Fear Is a Story We Tell Ourselves

I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe.
      —Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail

The minute I read this stunning line I recognized Truth in every fiber of my being, not related to any specific personal fear, but about fear in general. In a flash I realized it’s not just huge fears, like plane crashes or being attacked on the trail by a hungry bear, that cause distress. We all have daily irritations we choose not to confront because we fear that speaking out will be worse than stuffing our anger. We mutely mutter on, largely unaware of the story underlying our choices – or even that we are making choices.

The opening quotation occurs at the beginning of her solo adventure along the Pacific Coast Trail. Cheryl had plenty to be afraid of: a woman hiking alone in the wilderness is at risk from both two and four-legged predators (she met both). She might get lost (she did). She might run out of food or water (that was close). She might sustain an injury (she did) or get sick. Perhaps her biggest risk of all was the total ignorance and lack of backpacking experience that she finally admitted to herself as she heaved her unmanageable pack onto her back for the first time.

Cheryl faced most of these risks and other staggering obstacles head-on at one time or another, and  her new story worked. It kept her walking all the way from Mojave, California to the Bridge of the Gods on the Columbia River.

We can follow her example and use the power of new stories to alter or transform the direction of our lives. For stories with extra punch, explore your fears on the page, even the little ones, and write your new stories as insights emerge.

Why write?

Renowned psychology professor James Pennebaker postulates that a key factor to making expressive writing such a powerfully healing tool is that as people write about a troubling event over a period of days, chaotic thoughts begin coalescing into structured, meaningful stories. Writers who also begin exploring alternate points of view derive the most potent benefits.

Taking this one step further, an obvious conclusion is that those who explore alternate points of view create a new story to explain the past and guide future perceptions and choices.

Cheryl told herself one small story to enable herself to begin moving along the trail. By the end of her journey, she had told herself a new story about her entire life and justify the subtitle of her memoir: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. I urge you to pick up a copy of this best-selling book and use her experience as a guideline for a presumably less physically rigorous adventure in restorying your life.

Write now: about a recurring circumstance in your life, preferably something you’d like to change. As you write, pay close attention to thoughts that run through your mind, especially those that sound like messages. These connect you with your underlying “story.” Get that story on the page, then write a few alternative scenarios. Explore options you might consider impossible. You may be surprised at the new story options that pop out of nowhere onto your page. Leave a comment or send me an email about your success with this exercise.

Photo credit: Sharon Lippincott

Memoir: Breaking Through to the Next Level

Over the last few days I’ve read two memoirs back-to-back, Margaret Overton’s Good in a Crisis and Jonna Ivin’s Will Love For Crumbs. Both stories revolve around disastrous relationships with men. I was struck by the fact that although these two women had very different backgrounds and their stories are quite different, each had to piece together the puzzle of her mother’s life to break free and follow a different path. I was reminded of computer games where you must find all the hidden tools to advance to the next level. 

As I thought about this similarity, I realized how universal this theme is. I did study Freud once, along with a tower of other psychology books, and dimly recall some psychobabble about “differentiation.” Obviously there is nothing new under the sun here, other than airing this process in public. That public sharing angle is the aspect that most fascinates me.

Thinking beyond the stories themselves, I realized that as I read each one, it stimulated me to think more deeply about my own life and relationships. I realized once again that although I’ve certainly faced my share of puzzling and tense times,  for the most part I’ve led a charmed life, spared most of the traumas they disclose. In spite of the odds against it, I’ve remained happily married for nearly fifty years, and my mother’s shortcomings are hardly worth mentioning. Still, although comparing my life challenges to theirs may be like placing the Blue Ridge mountains next to the Himalayas, reading how these women “broke through to the next level” and became more peaceful and comfortable in their skin settled me more securely in my own. 

As I pondered the powerful effect these books had on me, a light went on. Each woman explained at the end of her book that she initially began journaling or writing random notes in an attempt to make sense of her experience. Transforming those notes into a coherent narrative was a profoundly healing experience. That healing process rippled out to me as a reader, and presumably to a multitude. Perhaps, just maybe, those of us who are “called” to write and share our stories are gifted with the opportunity to help others find hidden clues and find their own next levels of peace and freedom. As we heal ourselves, the effect spreads through our words into the world at large. 

I’m reminded of thoughts I’ve heard, perhaps from Christina Baldwin, and probably also from others, about “restorying” the world. I’ve written a pile of blog posts scattered around the web about my own experience with revis(ion)ing my memories and discovering far more light in them than I ever imagined. I know the process works, and some memory visualization tools I’ve found are magic cursors pointing to hidden tools and maps.

Not everyone wants or needs to write and fewer still want to share their work. For many or most, it’s enough to read or privately journal. To whatever extent you are called to write for peace and healing, whether it be a letter of reconciliation and forgiveness, a single short story, or several volumes of memoir, write with boldly honest passion and flood the world with light. I’m beginning to find tangible evidence that as we heal the past, we also heal the future. Let’s get on with that!
As an aside, there is still time to register for my 3-week NAMW short course, Soaring High and Digging Deep: Tools for Refining Your Memoir. It begins this week. Find more details and sign up for the class and this month’s related free Roundtable here. 

Write now: start a collection of random notes about a person or situation that puzzles you. Add to this collection over time as further thoughts occur to you. When you run out of new thoughts, read through what you’ve written and transform that to narrative. As you work on that story, your understanding is almost guaranteed to shift.

When Your Story Flips Upside-Down

A high school acquaintance recently pulled me into a Facebook group for people who grew up in Los Alamos – my tribe! They have posted pictures of historic scenes around Los Alamos and a lively forum-type discussion has sprung up about who remembers what and how. A fascinating sort of collaborative story is emerging with a type of shared, collective memory, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

One of the members is a retired LAHS chemistry teacher who arrived soon after I left. At some point I posted this comment:

Was Mr. Etherly still there when you arrived at LAHS? Or Mr. Cooper? Mr. E taught all the chem classes except the one I took from Mr. Cooper my senior year. I did not understand all the fuss from Mr. Etherly's students about how hard chemistry was. Mr. Cooper made it sooo easy! Then I took Chem 101 in college and had a seriously rude awakening. Alas! Mr. Cooper was a delightful man, and I always thought of him when my kids began watching Mr. Rogers. But a chemistry teacher he was not. Fortunately I was not meant to be a chemistry major, so no harm done, at least to me.

With gentle kindness, she replied that she had the highest regard for Mr. Cooper, and his students had loved him. “He was a fine teacher,” she said. Several of his past students agreed.

That’s when my mind went into spin mode. I felt a bit awkward and … confused. I pondered. I journaled. What was true? Was Mr. Cooper really a bumbling beginner who had been unable to control his class? Had I missed something? Suddenly I realized that not only had his class been genuinely fun, but everything I remember about chemistry traces back to his class, not the one at Texas Tech. Mr. Cooper made chemistry come to life and seem approachable. How many teachers can do that? I suddenly recognized his gift. He allowed the natural leaders in class to emerge, and let us feel engaged with it at our own best levels.

Then I remembered hearing that Chem 101 was a washout class at Texas Tech, intended to thin the herd and deter all but the most robust students from pursuing careers in science and engineering. That may not be all bad. In fact, it served me well. For a brief few weeks I actually considered majoring in chemistry. It did not take me long to see the folly of that decision.

When all was written and reflected upon, I realized that my attitude toward Mr. Cooper had been wrong-side out, and I owe both him and his compassionate colleague a debt of gratitude.

This group has sparked several re-visions and trance-formations in my Story, beyond many that have already occurred (see Your Own Magic Crystal Ball . Writing memoir becomes especially challenging when memories and perceptions are in such flux. Power tools for continuing to analyze and re-evaluate experience, then anchor it in story are especially valuable at times like this.

I collect power tools for life writers that are fun to use as well as enlightening. I will share a few of my favorites in February in Soaring High, Digging Deep, a three-week NAMW teleclass. This class will be an ideal opportunity to connect with others who may be helpful in shaking loose the shackles of assumptions and memory habits you’ve become accustomed to. Click here for more details and to sign up.

Write now: about a long-standing assumption you’ve had about someone . Challenge your beliefs about the person and see how they may change. Look for any silver linings in the cloud – or perhaps feet of clay in someone you’ve had on a pedestal that may have been a bit high.

Photo credit: Jason Rogers

A Blog Is Born

I am pleased to announce the birth of a new blog, Writing for the Health of It. Few regular readers will be surprised at this news, as I have included this concept in many posts here, and mentioned the Writing For the Health of It classes I teach.

The Heart and Craft of Life Writing blog will remain active, with one or two posts a week focusing on the process of writing. Writing for the Health of It will focus on the vast body of research exploring health benefits of expressive writing, and how those findings can be applied to the various forms of life writing. You are likely to find lots of cross-links because the boundaries are fuzzy and overlapping.

The new blog represents my growing understanding of the power of the life writing process. Perhaps like most of you, I began writing my lifestory primarily to document my experiences and insights for my family. I wanted to leave a written legacy of my life. I read books that mentioned personal insight and a sense of satisfaction as frequent outcomes of writing memoir. That sounded good and made sense, but it was not a primary goal for me, and though I paid the concept lip service, I really didn’t “get it.”

For eight or nine years I cranked out one vignette and essay after another, rather like a quilter practicing various designs on single squares. Someday, I told myself, I’ll sort through these squares and arrange them into a quilt — probably several quilts... But not just yet.

Eventually writing single pieces did become less satisfying. I’ll never exhaust the possibilities of all the stories I could write, but it was time to begin assembling them. My first finished product, The Albuquerque Years, fell together easily. You may have downloaded the eBook.

I’ve been tinkering with its sequel, A Los Alamos Girlhood, for a year now, and learned an enormous amount in the process. My most significant insights about the are detailed in my Los Alamos Girlhood blog that has lain dormant for a few months, but I do still post occasionally.

The other insight I have gained from writing short pieces and puzzling out the structure of Los Alamos Girlhood relates to the transformative power of digging more deeply into memoir and its component pieces. As I question memories and work to clarify my understanding of the past, chains of anxiety and other dark feelings are falling away, almost like magic. The experience has been much like washing the scum from time-crusted windows. My childhood looks much brighter and sunnier than I had realized.

That experience has led me to delve more deeply into the mysteries of the power of writing to make us whole, transform inner darkness to light, and heal broken hearts and spirits. Thus my triumvirate of blogs represents Heart (A Los Alamos Girlhood — my experience with writing), Craft (The Heart and Craft of Life Writing — how to write your story), and Health (Writing for the Health of It — how to tap the health benefits of writing).

Write now: take a break from writing. Click over to Writing for the Health of It and sign up for a subscription. As you scan the posts there, find an idea and use as a prompt for some writing practice.

Wordplay Magic

Do you believe in magic? Let me ask a deeper question here: What is magic? I keep a link to Dictionary.com on my favorites bar. The drift of their definition is that magic is appearances created by sleight of hand and devious means. I'm so disappointed. I do believe in magic, and the magic I believe in is the appearance of the unexpected, that which is not ordinarily possible. A related word is supernatural.

That word, supernatural, brings me to the point of this post.

Questions may be the single most powerful life writing tool. I refer to those open questions you pose on the page, then suspend thought and write the answers from wherever they come — your subconscious, God, the Universe. I'm less concerned about the source than the substance.

Winding along the path of my daily adventure of discovery on the pages of my journal, I wrote into a dream fragment that took place in a church of sorts, a sacred space. I posed a question: “What is sacred? What does the concept mean?” Two words flowed out of my pen, morphing into altered configurations:

Trance-form. Trance-in-dance.

I felt a tingle of excitement and delight at the invitation into this wordplay game with Wisdom. Trance. What is trance? My answer is “altered state of consciousness, awareness, or  perception.” I could interrupt my writing to check Dictionary.com, but my meaning is the one that matters when I'm on a journal page. That's my reality. The trance definition I work from is a state of being open to the super-natural, aka God or Wisdom.

Thus transform, or trance-form, involves suspending or setting aside the limitations imposed by (my) ordinary ways of thinking and entertaining alternate points of view and possibilities.

Aha! Of course! How could I change, grow, develop and learn without opening to alternate possibilities? That's the only way forward, out of a rut.

I moved on to trance-send. While in that trance, I send (or am sent) from one way of understanding to another, from one form to another. The sending led me to the next step:  trance-in-dance. Dancing is movement. Dancing is energy.

All these thoughts swirled together in a satori moment: for me, sacredness involves suspending belief in the limits of what I currently know and believe so Wisdom can mold my understanding into new forms better suited for whatever purpose is at hand. In an even more fun-da-mental sense, sacred means opening to the pure energy of life, of God. This new point of view, this new understanding of sacredness, forms an evolutionary thread connecting stages of faith and belief through my life.

The effect of those words and that wisdom flowing from the page into my awareness and understanding is magic — the appearance of the unexpected and ordinarily impossible. I might have struggled for weeks or years to come to that realization if I'd sought it deliberately. I definitely, strongly believe in magic — the magic of opening to the possibility of the page!

Write now: spend some time freewriting, easing into a deep place of meaning for you. Then pose a question similar to the one above, “What is this concept? What does it mean?” As the answer begins to emerge from your fingers, engage with it playfully and let it magically trance-port you to new vistas.

Image credit: h.koppdelaney