Another version: When I was 56, I decided to become a writer. I had done many other things before, lived in different countries, seen the world through the lens of different languages. There were chunks of my childhood spent in Germany and Austria; Russian studies at Georgetown; a career in finance on Wall Street; private banking and portfolio management in Switzerland; then, a completely different kind of life in Idaho.

I grew up hearing stories about people starting over. My father left his village in Germany as a teenager because he didn’t want to be a blacksmith like his father; he wanted to work on airplanes. My grandmother fled East Germany on foot with her children to begin life anew in a refugee camp. My parents began their married life in a new country with just enough money to rent an apartment in Queens and buy an old Chevy. Migration for them was a pathway to a better life. For some of my forebears, it was a matter of survival.

Movement became an agent of change and growth for me as well. But I always had the luxury of choice whenever I changed course. And through all the life pivots, writing gave me a means of building expertise in new fields. My studies in international affairs at Georgetown led to internships in which I wrote on international maritime strategy, summarized congressional hearings on the Clean Air Act, reported on economic sanctions imposed on the Soviet Union in the ‘80s. And as part of my various responsibilities during my 14-year career at Merrill Lynch, I was called upon to write strategic plans for international banking initiatives, training courses, marketing plans, and client presentations, among other things.

When I left finance and moved to Idaho, I ventured into new terrain with non-profit work in education and conservation, and the launching of a Montessori elementary school. I owned a retail business in furnishings and design, consulted on an online art start-up, and worked in hospitality/resort management. And in those 24 years, I was writing too: business plans, grant proposals, website content in three industries, and soothing letters to irate hospitality guests that would have made my diplomacy professors at Georgetown proud.

Over time, writing itself has become a form of movement for me, a continuation of the exploration that led me to become a writer specializing in memoir. I’ve learned that writing memoir — illuminating the messiness, the things we’d rather not look at in our lives — can be achingly difficult. But it can also be healing and help shine a light for others.