The Art of the Memoir: An Interview with Meredith Beardmore

Writing a memoir takes a particular kind of courage. It means going back to the hardest moments of your life, examining them closely, and then laying them out for the world to see. In The Plan B Chronicles: Divorce. Defiance. Liberation., psychotherapist Meredith Beardmore does exactly that, offering an unflinching account of heartbreak, betrayal, and, ultimately, self-reclamation. We talked with her about why she decided to tell her story and what she hopes readers take from it.

For Beardmore, the decision to write came while reviewing a year's worth of her own journal entries. "I stood back and thought: Whoa. This was bad. Like, really bad," she recalls. "And yet, there was something else there too. I could see, in real time, how I had survived without a plan, without a roadmap. Just raw instinct, rage, grief, stubbornness, one foot in front of the other."

Looking at those pages, she began to think about other women. "I wondered how many women were out there, drowning in shame, staying silent, too afraid to share," she says. "I felt that if more of us ripped the curtain back, if we told the truth in all its messiness, we'd all feel less alone."

As a psychotherapist and somatic healer, Beardmore had spent years helping clients through exactly this kind of pain. Living it herself was a completely different experience. "I felt like a student again," she says. "Like I had spent years teaching a class I suddenly had to retake, but this time, the stakes weren't theoretical. Everything I had taught about the nervous system, about trauma, about listening to the body? It wasn't just important anymore. It was everything."

Somatic healing plays a central role in her recovery, and she describes it in vivid, practical terms. "Somatic healing is about coming back to your body," she explains. "Trauma, stress, and heartbreak don't just live in your mind. They live in your nervous system. In your jaw when you clench it. In your shoulders when you tense them." Her advice is simple, if not easy: "Put the phone down. Stop running. Sit with it." It's a useful reminder for anyone going through a hard time. Noticing where stress shows up in the body can be a first step toward calming it.

One of the challenges of memoir is making a deeply personal story resonate with others. Beardmore found that her experience was reflected almost everywhere she looked. "I kept seeing my story reflected back at me everywhere," she says. "In pop culture, in movies, in the way society talks about women and aging and cheating. Betrayal, the gut-punch of being traded in, it's a tale as old as time. And that's exactly why I had to write about it. Because knowing it's a cliché doesn't make it hurt any less."

Some chapters were extraordinarily difficult to write, including one describing a moment when she feared for her safety. Reliving those moments on the page was painful, but she knew they had to be included, because they captured the confusion and disbelief that so many people feel when their lives suddenly come apart.

More than anything, Beardmore wants readers to know that what feels like the end rarely is. "When your life detonates, when you're thinking, This is what breaks me, it's not," she says. "The things you think will kill you? Won't. You are stronger than you know."

And she's already looking ahead. "More writing, more healing, more stories to tell," she says. One subject she's eager to explore is dating in your forties as a single mom. "If you thought dating in your 20s was chaotic," she jokes, "try doing it with a kid, a career, and an instant allergy to red flags."

That mix of hard-earned wisdom and humor is exactly what makes her memoir so compelling, and so comforting for anyone rebuilding after betrayal.

The Plan B Chronicles: Divorce. Defiance. Liberation. by Meredith Beardmore is available now in paperback and hardcover.