The Weight of Memories: Navigating the Emotional Burden of Writing a Memoir

Writing a memoire is an emotional excavation, especially when it is painted with the harsh and heavy strokes of trauma.

Today, I feel like I’m standing outside of myself. As I dig into the truths that I thought I had long accepted, I imagine my present self-taking a power sander and desperately trying to get underneath the truths I coated in black so that I wouldn’t have to see them. It’s one thing to know they are there; it’s another to strip them bare, stand in front of them and truly see. Exposing them feels like losing every breath in my body.

If my trauma were a painting, it would be the kind of piece that stops you in your tracks and makes you cry. You’d see scars, missing pieces, anguish, shame, depression and guilt. The guilt would be splattered in red across the entire canvas, overtaking everything else.

That’s the cruel trick of trauma—it doesn’t just hurt you; it convinces you that it’s your fault. There’s an unspoken responsibility attached, as if owning it and carrying it is part of your job.

With all the therapy I’ve done, I still catch myself saying “it’s not your fault” and the trauma will always whisper back “but it was.”

We are taught to believe we control our lives.

Maybe I can have compassion for my younger self, for the girl whose trauma wasn’t her fault—especially now that I’m a mother, imagining the same horrors happening to my own children.

But the chapters ahead in my story are harder to forgive. Those years were a landslide of poor choices, one that dragged me down with nowhere to grip.

When I picture my twenties, I see myself sliding through the mud, trying and failing to stop the fall.

SPOILER ALERT: I did catch myself. I climbed back up. But as I write, as I uncover all that I buried, it feels like I’ve fallen again. The summit I worked so hard to reach seems impossibly far away. I feel helpless, afraid that the more I look at these truths—the more I sand them down—the more I lose the person I’ve become.

What strikes me most as I confront this is the contrast between the two roads I walked during those years.

On one, there was self discovery—thanks to boxing, which grounded me and gave me strength.

On the other, there was self-destruction—through masking, avoiding, sabotaging, and clinging to anything that numbed the pain.

I realize now that one of the things I clung to was the physical pain of boxing itself. It wasn’t just an outlet; it was a way to distract myself, to avoid the emotional wounds I had buried so deeply.

I was addicted to one kind of pain to avoid facing the other, the pain I had painted over with black and tried to forget.

The truth has only recently come together for me, and it explains so much. Boxing was about drowning the ache I didn’t know how to face.

But how could I have known?

My trauma started in my early years, long before I even had the tools to understand it. By the time I reached high school, I was already carrying the weight of things no teenager should ever have to bear.

And then, before I had a chance to process or heal, I found myself pregnant at eighteen.

How can an eighteen-year-old girl with so much unresolved trauma possibly fix herself when she had a baby to care for?

I didn’t have time to stop and reflect. There was no space for self-discovery when survival came first. The responsibility of being a mother forced me to grow up overnight, but it also left no room for me to deal with what I had buried.

My son became my reason to be a better a better person, and boxing was the one thing that made me feel better than who I was before.

Being strong for him often meant ignoring the parts of me that needed attention and compassion. Instead of addressing the pain, I unconsciously channeled it into something else, even if it came with the cost of time at the gym instead of time with my son. That’s part of the red paint symbolizing guilt that I see across the canvas.

My son and I grew up together. At times, my son held my pain. He would see me broken from toxic relationships and try to cheer me up, carrying a burden no child should ever have to do for their mother.

As many people know, I moved to Nova Scotia in 2022 after having my second son. That was the hardest decision I’ve ever made.

It meant settling for summer-long stays and visits back and forth, which shattered me in ways I still can’t fully articulate.

What I can articulate is the profound sense of faith I felt in my heart when I chose to go. Something in my heart of all hearts was telling me to go.

Nova Scotia became the place where I confronted the truth I’d spent years avoiding. It was there, in the stillness of nature and solitude, that I saw the black wall clearly for the first time. The wall I had spent so much time painting over.

It’s where I began the sanding process, where I finally faced the guilt I carried for being the kind of mother I never wanted to be—the kind who couldn’t always show up.

Nova Scotia became the place where I made the choice to stop running and start unpacking.

Unpacking is not romantic. It’s not brave in the way people think it is. It’s sitting alone with the parts of yourself you hate the most and daring to look at them without turning away, without throwing everything back in the suitcases and zipping it back up.

It’s exhausting, painful, and slow. But it’s also where I realized I didn’t want to hide anymore—not behind boxing, relationships, or substances.

I chose to change. I chose to be a mother first. I chose to show up—not just for my sons, but for myself. Because I’ve learned that the only way to give them the mother they deserve is to give myself the love and compassion I’ve always deserved.

That’s how I know I’ll show up. By leading a life free of substances and self-destructive patterns. By embracing the pain instead of masking, it. By standing in front of the black wall until it doesn’t scare me anymore.

I will uncover every part I have painted over without fear and I will hold space for myself when I uncover the parts that hurt to look at.

These realizations aren’t tied in a neat bow. They’re messy, ongoing, and complicated, just like the truth. But if I’ve learned anything through writing this memoir, it’s that showing up—over and over—is what matters most.

I spent so many years believing that boxing was the strength I needed to be a better mother, because I felt like a better person with boxing in my life.

But the strength to move on without looking back came with a cost. Boxing became my way to cope, not by healing, but by hurting.

The physical pain of training and fighting was something I could control, something tangible that felt easier to endure than the chaos inside me.

Boxing was my release, an escape from anything and everything bad in my life.

But boxing was also a trade-off. With every day I trained, every fight I took, I was postponing the biggest fight of all. The fight I truly needed to face—the one with myself.

It’s only been within the four years I have been retired that I’ve had the space to reflect and uncover these truths. It’s only now, as a write this memoir that I am piecing together the pattern—the correlation between the physical pain I sought and the emotional pain I avoided.

Realizing this has been both freeing and devastating. On one hand, I can finally see myself with clarity and compassion, understanding why I made the choices I did. On the other hand, I’m faced with the weight of everything I never allowed myself to feel back then.

The irony is almost poetic: the very hands that threw punches in the ring to save me were the hands I used to push myself deeper into despair.

It’s duality in its truest form—becoming while breaking. That is what I hope people will see.

It’s not simple, it’s not clean, but it’s real. And maybe, just maybe, it’s what makes my story worth telling.