.
She returned the fire
With the vengeance of her love.
Kicking with heels
Muscled by thighs
Toned with fury.
She howled from her blood source,
“No more!”
And claimed herself
Like a bedraggled sinner
Suddenly declared a saint
By the congregation of the reawakened.
Then, when those who pursued her least expected it
She shouted:
“I am the Torah,
I am the Holy Grail,
I am the Nashama,
I am the Shekinah,
I am the Sunyata,
I am the Shakti,
I am the Koran.”
“Fools,” she declared into the void,
“It is time to become wise.”
“Bow down,” she ordered,
Smiling; a twinkle in her dark eye,
“Kiss the feet of your mother.”
I will close this post with what is called a log line, or a summary pitch statement about one of my memoirs. I always ask those who consult with me to write log lines. Log lines are the tell-tale indicators of how thoroughly you know the life of your writing project.
Realizing that she is truly alone, Rita faces herself finally and deeply. She must choose now between life and death. She chooses life. She re-enters the world, baptized by her suffering, convinced of her own beauty.
To schedule a Crone Speak Session to upgrade your writing, contact Stephanie Mines directly at tara-approach@prodigy.net or leave a message here.
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Love this!
Powerful writing. Very inspiring 💕🙏