It's Your Memoir & You Can Cry IF You want to

Inevitably in memoir workshops people worry about what their family and friends will think or say about their work. It's not only that we risk hurting feelings, it's also that people have different and often contradictory opinions about what actually happened.

Once you know these other interpretations, what do you do? You've written it as you experienced it. Now it's like watching the movie, "Rashomon." Should you mention these other descriptions of the experience?

Tricky question. So let's review what a memoir is: a personal account of the writer's life as experienced by the writer. Not the writer's siblings. Not the writer's parents. Not the writer's best friend. Those folks could write their own memoir and it could contradict yours, in fact, odds are good that it would.

Write your truth in your memoir. That is what reader's expect and are hoping for.

(All I ask is that you think about it.)