José Raúl Bernardo writes a meditative essay, "Happy Blue Crabs," on the first time he "felt like a man" and on his grandfather's philosophy about "living moments of poetry."   Jayne Anne Phillips, in "Callie" reflects on the meaning of her uncle's death to his family and to the community in which he lived.  In "The Diary of Kali the Cat," Whitney Otto meditates on the importance of her pets in her life. 

In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien discusses the reason he tells stories about Vietnam and his friends who served there with him -- those that died and those that survived.  He writes

In ordinary conversation I never spoke much about the war, certainly not in detail, and yet ever since my return I had been talking about it virtually nonstop through my writing.  Telling stories seemed a natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throat.  Partly catharsis, partly communication, it was a way of grabbing people by the shirt and explaining exactly what happened to me, how I'd allowed myself to get dragged into the wrong war, all the mistakes I'd made, all the terrible things I'd seen and don't.         

      I did not look at my work as therapy, and still don't.  Yet, . . . it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse.  By telling stories you objectify your experience.  You separate it from yourself.  You pin down certain truths. (179)