Antonina Mareglia wrote: "A blog post about how to write through painful memories without becoming too distressed would be very useful for me. People who meet me say I should write about my life, my childhood, but I struggle...I get too upset and then always worry I'm not remembering anything honestly or clearly. Your insight would be appreciated."

Dear Antonina, here is how I have dealt with this need to be absolutely correct, absolutely exact, and so on (still dealing with it, in fact): FUCK IT. The truth is, you won't ever remember everything with a 100-percent accuracy. Memory is fluid. It changes as we change, and it distorts original events to the point of disputes at family gatherings when people who were present during some particularly memorable incident argue till they're blue in face about who remembers it right. The answer is: nobody.