‘UNPACKING THE BAGGAGE’
The therapeutic power of writing one’s memoir
During Bob Becker’s long career in public relations and marketing, he’s done work for major corporations and met his share of high-powered CEOs and famous people.
But he’s never felt as satisfied as he does when sitting around a table with a group of non-celebrity folks discussing their lives and memories.
“If there’s a reason why I am here, this is it,” says Becker, who now spends a lot of his time facilitating memoir projects with senior citizens, recent retirees, cancer patients and others.
“It’s very personal and very intimate,” says Becker, 70, a longtime Bethel resident. “I get so much out of it because they’re opening up.”
Becker will perform music, show film clips, bring in guest speakers, ask questions and encourage discussion to stir up memories among participants in a group setting.
He may begin a conversation by saying, “You’re 10 years old, it’s spring, where do you live?” Or he could ask participants about their first love, first pet or first car. Sometimes he uses humor and other times he takes a more serious approach.
Then he waits for the memories to come out. “They laugh, cry, confess, scream — and it’s OK. Just get it out,” he says. “It’s very therapeutic.”
Becker refers to this sharing as “unpacking the baggage” that people have accumulated and kept inside them. “It’s the stuff you carry with you your entire life,” he says.
He stresses spontaneity of one’s feelings and assures everyone they have an interesting story to tell about their life.
Becker usually oversees the memoir workshops on a volunteer basis. He also does paid legacy work for business people, individuals, companies and trade associations.
Among the places he’s done memoir projects are the Bethel Senior Center, Greater Danbury Men’s Club, Ann’s Place cancer support group in Danbury, and a nursing home in Queens, N.Y. Projects often lead to booklets, videos or websites.
During one session at a nursing home, an 82-year-old wheelchairbound woman shared how as a child her mother was shot dead in front of her and her younger sister on Christmas morning.
“The room fell silent,” Becker says. “In the moments that followed, her fellow nursing home companions hugged her.”
At another site, an older man said he could talk about the first and last 20 years of his life but not the two decades in between. He eventually shared that he’d been institutionalized for six years during mid-life.
The man began to open up to the group and divulge more memories, including the guilt he felt over a childhood incident. “I told him, ‘You’ve become the teacher here,’” Becker says.
The man later told Becker, “You validated my life.”
“THEY LAUGH, CRY, CONFESS, SCREAM — AND IT’S OK. JUST GET IT OUT. IT’S VERY THERAPEUTIC.”
One reason Becker is pursuing this new endeavor is unresolved issues from the death of his own mother when he was 17. She died after a long battle with cancer.
He described her as “a fiery redhead,” classical pianist and dancer, but he felt in some ways he never really knew her.
Becker’s wife told him he didn’t talk much about his mother. Upon contemplation, he realized he’d never fully grieved for his loss, partly due to his age at the time. “I didn’t grieve and everyone else did,” he says.
That motivated him to visit the Bethel Senior Center and to oversee a memoir writing class. ”I want to give people an opportunity not to regret doing that,” he says.
More than five years later, he’s still leading the group that meets weekly. They’ve produced one book of people’s written memories and a second one now is in the works.
Lisa Plumb, the center’s executive director, says Becker has the right personality for the task, with his sense of humor and ability to make people feel comfortable.
“Everyone in the class gets very close, like they are a family,” Plumb says.
Becker thinks sharing and preserving memories is so important he wants hospitals and town governments to open legacy and memoir offices to retain the recollections of employees and residents.
Becker grew up in New York City and lived in northern California, Texas and suburban New York before moving to Bethel. He’s been married 43 years to artist and human rights activist Elizabeth White.
In the 1980s, he worked on a national cable-TV program that interviewed well-known artists about their creativity. Becker later formed his own communications firm and has won industry media awards for clients such as Fortune 500 companies, manufacturers, retailers, hospitals and nonprofits.
He’s been a musician since a young age and has created and performed original music scores for product launches and advertisements.
Becker thinks his memoir focus has made him a better husband, more forgiving person, and revived pleasant memories of his mother. “It’s put me in touch with long buried things,” he says.