#memoir

Aldrich bears witness to the tail-end of the disintegration of that most storied of American dynasties, the Astors. Growing up at Rokeby, the crumbling, 43-room family mansion on the Hudson River, she had ample opportunity to observe and participate in the eccentricities of her once mighty clan. Interweaving recollections from her dysfunctional childhood and tales of glories past, she accurately captures and communicates the madness and malaise that have infected many members of the last few generations of Astors. ↗

— Margaret Flanagan

#memoir #communication

My father has the proper degrees and framed pictures on the walls, though they're mostly taped over with photos of children, family and friends. Images from the past and present and trips and experiences combined with files on the floor – it's a happening or collage in progress. ↗

— Alex McKeithen

#experience

We're human. We all occasionally wet ourselves. No one is really better than anyone else. We're just all trying to make it through the year as best we can. We screw up sometimes. We succeed sometimes. We laugh. We cry. We go on. Those are the things we should really share with each other this holiday season, right, if we dare send a letter? We should share the truth. We should share the insanity. ↗

— Wade Rouse

#family

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. ...We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow. ↗

— Gail Caldwell

#grief #memoir #friendship

Now, through an act as simple as walking across a stage and collecting an empty plastic folder representing a degree, our stock had plummeted to nothing, the wretched leavings of some cosmic Ponzi scheme. A lifetime's worth of planning and training and delusion gone with the wind. Some of us were moving home to live free of charge in our parents' guest rooms, or if we were thin enough, heading west to try our luck in L.A.; others, to our collective horror, were being forced to work at actual jobs. ↗

— Rachel Shukert

#home

When I was five and Sarah seven, my mother went on a trip. She was gone from our home in Rochester, New York, for several days. But she was often gone — not always from the house but missing from our lives nonetheless. Then one day Sarah and I returned from school to find her standing at the door, a piñata in her hand, smiling her spellbinding, I-am-overjoyed-at-the-sight-of-you smile. Now when I imagine that scene, my mind’s eye puts a sombrero on her head, but I doubt she was wearing one. She had just come home from a trip to Juarez, Mexico, where she had obtained a quickie divorce. She told us she was taking us to live in Florida. We had no idea where – or what – Florida was. “There will be oranges there,” she said. “They’re everywhere. You can reach up and pull them off the trees. ↗

— Katie Hafner

#memoir #mothers-and-daughters #home

People always laugh at me when I tell them I’m scared of pencils, because they can’t fathom why anyone would fear a puncture wound or lead poisoning from a pencil, especially now that it’s impossible to get lead poisoning since they don’t actually contain lead. But those fuckers are sharp, and I have nightmares about getting cornered in a room and repeatedly stabbed with one. Somehow knives don’t frighten me, even though they are the more obvious tool for both a real and imagined stabbing. ↗

— Kate Madison

#memoir #pencils #stabbing #imagination

Your past doesn't dictate what your future will be. ↗

— Jillian Bullock

#inspirational #memoir #inspirational

So this needs to be said, and so I will try to say it ↗

— Jason Najum

#culture-critique #inspirational #memoir #philosophy #pop-culture

That night I slept like a baby. When I woke the next morning I knew I was going to smoke heroin again. Everything that day was enjoyable: sitting on the bus, working all day – it all felt good. It was the best day of my life. ↗

— Christine Lewry

#memoir #true-stories #true-stories-drugs #life