Writing about your own life is a journey of self-discovery

When you write about your own life, you get to know yourself and those around you better, as if you hadn't noticed. That's why it's worth writing, even if at first it seems like there's nothing worth writing about in your own, ordinary life.

"You don't have to be old - or wise - or the author of any significant life's work to write about your life", Merete Mazzarella has also said in her collection of essays Auntie and Crocodile (in Finnish, Kaarina Ripatti, Kirjayhtymä 1995).

Journalist-writer-artist Anne Tarsalainen has published two works that chronicle her own life. The Promise at Yalta (Reuna 2019) tells the love story of a twenty-year-old Savoese girl and a young man from Leningrad, which takes the reader first to Yalta in the 1980s, then to Leningrad, Tallinn and Narva and finally, after many twists and turns, to Helsinki and Tuusula. Lest you forget your name (Reuna 2021) continues the story of Anne and Andrei Tarsalainen, aka Andi, but also includes painful glimpses into Anne's childhood and family relationships.

I asked Anne what the process of writing her own life story was like.

Why did you decide to write about your own life?

To be honest, I thought I had a big story to tell. With the birth of my grandchildren, the grandmother in me also woke up and made me think that these things are important to record so that posterity can know where their roots are.

What did writing give you about yourself?

It was an exciting and insightful journey of discovery, which boosted my self-esteem as I realised how difficult things have been for me to overcome. They had been forgotten over the years.

Writing told me who I am, where I come from and how I became me. That journey was terribly fun to make. It was exciting to jump back so far and see what kind of girl I was back then.

There were many moments of astonishment along the way, when I told myself that I had been a really brave girl to go out and fight for the things I felt were important. Many people have described me as fragile, but as I was writing I found I was quite a strong person. These sides are not mutually exclusive.

In the second book I wrote a lot about my mother, and it was very therapeutic. My mother died about thirty years ago, and she's been in my mind ever since, as if she's been forcing her way into the depths of my soul and being a kind of unprocessed lump. I had tried to deal with her death, but I hadn't really got a grip on it. It was as if there was some kind of fog curtain in front of him. Even though I was close to my mother, the relationship was really conflicted.

When I was writing, I wanted to look my mother in the eye as she was. This was helped by the poems I have written all my life. They opened the door to the feeling I wanted to write about, made it easier to unpack that feeling. 

What kind of source material did you have besides poems?

We have a box of letters that Ant and I wrote to each other when we were 19 or 20. My own growth as a young girl and all those crazy experiences were found directly in these letters. I wrote Ant ten pages of letters in plain English at first, because he had only been learning the language for six months at that point. Antti asked me to write in Finnish and then went through the letters with a dictionary.

Before writing the second book, I also had a wonderful stroke of luck when I accidentally found a letter written by my mother in 1986, and it gave my mother a voice. Suddenly I could hear what she was saying and how she was saying it. I had a firm grip on her.

There was also other written material. For example, I had written to my grandfather-in-law from time to time, and I had those letters too.

What emotions did the writing process evoke in you?

Yes, it stirred up emotions from all sides. Sadness was often present. When I was filming my mother's death, I was crying profusely. Sometimes I couldn't see the screen at all as the tears flowed. It was hard and it took me back, physically, to the moment when I heard about my mother's death.

When I filmed my mother's death, I cried profusely.

Describing childbirth in the second book was also a physical experience. I felt like I was contracting. The birth of my second child in particular was hard and caused me deep sadness even now, as I write.

When I was writing about these themes, I might have been down for a couple of days as I was left to process those memories.

Of course, there are also joyful descriptions in the books, and I often laughed out loud as I wrote them. Describing the love story between Ant and me was enjoyable. We have walked hand in hand through big challenges and survived. Remembering it made me appreciate each other.

Did you learn anything about yourself or your loved ones during the writing process?

Yes, it diversified my picture of the people I was in dialogue with when I was writing. The events took on more nuance when I recalled them decades later. When you're young, you see things in such black and white.

Many things became clearer, and I now understand better why people have been the way they are. Everyone has their own story. In the end, I found myself feeling a sense of mercy towards all of them. I am now at peace with my own background.

What tips would you give to readers who are intrigued by autobiographical writing?

The first thing to do is to draw a map of your family relationships, with you in the middle and other people in your life around you, whoever is close to you. It is also a good idea to mark the relationships between people.

The next step is to give a detailed profile of each person - not a black-and-white characterisation, such as "mean granny", but a full description of the kind of person they were. This gives depth to the text.

Letters, diaries and other notes are really important. And if you go way back, you have to go to a museum and find out, for example, what kind of clothes people wore and what kind of dishes they used.

It's also a good idea to decide how detailed you want to write about, for example, emotions. The most important thing is to be honest with yourself, even if it can really hurt sometimes. Sometimes I felt like I was being punched in the face in the middle of everything. I'm a firm believer in Ernest Hemingway's advice to write "hard and clear about what hurts."

The most important thing is to be honest with yourself, even though it can really hurt sometimes.

If you are going to publish a text, it is a good idea to ask permission from those you are writing about, especially if it is about sensitive issues. If you use people's real names, the worst that can happen is that you can be sued for libel. I ended up changing the names of everyone except my own siblings.

Of course, everyone has the right to write about their own feelings, because they are always right about them, but defining other people - especially if they are still alive - is a tricky question that is worth thinking long and hard about, so as not to offend anyone by being thoughtless.