Tell Me A Story

- Marin Sardy

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Following the 2019 publication of my memoir, The Edge of Every Day, about mental illness in my family, I began writing about my evolving relationship with my mother, who had lived for nearly forty years with untreated psychosis and who was becoming increasingly frail. We had grown close since I began helping with her physical and financial needs, though as always, this was complicated by her paranoia and delusions. Then in late 2020, her physical health began a dramatic decline, launching me into an intensive caregiving role and bringing up traumatic memories of her illness in my youth. In the year leading up to her passing, I became so stressed and anxious that I was unable to write.

Fortunately, when I cleared out her apartment after helping her move into assisted living, I found a stack of magazines. These included National Geographic and Martha Stewart Living, both containing many striking and colorful photographs. I took them home and used them to create a series of collages exploring our situation and shared history. My memoir had included several collage-like essays, so this felt like a natural step. Photo collage beautifully conveyed the fractured disorientation I felt, and juxtaposing the disparate images enabled me to grapple with complex feelings. It also helped me find words again. With each piece, a sentence would arise that I then incorporated and made its title. Just as my book was a “memoir in essays,” I think of this series as a (somewhat fictionalized) “memoir in images.”

Marin Sardy is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Edge of Every Day (Pantheon, 2019). Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Guernica, The Paris Review, and many other journals, as well as in two award-winning photography books. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Sardy has three times had essays listed as "notable" in the Best American series and has been granted residency fellowships at Hawthornden Castle and Catwalk Institute. She teaches memoir and personal essay writing for Authors Publish and Pace University.

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