ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the trajectory of a life writing project through tertiary education to publication and beyond. It looks at writing as therapy and demonstrates that its affect on life writers may be incremental. The chapter explores a particular healing, from writing that pain out, but posits that this healing was incremental – a gradual process throughout the years. Louise DeSalvo describes the characteristics of a healing narrative: A healing narrative links feelings to events. Memoir captures real life and tells more about what it is to be human. The former candidate’s memoir, when first published, became a top seller of a large Australian bookstore chain for many weeks. The former candidate discusses that decision and why she would make a different one. As such, she continues the incremental ownership of her life writing story of the systematic abuse she experienced as a child, growing up in Melbourne, at the hands of an extended family member.
