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Putting one's life down on paper is for many a way of healing old wounds. More than 45 years passed before Fanya Gottesfeld Heller, now 75, could explain to anyone why the bark of a dog upset her or why her heart beat faster when she saw a policeman or why she became angry at the sight of food left uneaten on a plate. Only when she asked herself, "If I don't tell my story now, who will tell it for me?" was she able to confront her past. As Heller, who lives in a spacious apartment on New York City's Fifth Avenue, started talking into a tape recorder, all the ghosts from long ago returned. "It was eventually a catharsis, but it was a very painful process," she recalls. The memoir, brought out by KTAV Publishing House in 1993 as Strange and Unexpected Love: A Teenage Girl's Holocaust Memoirs, set her free. "I know myself and other people better," Heller says. "I have a little bit more insight and realize I am strong enough to deal with all the pain."
Not all memoirists, however, keep to the narrow path they set out on. That is part of the discovery process. After Diana Douglas Darrid's house was destroyed in the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, she stayed with her son, actor Michael Douglas, and his family while her home was being rebuilt. Long since divorced from Kirk Douglas, she was the widow of William Darrid, a writer and producer, to whom she had been married for 36 years. Michael urged her to start her memoirs as a legacy for her grandson Cameron, and Darrid began to write. The result, In the Wings, will be published this summer by Barricade Books. It is an account of her days as a stage actress, her romances before meeting Kirk, their marriage and subsequent divorce, and the happy years spent with her second husband. While writing, Darrid realized that even though her husband died in 1992, she had not finished grieving. The memoir became a healing balm.
Like Darrid and Heller, many find a sense of relief through recalling the events of life. "Maybe all memoirs are therapeutic to a degree," muses Dr. Robert Butler of the International Longevity Center in New York City. Through his work with older people, Butler has come to appreciate the positive values of reminiscing--or what is often called a life review. He says most people "do a silent life review or share it with a spouse or children, but writing it may be more meaningful and powerful." Indeed, the overall benefits of writing memoirs are just beginning to be studied. James Pennebaker is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and his 1997 book, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, is widely used by psychologists and teachers. He points to a number of recent studies that present the remarkable finding that people who talk about their life experiences have lower blood pressure and a stronger immune system.