Jeannette Walls, author of the memoir “The Glass Castle,” spoke about her childhood experiences and maintaining hope at the Memorial Union Wednesday evening as a part of the Distinguished Lecture Series.

In “The Glass Castle,” Walls navigates the dysfunction in her childhood and her later successes as a journalist and editor. The book spent 261 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Though her speech focused on how she came to write a book about growing up in poverty in West Virginia with parents battling mental illness, Walls filled her speech with anecdotes as well as lessons she learned from her past.

In one story, Walls said whenever her family didn’t have enough food to eat and times were tough, her father would pull out a blueprint to the mansion they were going to have when things got better.

Every time her father brought out the blueprints, they would add new features and fantasize about what it would be like to live there, which Walls said kept her hope alive and inspired the title of her book.

“The thing I keep coming back to is that glass castle, that dream and that hope and that vision,” Walls said. “It’s not what you’re given, it’s what you do with what you have, how much you’re given in life; it’s where you see yourself going.”

Walls also recalled an experience she had reading comments online of her book where, to her surprise, she found a comment from an old classmate, Becky.

In the comment, Walls said Becky wrote about her regret and desire to apologize for treating Walls poorly in school for being unclean and wearing old clothes, and not taking the time to understand Walls’ circumstances.

Walls immediately set out to find Becky. When she did, she said she told her there was no need for an apology.

“I told Becky if the roles had been reversed, and I’d been a popular kid and somebody like me would have come along, I don’t know if I’d have the courage to befriend somebody like me,” Walls said.

During their conversation, Walls said Becky told her she had became a nurse for disabled people as her way of making amends for how she treated her.

Throughout her speech, Walls kept the audience laughing, making jokes about herself and adding a humorous spin on dark experiences. As she concluded her speech, Walls told the audience it is OK to have a past and scars.

“It’s when we fall is when we see what we’re made of,” Walls said. “There is no shame in falling. The only shame comes if you think that you don’t deserve to get back up.”

Walls asked all to recognize that everyone has “texture,” and to take the time to consider someone’s story before passing judgment.