Marcia Golub

Whether your childhood was happy or sad it was a time of magic and dream. Events made an impression on you. Things you saw, smelled, tasted had a particular poignancy. The mysteries never solved, the comments never understood, events and images you've carried with you since then, these are your treasures. These are your materials.

We are natural storytellers, in childhood more than at other times because we're trying to make sense of the world, and we don't yet know what others want us to think.

Trust your memories. Savor them. Mine them for inspiration.

On this page I will suggest Topics for reminiscence-writing. Feel free to take off from the Topic. You have permission to lie. This is not memoir-writing (unless you want it to be). What I'm suggesting is that you use the topics you will find here to stimulate your imagination, to find a story or a poem or a narrative. If you don't remember whether your pants were brown or navy make them navy. Next time make them brown. If your mother said something, and your father said something else a week later, but it makes a better story to have them say these things in conjunction, do that. There is no Judge in heaven with a Truth or Consequences meter over your head, determining where you will spend the Afterlife based on what you write here. Be true to the child inside you, not the events or people that surrounded you then. Change the names and physical descriptions, if that will make you feel better. Remember, it was your childhood. These are your stories.