Posts Tagged: Stories

Truth Serum

in Confusion to Clarity, Noticing

Some moments, even some entire days, I can catch myself in the judgements and lies that keep me from the truth. There’s such grace in that kind of clarity, that kind of peace. That is, when I can catch the lies.

And then there are the other days. The days I actually believe that “they’re” at fault. By “they” I mean anybody (or anything) out there that I can judge or blame. Like my dog for barking too much, my husband for not shutting the door, the weather for not being warmer or drier. Not to mention the theme songs I play in my own brain. Number one right now is There’s something wrong, and it’s because I’m not enough or there’s not enough.

These are the days I need a truth serum. Or some loving but stern Zen master to rap me up the side of the head. One question can usually do that: really? Is it true? When I’m aware enough of that feeling of shrinking inside, the way I’m living from a small self, that’s usually enough to bring me back.

Sometimes Truth shows up in harsher ways: the illness or death of a loved one can take me right there. To an opening of the heart big enough to embrace and allow the beauty around me to teach me to heal. What a shame that this is what it would take.

Reflections after a Dead Puppy Christmas

in Family Stress, Radical Kindness, Winter

Every year at this time I ask myself the question. “Now where was I?” It’s as if I left “my life” for somebody else’s. Which just might be true, at one level. Always the holidays are full to overflowing with the unexpected. This year my daughter brought home puppies from a rescue mission that had gone awry and we set up an emergency vet clinic here, where we nursed and held half-pound infants, trying desperately to save them from the ravages of Parvo. Only one of 15 made it, and it was happily delivered on Christmas eve. In the middle of all this sadness, carols, games with friends, and the Beatles on Wii were islands of laughter.

Which brings up the big savior: dark humor. I’ve lived long enough to keep in mind the story in family history WHILE going through the tough stuff. This will be the Christmas of the Dead Puppies, and we will laugh. Soon.

Who Would We Be Without Our Stories? (or How I Found Inquiry)

in Radical Kindness

I love stories. I was an English teacher for twenty-five years; I taught mythology, where my first lecture always defined human as meaning-making animals. How did they make meaning? Through the stories they told each other about themselves and their world. Throughout my career I encouraged teens to read stories to each other, to themselves and to younger children. We told our own stories and then wrote them down and dived into the oral tradition by telling myths as they were meant to be told, in a circle with the lights off.  I created classes where kids could share from their deepest being the stories that they had lived, crying together and then creating new, healing stories.

Up close and personal, my own drama-filled story continued to teach me about something deep, archetypal, powerful.  I told my stories again and again wrote them down, and groped my way into meaning in the process. The stories I created about my stories had deeply changed my own life. And I knew the human bond of love that forms when people share their stories together.

So what attracted me to a process that asked the question, on bumper stickers yet, Who Would You be Without Your Story? I don’t know, except that when I first heard the question a gong rang deep inside.  Who would I be without my story?  The question was a silent opening beckoning me inside a new relationship with inner life. Read More>>