The Personal History of a Book’s Life—The Power of Memoir

My newest book The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story has just been released by Jossey-Bass. I’m thrilled about this, because the road to getting to a large publisher has been long and confusing. Often I had to traverse through unknown terrains to get where I am now: holding a brand new copy [...]

New Book in the Making! Memoir Writing as a Healing Journey E-Book

This book discusses the important research of Dr. James Pennebaker and other researchers that show how writing heals both body and soul, and makes a case for free expression and the wisdom of healing the past through writing the truth.

Don’t Call Me Mother

Linda Joy Myers’ compassionate, gripping, and soul-searching memoir tells the story of three generations of daughters who long for their absent mothers, yet unwittingly recreate a pattern that she was determined to break. Accompany Linda as she uncovers family secrets, finds solace in music, and begins her healing journey. Learn how she transcends the prison of childhood to discover light in the darkness of strife, abuse, and undiagnosed mental illness.

Becoming Whole: Write the Story You’ve Always Wanted to Write

Becoming Whole: Writing Your Healing Story is written by therapist and prize-winning author, Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D. Myers brings her expertise as a therapist and memoir coach to the page, offering solutions to everyone who wants to write her story. How much truth to tell, how to leave a legacy without upsetting the family, and how to keep writing despite the inner critic are discussed, with creative solutions offered.

Writing and Healing (Excerpt from Becoming Whole Writing Your Healing Story)

“One can enjoy the health benefits of writing without the emotional costs associated with writing about trauma. The physical benefits of writing about one’s best possible self were equal to or better than writing about trauma.” —Laurie King Writing and Healing Writing your true story can heal you, both physically and emotionally. Expressive writing, writing [...]

The Music Man (Excerpt from Don’t Call me Mother)

Mrs. Rockwell’s fourth grade classroom smells of polished wood, chalk dust, and pads of Red Eagle newsprint tablets lined with pale blue lines, a dotted line between the thicker ones to indicate where “t’s” should be crossed. About twenty-five of us are sitting in school desks, our books and papers tucked neatly or messily, as mine are, in the well beneath the desktop. The windows of the room go from the thick green radiators to the ceiling. The windows are raised and lowered by long poles wielded by the boys or the teacher. The boys are noisy, some have dirty fingernails, and their hair is cut in a flat top or slicked to the sides with Brylcream.

Tracks to my heart (Excerpt from Don’t Call Me Mother)

The train bisects the blue and the green, parting wheat fields by the tracks. Mommy and I rub shoulders, watching the landscape move backward as we sit in the last car, as if erasing my childhood when she would board the train and leave me aching for her. Now, in my dream, we rub shoulders, her perfume lingering. The old longing wrenches my stomach.

Blanche: My Great-Grandmother – 1955 (Excerpt from Don’t Call me Mother)

Blanche and I are in her garden. The Iowa air is full and rich, redolent with the scent of thick black earth, green growing things, the sweetness of flowers. When I get close to her, I smell her sweat, see it running in rivulets in the multiple creases in her skin. Her brown eyes under curly eyebrows are fierce as she flails away with the sickle at weeds who have the audacity to grow in her garden and bury the potato patch. Her whole arm rises and falls, sails of flesh hanging from her substantial bones. I am fascinated by her, how she can be so old, her body with its variety of wrinkles and drapings. She is more alive than anyone I have ever known, passionate about weeds, about her tomato plants and her raspberries, her strawberries, her woodpile, and the fire she builds each day in her wood cook stove. Blanche is the hero of my life. Blanche is with me every day, even now.