How My Memoirs Taught Me to Build Support. Part 2/6 in the Support Series.

I didn’t plan to write three memoirs. I didn’t even plan to write one. Writing has been a lifeline for me as I’ve experienced things far outside of anything I could have ever attempted to control. I was just a kid. I was a teenager when it all started, and totally clueless about the life and circumstances I was living in. 

Some of you know about my past memoirs, and some of you don’t. As I continue to write my third memoir and plan out all my ideas for how I can introduce support in the lives of others, I want to share what this journey has looked like for me. 

This post is the second part of a blog series that I’m working on to slowly help you all understand why this matters to me so very much, and why I’m doing all that I’m doing. Which feels like a lot right now, and it hasn't been easy to juggle both kids and a fulltime job, but still, I make progress, and if I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it. 

Support has become my bread and butter. 

I won’t tell you that my experiences have made me some kind of expert on the topic, but my experiences have led me to see how critical it is in the quality of our lives. 

My first memoir began as a journal, as most memoirs do, I imagine. Beyond that journal, I began writing down memories in larger detail. I did this because I couldn’t get the weight of everything I had lived through off my chest. I would recall how slowly the ceiling fan was revolving during a moment of trauma. I would write about the sunken feeling I had and the need to just lay my heavy body down in the grass because I couldn’t carry myself anymore. I wrote about my emotions and tried to figure out what it was exactly that I was feeling because none of it made sense. I had a constant feeling of dread, but what was the dread? Was it sadness? Was it regret? Was it grief? Was it anger and resentment? And why couldn’t I just be happy in the life I had?

To put it simply, I didn’t understand myself, but I noticed that every single time I sat down to write, I discovered something. I called it my “realizations”. As if a light bulb had gone on in a dark corner of my being, and shone across the things that I was feeling, but couldn’t see. 

Writing helped me understand myself. 

Writing still does this for me. 

All of it led to my first memoir, and not just understanding myself, but also understanding my family. Family that was gone, so no chance of ever asking them “What was it like for you?” and I desperately wanted to know. 

I believe that’s where I began to learn what compassion felt like, and empathy. I saw all of our collective struggles as things we had all experienced both alone, and together. I found myself relating to them, even though they were gone. I found myself understanding their pain, even though they couldn’t feel it anymore. Suddenly it wasn’t just my pain, it was our pain. 

And my first memoir was born. 

In the last pages of that first memoir, I wrote “Support is it!” because that was what I had come to understand. We all needed support in order to support each other, and none of us had support to then turn around and give it. 

I had to understand this about them, and then I had to understand this about myself. 

That understanding removed a lot of my pain, anger, and resentment because that understanding led me to see that all of our problems were so much bigger than any one of us and the individual decisions that were made. 

That was the commentary I led with on the opioid crisis. I began to blame the world I was living in, rather than my family, because they fell victim to the greed that was happening around them and to them at a time when they thought they were making good decisions for themselves. And as snowballs do, it all cascaded in an avalanche from there, eventually killing my family, and leaving me with a horrendous story of trauma and grief. 

And then my second memoir was born, as an attempt to tell that story to people who were the same age I had been when it all began. Teenagers. That book… It didn't make it far, because it was set to release in the summer of 2020, and we all know what happened in the spring of 2020. What I did do, however, was make a guide at the end of this second memoir to help teenagers begin to think about how they could build support in their lives, and when to activate that support. Before it was published, I was working with my daughter’s No Place for Hate group at her middle school here in Oregon, and the school allowed me to share my support guide with them, and hype them up about creating their own support networks. 

Those children are all adults now. It’s scary for me to think of where they were then, and where they are now, in a nation that does not prioritize support. I hope they are all finding their way. 

Then of course the pandemic, and my divorce, which I am still struggling to find words for. And that is because I have found compassion, I found compassion and empathy long before our divorce, and I hate that I have compassion for a man that, well, I hate. We were not good to each other or for each other, and the most difficult part is knowing that I blamed myself for all of it. Both while it was happening and after. I’ve since learned that it wasn’t all my fault, but some of it was my fault. Who and what do I blame? I’m not really sure. 

Look at everything that was stacked against us, and against me as my family continued to die one after another. 

I’m not sure any marriage can survive that. 

I don't blame our problems entirely on what I experienced, but it was a large part of it. 

I needed support. 

Plain and simple. 

I did not get support, and I struggled to understand what it was meant to look like. 

He could share his own story, but I’m one hundred percent positive he has also never had the support he has needed to live the life he has wanted. 

And don’t we all just want to be understood?

We did not understand one another. We were never going to.

Years and years later, here I sit, with new thoughts on what support wasn’t, is, and could be.

I understand different perspectives on why we might push it away, even if it’s offered to us. 

I understand why it might be impossible for your loved ones not to be able to support you. 

I understand why you need it, but also why you don’t know how to ask for it. 

I understand why support is hard to come by. 

And I understand why it’s hard to give, too. 

Support is not a one-size-fits-all glove or bucket. 

Now I’m in a position to write another book, my third memoir, all about the thing I figured out in the first one. 

And not just that, I’m in a position to share support in many other ways and start discovering what it means to truly have and find support in our lives. 

I’ll be sharing all of that in the next few blog posts. 

I’ve written a little about the third memoir I’m working on in the past, but hopefully this gives a better indication of what it’s about. 

It does span the timeline of both the pandemic and my divorce, but I don't emphasize those points, nor do I want it to read like a divorce memoir. 

The thing about all of these events is that I desperately needed support throughout every single moment, and eventually I found it. Sometimes in unlikely ways, places, and with total strangers. I think this story can have a great impact, because sometimes support is simply about keeping your eyes and heart open to receiving it. After all, it might just fly at you out of nowhere. 

But again, there are so many ways to look at this, and I think I’ve done a lot of looking. 

I want to share everything I've discovered.

It is, in essence, a follow-up to my first book. It’s what I didn’t see when I wrote that first memoir. It’s the missing element. The key, if you will, that unlocks what you really need in order to move forward. 

And yes, it will include an updated version of the support guide from my second memoir. I was pretty proud of that.

This book will hopefully be ready in the spring or summer of 2027. I know, I know, that’s a long time from now, but in the meantime, I have many other things I’m working on launching at the beginning of 2026, or maybe even in the next month or so, because I’m so excited. My next post will be all about a special event I’m doing this month, with a mini-version of the support guide I’m creating. And journal prompts, definitely journal prompts. 

I would also like to ask for your continued support. If you read this all the way through, first, huge thank you!!! I can never write concisely; I guess that’s why I write books. LOL

And also, can you please leave a thumbs up/heart, and a comment?! Those things really boost my self-esteem and make me feel like all the time I spend writing is worth the effort. I appreciate every one of you. I hope you’re excited for all that I have in store! 

With love, 

Alyse