About six years into the endless rewriting of my first book, MY MOTHER’S HOUSE, A Memoir, people commented, “Well, at least it’s good therapy.” Well, no, I had to say. Therapy is therapy. Writing is writing. It’s true that I needed to tell the story of my fifty-plus years of relationship with my mother. But this need came as much from my writer’s soul, to capture The Story, as to get the personal story out of myself. This writer’s need comprises one of the two exceptions to that fact that journal writing, not memoir, is the primary form of life-writing that works as therapy. The quest of therapy is to learn about your feelings, needs, desires, and so on, in order to realize the meaning of your life and perhaps change accordingly. Journaling helps you achieve this. In a journal, you are concerned with telling yourself your story, clarifying it for yourself. Memoir, however, is a story form about some aspect of your life that you share with, and must interest, others. In a journal you write, “I ran into John at the supermarket yesterday.” You don’t have to describe the special ambiance of that supermarket in that part of town. You don’t have to explain who John is because you already know. “John” is a kind of shorthand for a whole experience of this man. Of course you might decide to jot down some salient details about John today and/or yesterday, either for yourself or for reference if you eventually do write a memoir. But in a journal, this is a choice, not a necessity. Moreover, you needn’t describe John in complete sentences. Phrases that make sense to you will work just fine in a journal. And you can choose not to write such details as well. Then there’s dialogue. “We talked about