Thank you so much for Terri White’s thoughtful and honest article on the psychological (and social) side-effects of publishing a memoir, especially of traumatic events (When my memoir came out, I got a brutal shock. Vulnerable writers need protection, 8 February). I am a professional writer, and currently halfway through writing a memoir focused on my big brother, who killed himself 47 years ago, when I was 22 and he 27.
The book also covers my parents’ Holocaust background, which was a contributing factor to his mental illness and death. That is the first half, which wasn’t so hard to write as I have most of the facts. The only really hard bit was the paragraph reporting his actual death – after writing that, I was unable to write anything more for a week.
