“Are you writing it down? You’ll forget it. Write it down.”
~ Vivian, Pretty Woman

There it is, friends. If you want to remember, and especially if you hope other people in your life will remember, you must write it down.

My sisters and I often exchange book recommendations, and this was one I encouraged Lowi to read: Grimoire Girl: A Memoir of Magic and Mischief by Hilarie Burton Morgan. As you have already heard, she’s not a fan of the word Grimoire because she considers it to be grim.

I say don’t let the name fool you. This is, at its very core, a love letter to your loved ones about your well-lived life. Period. The End.

Even the people we know the best have parts of themselves that we know nothing about. Children have no idea who their parents were in their younger days. Sure, we hear stories, but we don’t know them in that way. We come along far later after they are saddled with kids, mortgages, marriages, and life. Much like my sisters. I know them well. We share inside jokes and years lived together, but I feel confident their perspective on their life is different than mine. It has to be. 

This idea of a grimoire, or Endowment, as Lowi has taken to calling it, is a way of letting people into our lives with a narrative that’s our own voice. It’s a telling of our life in experiences, poetry, book recommendations, and reminiscences; it’s the relaying of who we have been, who we are now, and maybe even who we are slowly becoming.

It’s opening the door a bit wider to those who deserve it, letting them in on the little secrets that have landed us in good times and allowed us to survive the unbearable. 

I don’t have children, but I don’t think that precludes me from having something to pass on to my nieces, my friends, or maybe even my sisters in this life. That’s how I think of creating your own grimoire. 

As Lowi and I have tossed this idea around over the months, we warmed to our own versions of what this means to us. I have always been drawn to writing down your life because it’s often only in hindsight that you are able to discern the meaning or the lessons that are woven inside. Who is better equipped to write the story of you than you? This may be a bold stance, but I am not even sure we know what our story is until we begin to write it down, methodically put its pieces together, and then step back and look at how far we’ve come. All the roads traveled, all the near disasters, and legitimate crises survived. As well as all of the joy, the wreckless and carefree fun, the falling in love, the hapless adventures, and the laughter until tears rolled down your face. 

This process also helps us to hear our own versions of what happened. Many of us go through our lives hearing it told back to us like someone else’s story. We don’t hear our own words; we hear someone else’s. We hear their voice. Sometimes we even mistakenly internalize it as our own. 

But how would you tell it? What context or backstory about who you are is missing from the general draft floating around in the ether? And on the lighter side, do you have a recipe for guacamole that most definitely should outlive you? Have you learned how to fold a fitted sheet in a way that doesn’t make you just ball it up in the linen closet? Do you have just the correct measurement of liquor to mix with deep conversations that will assuredly deliver you through the rougher parts of life that need to be passed on?

I imagine a tome of this genre will be replete with various chapters that vacillate as widely as different eras of our lives have. I said it was a love letter to our people, and it is, but it’s also one for ourselves. The tangible embodiment of human life, a veritable instruction manual that nearly all of us at one time or another wished we had. And in the year of making your own luck, being your own person… make your own book.