Writing the end of your memoir is inherently awkward. Your story needs to come to a conclusion, but your life just keeps on going. Maybe you’ve finally gotten to the last chapters of your memoir (congrats!). You’ve done your research, written the painful scenes, created a sturdy narrative structure—and now you’ve hit a wall. That makes sense. Your real life is unlikely to hand you a tidy resolution. But somehow, you’ve got to figure out how to end your memoir, anyway!
Why Your Memoir Needs “Narrative Closure”
Writing the end to your memoir is (usually) not quite the same as finding resolution in your life
So, yes. Your memoir does need “narrative closure”—a conclusive arc. But that doesn’t mean that you need to have gotten closure in real life.
Narrative closure can be subjective. It’s your call to make. When they read your story, narrative closure will make readers feel they’ve arrived somewhere different than where they started. Emotionally. Psychologically. You may have shown you’ve changed in some substantive way. Or that you’ve understood something better. Whatever the external circumstances, you’ve demonstrated growth through the pages of your book. Even if the issue itself hasn’t been completely resolved.
Real-life closure, on the other hand, means you’ve objectively ended or resolved the situation. For instance, your divorce is final, your treatment is behind you, or the new life you longed for is underway.
The good news? You don’t need real life to validate your inner experience. Your own sea change is likely enough to satisfy readers deeply.
How to writing about what you’re still processing
Sometimes, writing while we’re in the midst of things can help us process what’s swirling around us. When you’re shaping your experience into a story, though, this approach can feel complicated. If you’re working through trauma or an unresolved relationship you might be concerned that you won’t be able to write the ending. Or at least not now.
In such a case, reframing your task as a memoirist can help. Remind yourself that you’re not writing toward an objectively concluded outcome. You may not be able to do that. But what you can do is write toward some level of subjective understanding that you can share with your readers. Relieve yourself of the expectation that your ending has to say: Here’s how it turned out. Instead, congratulate yourself on being able to say: Here’s what I understand now, at this point in my life, looking back at this part of it.
That’s more than legitimate. It’s honest and likely to land with readers—who are also living complicated lives.
How one author wrote an inconclusive end to his memoir
David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy is a good example of this. In it, Sheff writes about his son’s addiction. The memoir doesn’t end with his son’s recovery or with the healing of their relationship. Why? Because neither of those things had happened by the time he finished his book. Instead, Sheff brings his readers with him, to the understanding that he couldn’t fix his son. That he had to change the way he loved him. That’s the ending. It tells the truth as Sheff lived it. And it doesn’t pretend to have answers he didn’t have.
If you’re sitting with something unresolved, ask yourself what you understand today that you didn’t understand prior to the experience unfolding. That shift in understanding may be exactly the ending your book needs. Even if the situation itself is still unfolding.
When your memoir has a built-in ending
Some memoirs are written about something that has an obvious end point—a particular time in your life, a specific undertaking, or a relationship that completed its story. Any experience that has a clear beginning, middle, and end. When that’s the type of story you’re telling, your ending will be straightforward—even if it wasn’t easy to live.
Patti Smith’s Just Kids is one beautiful/painful instance of this type of memoir. In it, Smith explores her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, and the story ends with his death. Smith’s own life didn’t end there—she has kept living and making art into the present day.
Patti Smith has written three more memoirs since Just Kids: M Train (2015), Year of the Monkey (2019), and Bread of Angels (2025). She’s had a big life and has a lot of story to share. Still, she allowed herself to let Just Kids come to an end with the conclusion of that particular chapter in her life—rather than trying to carry that narrative thread forward into everything that came after.
If your material has that kind of clarity about where it ends, you’re not obligated to follow the story past that point just because your life kept going. That’s what a next book is for.
Finding your own ending
Maybe your story has a natural ending. Maybe it doesn’t. Either way, here’s a way to test it. Write one sentence that fills in this blank: By the end of this experience, I understood … Not necessarily I resolved … or I fixed … Just, I understood. Whatever you fill in that blank with is probably the ending you’ve been wondering about—whether your life outside the pages has wrapped up tidily or not.
If your story doesn’t feel complete, you might also take a look at my post titled “Is It Too Soon to Write Your Memoir?“
If you have questions about how to end your memoir, to start it, or how to keep going in the murky middle, I can help. Visit my contact page, and let’s connect. You might also be interested in my books: Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.