Thinking about writing a memoir?

Already started?

Stop.

You have some work to do — important work — that has little to do with the arc of your story or character development. Writing memoir requires courageous exploration of where you come from.

Best-selling memoirist and educator Mark Matousek invites you to travel back in time with Origins: Lineage, Legacy and Blood Relations. Revealing the patterns of our personal history, we gain insight into our character – on and off the page — by asking essential questions.

What is the nature of my emotional and spiritual inheritance?

What lessons were passed down to me at birth?

How has this legacy shaped my story?

How much of the story of my life, the story I live from, is true?

These nine eye-opening lessons will deepen your writing and enrich your life.

ABOUT THIS COURSE

Origins: Lineage, Legacy and Blood Relations is a multimedia independent study course.
Each original lesson is available in audio and PDF formats. Also included are videos providing an overview of the course and an introduction to Mark’s Writing to Awaken method. All files can be accessed through the website after purchase and downloaded to a phone, tablet, or computer.

Lesson One: The Creation Myth – Each of us carries a story about how we came into the world, the parents who came together to create us, and the emotional narrative into which we were born.

Lesson Two: Ancestral Voices – Your creation story is the product of multiple voices communicating to you through episodes in your biography as well as through your imagination.

Lesson Three: The Wise Child – Childhood is a wellspring of innocence, inspiration, and native wisdom, and you can explore and learn from the child-like qualities that persist in your personality.

Lesson Four: The Magic Circle – One of our greatest fears is to be exiled from our community, rejected by the people we call our tribe. In order to avoid this, we are often willing to sacrifice our originality.

Lesson Five: Telling Secrets – Authenticity arises from confronting the impostor within and refusing to be controlled by our secrets or the contents of our psychological shadow.

Lesson Six: Love Invents Us – Emotional connection is the link to our sense of meaning and a central element of character. When we come to recognize the bonds of the heart, we reveal who we are and what really matters.

Lesson Seven: Creative Memory and Imagination – There are many ways of knowing things about ourselves, including non-verbal memories and received ideas from family.

Lesson Eight: Creating from Memory – In the process of articulating what we know and representing it on the page, we learn to distinguish essential information from imagination.

Lesson Nine: What Do I Mean? – The need for meaning is universal, as important to our survival as food and water. Learning to identify your primary sources of meaning will enable you to make clearer choices about how to tell your story.

A Writing to Awaken Testimonial

Origins: Lineage, Legacy and Blood Relations yields penetrating, creative results that deepen your self-understanding while providing a proven framework for creating powerful memoir.

Self-Study Course Price: $299

Return to all Self-Study Courses