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To Be Known
Earlier this month I visited an old friend in her new home on a little island off the coast of Maine. She’s actually lived there for almost two years, but this was the first chance I’d had to go see her. I know I’ll return. In fact, I half-jokingly sent my husband a photo of an adorable little house around the bend from my friend’s place saying, “This is where I want us to retire, OK?”
Three factors lay behind the impulse of that text message, apart from the little house’s storybook charm. One, the island, accessible only by ferry, has an abundance of beaches and wooded areas, inviting communion with nature. Two, the tight-knit community of just 250 year-round residents, where people rely on their neighbors, and impromptu kitchen parties spring up just because someone’s porch lights are on, felt downright idyllic. And three, of course, my old friend lives there.
I listened to an audiobook while driving north to see her, Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale. Centered on the French Resistance during WWII, the novel’s historical setting is right up my alley, and I was so taken by the following lines from its opening pages that I pulled over into a parking lot to rewind the audio and write them down in my journal:
“I always thought it was what I had wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.”
The timing of my encounter with these words moved me through its coincidence with my drive north to see someone who knows me better than most. Is there anything better than being truly known by another person—a partner, a family member, or an old friend like mine? Or anything more painful than being unknown by someone who you wish could see you for who you are, but doesn’t? Or anything more vulnerable than sharing your story in an honest effort to be known?
The character in Hannah’s novel is elderly when she speaks these words, looking back on the secrets, hardships, joys, and sufferings that the story reveals in ensuing pages, but even though I am middle-aged, her sentiment rang true. I think it would resonate with many Modern Memoirs clients, too, beloved by family and friends, and admired in their careers, who come to us wishing to be known for their whole selves. They write and publish their memoirs not out of vanity or self-importance, but in a spirit of generosity and openness. “Here I am,” they say in one way or another, “in all my complexity, all my humanity, wanting to share my true self with you.”
The friend I visited in Maine was one of the first people I called for advice when my husband and I were weighing the purchase of Modern Memoirs nearly six years ago. I went to her with this major life decision because I love and admire her, and because I know her, and in that knowing lies trust. “Am I crazy to even consider this?” I asked. “No!” she said without hesitation. “This sounds like good, creative, inspiring work. You’ll love it.”
She was right—right because she truly knows me and could immediately see how helping people to share their life stories would add immeasurably to my own. So, while my imagined retirement on an island off the coast of Maine seems pretty appealing, I am grateful today for the good work my staff and I do, helping our clients to be known by those with whom they share their singular, special books.
Megan St. Marie
President
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