My grandmother and I frequently summered in Italy; her only luxury in life was to go back home. But every summer there were fewer people to visit, and fewer friends left alive.

One year, in Tuscany, we were met by a vivacious, older woman, with chaotic matrilineal connections to me that I could not chart at gunpoint. She handed me an old, tattered book, with a gilded steer on the cover.

She said to me, in broken English, “This is our family.”

It wasn’t, of course. It was a fable. It was the story of a patriarch—a man of unearthly determination who had built an entire township on the back of a single prized steer. It was, of course, a ghostwritten manuscript; a self-published book that they had passed down, generation after generation, creating their own family mythos. A shared sense of values and connection.

There is a truth beyond truth. The book may have not been anyone else’s truth. But it was the truth of their family. And I still remember the extraordinary pride in her eyes when she shared it.

As children, we grow up reading biographies and autobiographies. But these are detached tales. There is extraordinary power and strength in a memoir that frequently lies untapped. A memoir is a way to explore yourself and your history, but it’s also a way to leave something long-lasting behind.