This post is so very timely. I’m working through reconnecting with a family member I’ve been estranged from for the past 11 years after a traumatic event that we’ll both remember differently. I’ve drafted a letter and talk a lot about the past, but may need to rethink it a little based on this post. God bless you Philippa!
Listening to conversations within a family, about their childhood, they all have different memories of the same events. Each one has taken those events and constructed their own narrative around them.
Very interesting topic. During my Masters I made work around the notion of memory as a retained physical residue in relation to architecture, in particular my childhood pre fab council house home.
As some others have shared I have recently reconnected with an Aunt after silence and rejections over around 9 years. Its odd. They act as if nothing happened which is ok as we wont much be in each others lives. I feel less compelled to press it.
What I have done though is share some docs, medical records I have from the age of 11 to 13 when my mother took me (and family) to a child psychiatrist. Reading their perspective on the situation now aged 55 has brought some sadness. My 11 year old self angry at being made to go, the level of denial of my mam, her obvious inability or fear to address her own trauma and the last doc stating they though I as a child was being scapegoated and that they would try and work with mam alone. We never went back.
When reading this I could actually feel how I felt at the time, the bewilderment and confusion having to be with this woman, it was faint but def there.
Your words resonate with me. Definitely feel that architecture and environment shape us massively and we hold that in memory too.
I hope that reading the documents and feeling the feelings was useful to you, cold comfort for sure, but maybe a sort of validation for 11 year old you.
What an inspired and inspiring piece of writing, leaving so much room for hope, understanding and healing. I feel so comforted and supported. Thank you, Philippa.
There are (naturally) plenty of Proust quotes about memory from A la Recherche du Temps Perdu/Remembrance of Things Past.
Here's just one more, reinforcing your piece:
"Les images choisies par le souvenir sont aussi arbitraires, aussi étroites, aussi insaisissables que celles que l'imagination avait formées et la réalité détruites."
My translation - and of course there are many possible versions, just as there are of the "truth" ;-) :
"The pictures selected by memory are just as random, just as limited, just as intangible, as those created by the imagination and destroyed by reality."
Lovely piece of writing, thank you. Insightful and a useful tool for thinking. I find that having a sibling helps me make - some - sense of the past where we experienced the same event similarly. But age difference, individual personalities, and unique ways in which we have processed memories, means that we can be amazed at how we recall something that the other has forgotten. Sometimes this triggers a dormant memory in the other, sometimes it remains unique to one of us.
I love how your take on it removes any sense of remembering ‘wrongly’; as I have become old I now have adult experiences which often make me more compassionate towards the adults in my past. I don't necessarily forgive the wrongs, but I can understand or imagine why they may have behaved as they did, and view the past as a much more complex and nuanced series of events that are a kaleidoscope of emotions and actions all colliding and changing from varying perspectives.
This interests me - I wrote a whole memoir about my childhood because I wanted to pin it down, I wanted a record of the "truth, the whole truth" etc. This was important to me because my 'wicked' stepmother had this habit that I called "rewriting history" - always to just slightly change everything that happened to put her in a good light, and me in the doghouse.
A couple of things that happened to help me hold on to my reality - my dad's sister talked to me soon after he died, and confirmed that my version was pretty close to how it looked from the outside. In fact, she had offered me a home a few years earlier, but I couldn't leave my dad because I knew he'd be the next scapegoat. And indeed, he was, when I left to go to University.
And later my tutor at Uni, who was also the warden of my Hall of Residence, invited me to afternoon tea, and a chat. He said it had been a difficult decision, but he had decided to tell me that when my dad died, my stepmother had called him and attempted to pressure me into not changing course from Law (which she bullied me into) to English Language and Lit, which I had wanted to do.
That support allowed me to make the right decision and I very much enjoyed and thrived studying English, and I have no regrets at all.
But even though holding on to the truth has always mattered to me, I do know that there must be lots of areas where my memory can't be trusted. And I know that even my diaries must be partial and inaccurate because it's not possible to fully understand another person's perspective.
I went to see Charan Ranganath (neuroscientist) speak a few weeks ago. He was speaking mainly about how our brain uses memory as preparation for future events which now seems obvious to me! He also showed the data on how quickly we forget, our brain discards information at a rapid rate.
This has made me recall how my sister and I would still get excited about Christmas as adults, but not my brother. Exactly the same upbringing but choosing to remember what was good and what was bad. I've kept a diary for years, and rarely go back to them, but when I have, I find I have misremembered some things.
Thanks so much for this, Philippa. I too am working through a raft of childhood memories and it's really helped me to appreciate the reality of those memories. As you say, some days I remember certain events and think maybe it wasn't that bad and on others, lapse into self-pity. Understanding how recall is linked to mood is a great insight in this respect - thank you Xx
On writing that in my book of quotes, I found that I had already said something slightly similar: 'The story twists the truth, and the truth twists the story'.
This is so interesting and relevant to me right now.
Memories are something I am working on at the moment. Dad was killed by a drunk driver when I was 9. The trauma and knock on effects of it ruled my life until my 40s . I’d spent far too much time in my younger life focusing on the few memories of dad almost scared I’d forget them obsessed with clinging on!
Then I unpacked it all and started looking forward instead of back and my world got a whole lot better. I’m stronger now and I’m revisiting memories of dad in a way that makes me feel good. I used to run with dad as a kid . I did the Great North Run in his memory last week after many failed attempts at running . A joyful happy mood remembering dad carried me round. Thinking about the nice times dad and I had together and raising money for Winston’s Wish too.
Moving forward, in November I am meeting dad’s cousin whom I haven’t seen for 30 years. I am hoping our conversations about dad are going to spark new memories . I hope we laugh lots . I am interested in dad’s cousin’s memory of dad and how it compares to mine and I will be self aware and pay attention to how I feel.
I haven’t been able to meet him for such a long time because he is a similar age to dad and meeting him always reminded me of what I’d lost. Afterwards I always felt down . I couldn’t deal with it so always made excuses not to meet. I will now look at meeting him as what I’m gaining not what I’ve lost and hope our joint memories of dad ,today’s recollections of a time 44 years ago ,will swell my mood ,bring some of dad back to now and carry me forward in life. It will be another step.
That’s my example. I’m not as proficient with words as many folk but I hope you get my gist.
I love Rosebud podcast, it’s my fave and have been interested in their discussions about childhood bereavement. Enjoy your recording . I look forward to hearing it.
So, so true and beautifully expressed. I’ve always felt I’ve never had a ‘good’ memory and never really trusted it completely. But now I know that I was right not to! It’s also made me more in awe of nature and our brains and how they kind of protect us.
I also have a theory that memory is protective, and if we don’t remember either a particular period, or place or person, the brain has its own logic and says we don’t need to remember it - as long as we seem to be functioning pretty well at the moment! Neither
my younger sister nor I can remember much about our early childhood, we accepted it as a kind of joke between us until in her fifties, she was left by her husband with five kids to parent. Latent bipolar disease came to the fore and after one terrible episode of mania her eldest son sectioned her. Medication has since helped her enormously and we talk regularly about everything, with me frequently asking her advice. The only sticking point was that I looked after our mother till she died, and she showed no interest at all. We’d already said goodbye to our dad who was delighted to see her well again, having suffered years of rejection and verbal abuse from her. ( And at one point she’d said my child was the spawn of Satan). But she never seemed to forgive my mum and I could never understand why. However, recently she revealed in a piece of poetry that a doctor had confirmed that scars on her bum could have been from cigarette burns, and how did I not know that?! Apparently she had asked mum about this and mum dismissed the marks as cinder sparks - we were very poor, often getting help from my grandparents who had a constant coal fire going. I almost had a breakdown myself feeling so guilty that I had never recognised this trauma but there was no way this memory could be confirmed or denied. Eventually I sought counselling myself, and told my sister I just couldn’t deal with this revelation emotionally, and I have to accept it as an “unknowable”. So is this an example of mind protection on my part, but a life altering ‘ false’ memory for my sister?
This post is so very timely. I’m working through reconnecting with a family member I’ve been estranged from for the past 11 years after a traumatic event that we’ll both remember differently. I’ve drafted a letter and talk a lot about the past, but may need to rethink it a little based on this post. God bless you Philippa!
Oh, that is so true Philippa.
Listening to conversations within a family, about their childhood, they all have different memories of the same events. Each one has taken those events and constructed their own narrative around them.
Very interesting topic. During my Masters I made work around the notion of memory as a retained physical residue in relation to architecture, in particular my childhood pre fab council house home.
As some others have shared I have recently reconnected with an Aunt after silence and rejections over around 9 years. Its odd. They act as if nothing happened which is ok as we wont much be in each others lives. I feel less compelled to press it.
What I have done though is share some docs, medical records I have from the age of 11 to 13 when my mother took me (and family) to a child psychiatrist. Reading their perspective on the situation now aged 55 has brought some sadness. My 11 year old self angry at being made to go, the level of denial of my mam, her obvious inability or fear to address her own trauma and the last doc stating they though I as a child was being scapegoated and that they would try and work with mam alone. We never went back.
When reading this I could actually feel how I felt at the time, the bewilderment and confusion having to be with this woman, it was faint but def there.
Your words resonate with me. Definitely feel that architecture and environment shape us massively and we hold that in memory too.
I hope that reading the documents and feeling the feelings was useful to you, cold comfort for sure, but maybe a sort of validation for 11 year old you.
What an inspired and inspiring piece of writing, leaving so much room for hope, understanding and healing. I feel so comforted and supported. Thank you, Philippa.
There are (naturally) plenty of Proust quotes about memory from A la Recherche du Temps Perdu/Remembrance of Things Past.
Here's just one more, reinforcing your piece:
"Les images choisies par le souvenir sont aussi arbitraires, aussi étroites, aussi insaisissables que celles que l'imagination avait formées et la réalité détruites."
My translation - and of course there are many possible versions, just as there are of the "truth" ;-) :
"The pictures selected by memory are just as random, just as limited, just as intangible, as those created by the imagination and destroyed by reality."
oui
Lovely piece of writing, thank you. Insightful and a useful tool for thinking. I find that having a sibling helps me make - some - sense of the past where we experienced the same event similarly. But age difference, individual personalities, and unique ways in which we have processed memories, means that we can be amazed at how we recall something that the other has forgotten. Sometimes this triggers a dormant memory in the other, sometimes it remains unique to one of us.
I love how your take on it removes any sense of remembering ‘wrongly’; as I have become old I now have adult experiences which often make me more compassionate towards the adults in my past. I don't necessarily forgive the wrongs, but I can understand or imagine why they may have behaved as they did, and view the past as a much more complex and nuanced series of events that are a kaleidoscope of emotions and actions all colliding and changing from varying perspectives.
This interests me - I wrote a whole memoir about my childhood because I wanted to pin it down, I wanted a record of the "truth, the whole truth" etc. This was important to me because my 'wicked' stepmother had this habit that I called "rewriting history" - always to just slightly change everything that happened to put her in a good light, and me in the doghouse.
A couple of things that happened to help me hold on to my reality - my dad's sister talked to me soon after he died, and confirmed that my version was pretty close to how it looked from the outside. In fact, she had offered me a home a few years earlier, but I couldn't leave my dad because I knew he'd be the next scapegoat. And indeed, he was, when I left to go to University.
And later my tutor at Uni, who was also the warden of my Hall of Residence, invited me to afternoon tea, and a chat. He said it had been a difficult decision, but he had decided to tell me that when my dad died, my stepmother had called him and attempted to pressure me into not changing course from Law (which she bullied me into) to English Language and Lit, which I had wanted to do.
That support allowed me to make the right decision and I very much enjoyed and thrived studying English, and I have no regrets at all.
But even though holding on to the truth has always mattered to me, I do know that there must be lots of areas where my memory can't be trusted. And I know that even my diaries must be partial and inaccurate because it's not possible to fully understand another person's perspective.
I went to see Charan Ranganath (neuroscientist) speak a few weeks ago. He was speaking mainly about how our brain uses memory as preparation for future events which now seems obvious to me! He also showed the data on how quickly we forget, our brain discards information at a rapid rate.
This was very stark with my grandmother and great aunt, who were both evacuated in WW2 to wales.
“Jean do you remember the day in Wales when we went to the beach? That was so lovely.” :)
“Yes, I remember. It was a terrible day. I got stung by a jellyfish.” :(
Neither of them were wrong, nana just had a better experience, partly because she was four years older perhaps.
This has made me recall how my sister and I would still get excited about Christmas as adults, but not my brother. Exactly the same upbringing but choosing to remember what was good and what was bad. I've kept a diary for years, and rarely go back to them, but when I have, I find I have misremembered some things.
Thanks so much for this, Philippa. I too am working through a raft of childhood memories and it's really helped me to appreciate the reality of those memories. As you say, some days I remember certain events and think maybe it wasn't that bad and on others, lapse into self-pity. Understanding how recall is linked to mood is a great insight in this respect - thank you Xx
'Memory is a storyteller'. Brilliant. That's going in my book of quotes, acknowledged of course.
On writing that in my book of quotes, I found that I had already said something slightly similar: 'The story twists the truth, and the truth twists the story'.
This is so interesting and relevant to me right now.
Memories are something I am working on at the moment. Dad was killed by a drunk driver when I was 9. The trauma and knock on effects of it ruled my life until my 40s . I’d spent far too much time in my younger life focusing on the few memories of dad almost scared I’d forget them obsessed with clinging on!
Then I unpacked it all and started looking forward instead of back and my world got a whole lot better. I’m stronger now and I’m revisiting memories of dad in a way that makes me feel good. I used to run with dad as a kid . I did the Great North Run in his memory last week after many failed attempts at running . A joyful happy mood remembering dad carried me round. Thinking about the nice times dad and I had together and raising money for Winston’s Wish too.
Moving forward, in November I am meeting dad’s cousin whom I haven’t seen for 30 years. I am hoping our conversations about dad are going to spark new memories . I hope we laugh lots . I am interested in dad’s cousin’s memory of dad and how it compares to mine and I will be self aware and pay attention to how I feel.
I haven’t been able to meet him for such a long time because he is a similar age to dad and meeting him always reminded me of what I’d lost. Afterwards I always felt down . I couldn’t deal with it so always made excuses not to meet. I will now look at meeting him as what I’m gaining not what I’ve lost and hope our joint memories of dad ,today’s recollections of a time 44 years ago ,will swell my mood ,bring some of dad back to now and carry me forward in life. It will be another step.
That’s my example. I’m not as proficient with words as many folk but I hope you get my gist.
I love Rosebud podcast, it’s my fave and have been interested in their discussions about childhood bereavement. Enjoy your recording . I look forward to hearing it.
So, so true and beautifully expressed. I’ve always felt I’ve never had a ‘good’ memory and never really trusted it completely. But now I know that I was right not to! It’s also made me more in awe of nature and our brains and how they kind of protect us.
A really insightful post, Philippa - thank you 🙏🏾
I also have a theory that memory is protective, and if we don’t remember either a particular period, or place or person, the brain has its own logic and says we don’t need to remember it - as long as we seem to be functioning pretty well at the moment! Neither
my younger sister nor I can remember much about our early childhood, we accepted it as a kind of joke between us until in her fifties, she was left by her husband with five kids to parent. Latent bipolar disease came to the fore and after one terrible episode of mania her eldest son sectioned her. Medication has since helped her enormously and we talk regularly about everything, with me frequently asking her advice. The only sticking point was that I looked after our mother till she died, and she showed no interest at all. We’d already said goodbye to our dad who was delighted to see her well again, having suffered years of rejection and verbal abuse from her. ( And at one point she’d said my child was the spawn of Satan). But she never seemed to forgive my mum and I could never understand why. However, recently she revealed in a piece of poetry that a doctor had confirmed that scars on her bum could have been from cigarette burns, and how did I not know that?! Apparently she had asked mum about this and mum dismissed the marks as cinder sparks - we were very poor, often getting help from my grandparents who had a constant coal fire going. I almost had a breakdown myself feeling so guilty that I had never recognised this trauma but there was no way this memory could be confirmed or denied. Eventually I sought counselling myself, and told my sister I just couldn’t deal with this revelation emotionally, and I have to accept it as an “unknowable”. So is this an example of mind protection on my part, but a life altering ‘ false’ memory for my sister?
Fascinating insights about how our memories work, thank you Philippa,