From the time I was nineteen until a few days before my thirty-ninth birthday, I comforted the dying and cared for children from the street as a nun in the group founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. All the while, my real job – as Mother Teresa explained it – was to die myself so that Jesus could live within me.

Obliterating self is not ideal preparation for the writing of memoir.

The magnificent novelist Marilynne Robinson, author of “Housekeeping” and “Gilead” and “Home,” read one of my early essays about my years in the convent. More than a decade later, when she held my memoir, “An Unquenchable Thirst,” in her hands, Marilynne told me that she’d never forgotten that first essay. It was the only piece of autobiographical writing she’d ever read that abstained from the use of the first person singular pronoun. As a good sister, I had obliterated the word “I.”

What could I say? To me, everyone else was far more interesting: the kids in the Washington, DC, projects; the drug dealers in the South Bronx; the gypsies in Rome. And, of course, writing about Mother Teresa and what I understood of her struggles was a privilege. Writing about myself would be a waste of paper and ink – and shamelessly egotistical.

Or maybe I was just scared.

The more I hid from my own stories, the more people who read the early drafts wanted to know about me.

Gradually, I began to reveal more. I decided to write in simple sentences, using language that didn’t draw attention to itself, bringing readers so close that they would experience the events of my convent days along with me. I decided not to leave out the embarrassing parts. I wrote about being so angry with a superior that I picked her up and shook her. I wrote about falling in love – twice – first with a sister, then with a priest.

When I began to fear that I was revealing too much, I would think of how often the Church revealed too little. Nothing had been gained by hiding the stories of what it felt like to struggle with chastity, poverty, and obedience. Perhaps if I was honest about my own trials, other people would be encouraged to be honest about theirs.

It took ten years to write my story.

When “An Unquenchable Thirst” was first released in hardcover and as an e-book, its subtitle read: “Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life.” Today, when it is released as a Random House Readers Circle paperback, the subtitle says simply: “A Memoir.”

In the process, “An Unquenchable Thirst” has become a reclaiming of the self that Mother Teresa said needed to die.

Each human story is important. Each examined life has something to teach us. I’m so grateful to the people who convinced me to tell mine.

Read an excerpt of "An Unquenchable Thirst" below.

An Unquenchable Thirst; Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life by Random House Publishing Group