Memoir vs Autobiography
I recently wrote a memoir. A family member asked me, “Why wasn’t so-and-so mentioned in your book?”
“I didn’t include many special people, interesting places, and events of my life in the work, mainly because I wrote a memoir, not an autobiography.” I said.
“What’s the difference? I’m not sure I know. Isn’t a memoir supposed to be about all that you remember in your life?” he said.
That’s when I gave a brief comparison as I understood the differences.
“To me, a memoir presents slices of memory around a theme. The theme I chose was my adoption and healing love. The memoir began simply as a journaling of the various encounters I had as an adoptee with the love that finally healed my life and my wounded heart. Much of what I wrote when I started out was for my own personal reflection and not intended for publication. Only later did I see the theme emerge.
An autobiography, on the other hand, is a full, comprehensive accounting of everything in the life of the person writing. The autobiography organizes itself chronologically. The memoir or personal narrative, may meander through various memories and snatches of experiences surrounding the developing theme. Is that explanation helpful?”
“I think you should share that in an Introduction or Preface then.” he said.
“Perhaps a blog post will do. On behalf of my readers, I was trying to be brief and focused.” My family member seemed satisfied.
This is the simplified explanation of how I envisioned and wrote my recent book entitled, Adopted: An Adoptee’s Memoir of Healing Love. I hope I clarified the distinction enough to not be held guilty of leaving out him and others I love and value.
QUESTION: Is the explanation I gave clear and accurate as you think about the differences?
Adopted Memoir Available for Kindle
“I thought I’d be dead by 21”
Great pain produces character. It can just as easily produce fear, rejection, and self-loathing.
My early life produced in me a fear that I’d be dead by 21. This personal narrative is my memory of a lifelong search for love, belonging, and a sense of place. Walk with me on my journey through abandonment, panic attacks, fear, rejection, bullying, and unbelief, out into the blinding light of healing love.
Adopted touches on the issues nearly every child or adult adoptee must face on the way to maturity, wholeness, and redemption. Along the way it provides valuable insights to adoptive and foster parents who long to see their children whole; and, to adult adoptees who wonder why they do what they do and how healing can be the next chapter in their life story.
See product page at Amazon.com
A Revival Account: Asbury 1970 – YouTube
Many churches use a week or two week meeting once a year to hold a “revival.” This term is thrown around very loosely in our culture and churches. I have attended many of these “revival” weeks in my life. I’ve spoken at many of them. But I never considered them revivals. Because I’ve been influenced by the aftershocks of a revival visitation of God and know the difference.
For those who want to see what a REAL revival is, I’ve posted this account of the visitation of God that students, faculty, staff, and the Lexington area experienced at Asbury College (Now Asbury University) in Wilmore, Kentucky in 1970. If you take the time to watch this in its entirety–to the end–I believe that you will experience the Lord’s love and a sense of what genuine revival is like.
You’ll see and hear Dr. Dennis Kinlaw share a narrative and video clips that will help you understand what they experienced during that visitation.
I hope that you will use this testimony to help inform your definition of a visitation of the Lord God in genuine revival. My prayer for you is that God will meet you in the viewing of Dr. Kinlaw’s account. And it will profoundly touch your heart.
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