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Transforming Your Story (Part 3)

Mar 17, 2014 | Spirituality, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom

Transforming Your Story – The “How”

Part 3 of a series. 12 posts scattered throughout 2014 on Transforming Your Story.

Part 1 – the “what:” To transform your story means that you are awake to and aware of the book in which you find yourself and the pages you are writing.

Part 2 – the “why:” This is your story. You’ll decide where it goes from here.

And now, Part 3 – the “how.”

In order to transform your story, you need to consider how you came to tell it the way you do.

Have you ever listened to yourself tell a story about something that happened to you and wonder why you chose to tell it the way you did? Why you used humor, sarcasm, dismissal, emotion, or any other myriad of devices?

Whatever choice you made in that moment is not objective. The ways in which you experience the events of your life and the way in which you interpret, translate, and tell of them is always subjective; always influenced by the lenses that are yours. And one of those lenses is the assumptions you make.

We all make them: assumptions. We jump to conclusions, have opinions, feel our gut response. We can’t help it, really. It’s knowing what they are and where they come from that makes the difference.

Here’s a quick exercise to prove my point:

  • When you see an online personality who appears to be completely put together and undoubtedly successful, what thoughts run
    through your mind?
  • When you spot a composed, attractive, and perfectly thin mom at Starbucks with her well-behaved, well-dressed children, what do you think?
  • When someone passes you on the freeway, what is your directed response toward the other driver?
  • When you hear someone mention the word “God,” what happens inside?
  • When you watch a political debate, what thoughts formulate concerning the “opponent?”
  • When following a truck with bumper stickers that offends you, what do you already know about the people inside?

I have no agenda inherent in any of these statements; rather, I list them to show how our brains so quickly leap to what we think we know, what we think we understand, what we’ve sometimes been indoctrinated to feel. Assumptions form quickly, naturally, and make their presence known. It can be a little scary, really.

These unconscious perceptions and preconceived notions have been developed and highly-honed over time – through our own and others’ voiced experiences; through the particular circumstances and cultural realities that have influenced and shaped our lives.

If this is true as it relates to the things and people external of you, it is just as true, if not more so, within.

You have interpreted the events in your past, in your own story, in a particular way. You experience the day-to-day aspects of your life with a learned-perspective. And you even consider your future with pre-determined beliefs about what can and will happen (or not).

You are living (and telling) your story within a swirl of assumptions.

Knowing the assumptions you have and do make within your own story (the “how” of how it’s told) is one of the most profound ways to transform it – past, present, and future.

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A personal example:

A NOTE: My theological perspective has shifted more-than-significantly since the following story occurred, but it serves in this context.

I assumed, during my excruciating years of infertility, that it was, apparently, God’s plan that I not become a mother. It was not mine to question, to doubt, to feel anger over. And this created incredible angst and nearly insurmountable levels of ambivalence for me. If I believed that God was in control of all things, then this too, had to fall under “his” purview. And if that assumption were true, then who was I to question, to rage, to exhibit pain? I needed to suck it up and accept God’s will as best for me.

And therein lied the problem: I couldn’t – at least with any degree of honesty.

Adjectives that describe those years are words like gray, bland, and flat. It’s true: I was sad when the clinic would call to tell us the latest insemination attempt hadn’t worked. And yes, I was devastated, at least momentarily, when I was reminded of my fate every 28 days. I even recall expressing tentative anger with the-God-I-thought-I-knew through my journaling, but quickly talking/writing myself out of such by listing all the ways in which I was grateful; more, the ways I clearly needed to change my attitude, my perspective, my response. I argued with myself incessantly. I fought every temptation to despair. I kept a stiff upper lip and marched onward because to stop long enough and actually experience, let alone express my anger and anguish would have undone me…or so I thought.

The assumptions I held and the beliefs they perpetuated (or maybe the beliefs I held and the assumptions they perpetuated), reeked havoc in my mind and soul. They shaped my story in marked and undeniable ways during those years. And if then, how many times before and certainly after?

Herein lies a pathway for me to look at my story anew: to wonder about where grief remains to be expressed, where true emotions have been hidden under layers of practiced behavior, where learned-belief has superseded lived-experience. And the more of these layers I uncover, the more profoundly my story – as I’ve been telling it – becomes clear to me; the more ability I have to tell and live it as I prefer – to transform it – with beliefs chosen, assumptions put aside, new lenses donned.

I can re-play that tape in a much different way today. I extend myself considerable consolation and kindness. I grieve after-the-fact. I wonder anew about where the divine was showing up all the time – but in ways I couldn’t see…yet. I look with appreciation and gratitude at the infinite strength of my heart to endure, to persevere, to hold on to hope. And I look at my two daughters with infinite amounts of awe – continually amazed by their presence in my life; miracles, both.

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In my story – and maybe in yours – to get underneath assumptions, acknowledge them, and then gift ourselves with new and ever-deepening understanding – might be the most transformational thing we
could ever do.

My story is worth that. Your story is worth that. Even more, you are! 

May it be so.

Transforming Your Story (Part 1)

Jan 6, 2014 | Women's Wisdom, Writing

A transformed story is what I want for you: that you would see your life as story, step into it with the same intent and curiosity, and even more, go about writing/living it with passionate intention, desire, honesty, and hope.

Not surprisingly, it’s what I want for me, too.

And so, this series. 

Today, Part 1: What does it mean to Transform Your Story?

Here’s the short answer: You acknowledge that you’re in one in the first place!

To know and believe this to be true, to have it as the over-arching context through which you view your life, then gives you both the ability and privilege of transforming it. The longer answer is, as you might imagine, the remainder of this post.

To transform your story means that you are awake to and aware of the book in which you find yourself and the pages you are writing.

The Book: The larger story within which you find yourself – determined by all kinds of things: family of origin, gender, race, ethnicity, age, location, culture, religious tradition, cultural norms/morals/events, socio-economic status, world events, etc. You do not choose these aspects of your story. They are a given. And the more aware you are of them, the better able you are to understand why you respond in certain ways, why you’re drawn toward (or  repulsed by) particular people, philosophies, or systems of belief, even why you look and sound the way you do.

“Yes, that’s so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the= old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkein, The Fellowship of the Ring

The Pages: Yours to write, to develop, to fill, to love. (And sometimes to scribble on, take a Sharpie to, or edit profusely.) Sentences to craft. Characters to shape. Dialogue to determine. Plot to build. Emotions to have. Feelings to express. Memories to heal. Dreams to dare. Hopes to express. You choose these aspects of your story. They are all yours. And the more you are aware of just how much creative license you have; how much freedom you have to choose the very particular and precise, or broad and sweeping ways in which you will write them (and live them, of course), the better.

Every person is born into life as a blank page — and every person leaves life as a full book. Our lives are our story, and our story is our life. Story is the narrative thread of our experience — not what literally happens, but what we make out of what happens, what we tell each other and what we remember. This narrative determines much of what we do with the time given us between the opening of the blank page the day we are born and the closing of the book the day we die. ~ Christina Baldwin, Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story

A brief example.

My book. A white woman, born in the U.S. in 1960, and growing up in a middle-class, Presbyterian-church-going home with 2 siblings, 2 parents, and some occasional pets. WAY more between the lines, but just these elements, by their very nature – and undetermined by me – determine a whole bunch of the story that is mine.

My pages. How I view these particulars, how they have shaped me, how I allow them to continue to do so or the very specific ways in which I make different and distinct choices. My responses. My resentments. My growth. My change. The pages are what I determine; what I’m writing/living.

To ignore the parts of my story that were not by choice, is short-sighted. To think that every aspect of my life is up to me, is arrogant. I need a way to recognize, allow for, and most importantly accept my context, my givens: the book in which I find myself. But to stop here is dangerous. To believe that nothing is within my control and that I can only work with the cards I’ve been dealt is, of course, depressing if not fatalistic. What I do with my reality, my story is up to me: the pages on which I write.

In every story there is a fine line between chance and choice, will and destiny, deliberateness and the hand of the Divine. And this is the stuff of great story, beautiful story, passionate story; the kind of story we love.

The same is true in yours and for you. To know where each of these elements are present, to accept responsibility and allow for grace – this is the stuff of your great story, your beautiful story, your passionate story. A story you love.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that to go on living I have to tell stories, that stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world. ~ Dorothy Allison

Choose to Believe – If Only For Today

Mar 30, 2013 | Hope & Encouragement, Sacred Stories, Spirituality

Easter Sunday is the most significant day on the Christian church calendar. Marking and celebrating the resurrection of Christ is no small event; no small thing to try and understand.

What if understanding is not the point?What if it never has been? What if all that’s ever mattered is the story itself?

I’ve been pondering this nearly endlessly the past couple of days – inspired by watching the film version of Life of Pi. The story is enchanting, heartbreaking, and powerful – as all good stories must be. Even more, it’s so fantastical that you want to believe. Did it actually happen? Was it really like that? Could he possibly have seen and experienced and survived all that he did? Does it matter?

These words, from the book:

“I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.

“So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do
you prefer? Which is the better story . . . ?”

Do you see?

If given the choice between a story of documentable facts or undeniable meaning, which would you choose? And more important, will you choose? For in such is where faith takes hold. In such is where hope survives. And in such is where love dwells – resurrected and pulsing.

I know: it’s a lot to accept the Burning Bush, the parting of the Red Sea, Jonah in the belly of a whale, and Job’s plight. I know: it’s a lot to accept the Virgin Birth, the healings, the feeding-of-the-5000, the walking-on-water, the death on a cross and resurrection three days later. I know: it’s a lot to accept your own stories of beauty and pain, sickness and health, better and worse, understanding and misunderstanding, poverty and plenty, silence and voice, dignity and depravity, shame and glory, struggle and celebration, hurt and healing, hate and love. But compared to what? A story that won’t surprise? A story that won’t make you see higher or further or differently? A flat story? An immobile story? A dry, yeastless factuality? No story at all?

Believe me, my point (even if only today) is not to have a discussion an argument about biblical inerrancy, atonement theory or any other multitude of theological premises. These are topics and arguments conversations I love, to be sure, but above and beyond everything else is the story. And that, today and every day, is where we must stay. It is our common ground, our grounding reality, our real (if not
only) source of faith and hope and love.

Story is the only thing that compels us; the only thing that really matters when all is said and done: mine, yours, ours…and mayebe even the one we tell/live/believe about God.

Do you see?

You can choose which story you want to believe; which one you want to have impact and move you over and over again. Even if only today, the veracity and “truth” of the story doesn’t matter. What matters is that the story is enchanting enough and heartbreaking enough and powerful enough to hold you captive, to hold you, period; to move you from despair to hope, from darkness to light, from doubt to faith, from death to life.

Do you see?

The Easter Story is invitation to choose to believe, to feel and experience what that makes possible, to cling tenaciously to faith, to hold onto crazy and illogical hope, to trust in beyond-belief love – even if only today. And maybe even more.

“Come and see.”

These were the words a few brave, believing women spoke to the disciples after discovering Jesus’ tomb empty. That morning they stepped into a story that was bigger than them – that they couldn’t possibly prove, verify, or make sense of – ever. And it didn’t matter.

On this Easter Sunday, like those brave, believing women of so long ago, I’m saying, “Come and see.”

Come and see. Choose to see. Believe the story you want, the story you long for, the story you pray for – for yourself and for our world: one of impossible-to-explain miracles, of resurgent faith, of soaring hope, of life conquering death, of resurrection, of love – and love – and love. And not just today. Always. Eternally. Really.

May it be so.

Our Heritage is Our Power

Jan 4, 2013 | Sacred Stories, Sovereignty, Women's Voice & Power

I had a gorgeous hour on Skype with Amy Palko today. A quick skim of topics included online business, abortion rights, driver’s licenses, culinary delicacies, life with teenagers, passive revenue streams, archetypes, goddesses, and . . . romance novels.

She talked of her current intrigue in self-published romance novels (a burgeoning quantity within the past few years, she says). Previously controlled almost exclusively by major publishing houses, that choke-hold has loosened, if not completely broken free with the advent of
self-publishing. Now, anyone (including me), can put their words into print! For women this is particularly significant: a forum in which we can say what we want with no need for permission or privilege.

This is not new. Amy told me of a lecture she gave about the gendered nature of blogging; the way in which it mirrors (and amplifies) what we’ve seen for centuries in women’s diaries and journals. Safe space in which women have articulated their coming of age, their deepest desires, their voice – unedited and unrestrained.

We agreed:

As women, we need a place to tell our stories – and hear each other’s. If it’s not provided or encouraged by the systems and structures within which we live, we will make a way.

As we talked, I felt a growing sadness within; truth-be-told, even a tinge of anger. This does not happen in Scripture. Women’s own voices and candid, raw experiences have not been captured or curated. And because of such, we have no sense of how they experienced their own coming of age, their own desires, their own experience of voice (or not). We have no way of connecting to them. Not really. Or at least, not enough.

It’s no wonder we struggle to find ourselves within those pages. We’re not there! Not in the connective, resonant, “yes” sort-of ways we intuitively create and crave.

Lest you despair, know that I do not. (Well, not for long, anyway.)

This is what I do and why I do it!

Women’s stories desperately long to be discovered, told, and honored throughout the pages of Scripture for (at least) two reasons: 1) because they are there, often between the lines, and waiting to be told, but boldly, beautifully present nonetheless; and 2) without them, our stories are incomplete – so formative and embedded are these texts in our culture, our politics, our structures of power, our religion(s), our social systems, our everyday world.

Judy Chicago, feminist artist of The Dinner Party said: “…all the institutions of our culture tell us through words, deeds, and even worse, silence, that we are insignificant. But our heritage is our power.”

I could not agree more. And I could not hope more. Our heritage is our power. Our stories, past and present, can and must be told.

Women’s voices, past and present, can and must be heard. It is not too late.

Mmmhmm. And then some.

May it be so.