Memoir writing can give us a new kind of perspective.  Here we are immersed in the experience of our lives, caught up and busy and focused.  But when we stop to write, we take a step back and get a different view.  When we arrange the pieces of our lives on the page, we can see the contours of our days and the shape of our lives from a unique vantage point.  Ordinary events can strike us with their beauty and breadth.  We can see the movement in our lives.  Sometimes writing takes us into unfamiliar spaces, too.  We look at photographs and try to remember who we were once.  Or who the people we loved were.  And we connect the dots, creating the borders of a map of our lives.