Throughout their journey in life, your parents experienced all the everyday human emotions that make our personal stories meaningful. They loved and they shed tears; they filled their stomachs after a hard day’s work; they stretched out on a rough mattress in the afternoon heat, heady with gathering sleep. They waved their fingers through the surface of a stream; they shouted and fought with close friends in moments of anger; they waited with undisguised concern at the gates of your school, watching for you to emerge amongst the throng of your classmates, eager to take you back home.
All these memories, all these moments are part of their story, most of them half-remembered and not even thought about for decades. Most of the details of their early lives have long since faded to unimportance during those years when they were far more concerned with caring for you than they were about any aspirations of their own.
But no matter how colourful or commonplace their lives were, everything that ever happened to them influenced the way they parented you. In their stories lie the origins of the person you became, events that shaped your character long before you were even born. Your life is irrevocably intertwined with theirs, even from the days before they ever became your parent.
The Metro Writers HOW TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT YOUR PARENTS campaign launches Tết 2025, with our first writing guide scheduled for release in March.