Whoopi Goldberg says writing a book about her late brother and mother “felt like losing them all over again” (Exclusive)

“I didn’t remember anything after my brother died,” Goldberg says of that emotionally trying time.

Whoopi Goldberg makes emotional vulnerability a definitive aspect of her latest written work.

Title Pieces: my mother, my brother and meIn a nod to his late mother, Emma Harris, as well as his late brother, Clyde K. Johnson, Goldberg reminds PEOPLE for this week’s print issue that putting pen to paper for the memoir “was almost more hard to do because it was like losing them again.”

“I didn’t remember anything after my brother died,” Goldberg recalled of that emotionally trying time. “I don’t know why, but for some reason in my head, my brother has only been gone for five years and my mother has only been gone for seven years. This is not the case, my mother has been gone for 16 years and my brother for 11 years.”

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Harris died of a stroke on August 29, 2010, while Johnson died suddenly from a brain aneurysm at age 66 on May 11, 2015.

“I just thought, ‘Wow, if you can’t understand how they lived together, no wonder you don’t remember anything.’ View the host explains. “It’s no wonder you don’t remember anything. So maybe you should just write some stuff down, see what happens if you do that.” “

She did just that, writing a powerful memoir that is both a moving tribute and a frank reflection on her family, from heartwarming memories with Johnson and Harris to shocking revelations about her father forcing her mother to endure electroshock treatment during his stay in New York. Bellevue Hospital.

For more from Whoopi Goldberg, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

“I talked to a few friends and talked about what I wanted to do. And then I just thought, ‘Well, I’ll just do it. I’ll just do it.’ And I did it and it’s great,” Goldberg said of the writing process, noting that the entire project “took about a year” to put together.

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The star, who jokes about her “pretty scattered thought process” and having “the attention span of a gnat,” told a close friend to “talk” about her memoir instead of sit down and write them completely alone. She says the collaborative effort “[helped] I received it in an order that made sense to people.”

Overall, Goldberg wants the memoir to serve as a way for “people to get to know me better.”

“It’s a little more important where I come from and the people I come from, what my blood is, who my blood is,” she adds.

Pieces: my mother, my brother and me comes out May 7 and is available for pre-order now, wherever books are sold.

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