Welty admits that she leads a sheltered and protected life mostly in Mississippi, growing up and that a sheltered life can be a daring life. The autobiographical elements of the writer who is an artist and a survivor are embedded in Welty``s The Optimist``s Daughter, in particular. The protagonist of this text has something in common with the writer herself. She is an artist who loses her family and is left alone in Mississippi like Welty. This study explores how the protagonist of The Optimist``s Daughter, heals her mind wounds through recollecting her mother``s death and her husband``s after her father``s funeral, and establishes her own identity as an artist who is isolated and independent in the Southern community where she grows up. The protagonist reexamines the layered relationship between her mother and father that is different from what she wants to remember. Also she tries to understand the past including her father``s remarriage with a much younger woman. She comes not only to understand her parents`` pain, but to realize her late husband``s despair. She delves into the close relationship between the past and the present, and then the future. She tries to heal the wounds of the past through remembering and recollecting memories as a survivor in the family.