I have moved just slightly beyond contemplating memoir to working toward actually putting some things together. As I do, I am not quite sure it is standing as a true “memoir” anymore at all. I am not sure I can take moments from my history and write them out. I am not sure I can do this, because I do not quite interact with my own history in that way. I think in chunks, of emotions, about patterns. I am not exactly sure the specific thoughts moving through my head in the Thanksgiving season of 2019 or a specific run of dialogue from my childhood, but I can emotionally travel back and pull observations from that time or a span of times behaving in a pattern.
So, as I began 2025, even as I was ending 2024, I began to shift my next writing project from a memoir to a testimony. I cannot quite promise anything of its final structure, but I think it needs to be a bit more open than the cage I was trying to put myself into for writing a proper memoir. Maybe it is all semantics. But holding space for this project with this new logic has helped me to make progress. So, I have moved from contemplating memoir to exploring testimony. I am curious to see what will be on the other end of this exploration. And hopeful to share the creation.
Taylor Ruby's 