Storycatching

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Life can be difficult. I just finished a class at Integrative Medicine at Mayo Clinic where my writers tapped into dozens of stories– the story of a woman who had the courage to leave her wheel-chair bound but abusive husband, the story of an award-winning engineer who was unexpectedly laid off, the story of a mother’s suicide and a daughter’s sex change, the story a drunk driver who took the life of a young fiancé, and the story of a birth mother who recently contacted and reconnected with her own kind-hearted birth mother.

These were all hard stories, and sooner or later each one of us realizes we, too, are faced with a challenge. I still remember the day of my cancer diagnosis. Steve was a thousand miles away on a business trip. After a robot-like radiologist read my diagnosis, I drove home in a zombie-like state.  The doctor’s words echoed in my brain like a death sentence. Within minutes of arriving home, I was curled up in a fetal position on the cold tile of kitchen floor, rocking back and forth and feeling trapped in an undertow. It was after 6:00 pm and the last rays of sun were disappearing from the winter sky. The darkness engulfed me.

The next day I walked, I prayed, I talked to a friend, and I went to my local bookstore where I bought my bright red “I have cancer journal.”  I began to scratch out my story. The words were halting at first. The thoughts were frozen and needed time to thaw. Later I recall scribbling loudly across the page that I did not want cancer for a story, but if it was my story, I was going to write my way forward. The story would not define me. In coming weeks as I made the trek from surgeons to radiologists to oncologists, I wrote this story. Slowly. And later I would rewrite it.

As I began to help other cancer patients and community writers to write and release their stories, I came to understand that I had always been a storycatcher—and perhaps you are as well. Storycatching embraces listening to a story wholly in the moment—the emotions, the images, the perspectives, and insights. If it is a painful story, you can give this story a new frame to hold it. You can rewrite and even re-vision it, finding the new possibilities. Perhaps you can transform your story and allow it to become the new story it needs to be. My cancer story became the framework for my current research, writing, and workshops on story.

What a gift to watch students find and rework and reframe the power a story has on them. At the end of my last class, Michele shared her beautiful poem on story. It is an honor to share it with you—

 

A Story Set Free

By Michele Lee Sefton

 

They whisper and wait,

the stories that exist inside of me.

I write about what once was,

to release them, to set them free.

 

Elusive details captured on a page.

My blank messenger conspires with me,

coaxing the story out of hiding,

and snaring it for other eyes to see.

 

No longer is the story mine, I am setting it free.

No longer does the story have power over me.

 

The words and emotions transferred from

me to you and from you to them.

My story becomes your story,

because you understand where I’ve been.

 

My story released; my mind can now expand.

Cloudy perspectives and timeworn pathways,

no longer weigh me down or slow my pace.

An open mind now ready to explore new lands.

 

No longer is the story mine, I am setting it free.

No longer does the story have power over me.

 

There once was a time when I told myself,

that silencing our stories gives us strength.

Not sharing our stories highlights courage

and defines how we conquer moving on.

 

I now know that lie was just a trapped story,

convincing me that it should stay hidden,

in the dark and under the bed.

“Sweep around me,” it said, “but don’t ever bend.”

 

A believer, I was, that a shared story

might spend too long dwelling on the past.

“Don’t look too closely,” it whispered,

“For I might provoke pain, sadness, or regret.”

 

I now know the truth about the stories,

hiding in the crevices of my mind:

walking with the shadows is uncomfortable,

but it is there where freedom is found.

 

No longer is the story mine, I am setting it free.

No longer does the story have power over me.

 

The Empty Page

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I sit with writers on Tuesday afternoons at Mayo Clinic. We weave our stories from our words. We hope to find our voices. To find ourselves–but it is not an easy task. I think of Terry Tempest Williams and her lovely book, When Women Were Birds. The author’s mother, the matriarch of a large Mormon clan in northern Utah, told her daughter, “I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won’t look at them until after I’m gone.” Bereft and lonely as she faced her mother’s death, Williams sought out these journals as a lifelife or a way she hoped to ground herself. But as she flipped through the pages of the first, and then the second and third, she found only blank pages. Then she dug through them hurriedly, and much to her shock three shelves of her mother’s journals were completely empty.

The blank page becomes the surprising image she holds for her mother, and Williams begins to write her way forward finding the stories that will fill these empty pages and help her understand not only her mother but also her own life and voice.

Each week I ask my writers to write themselves forward with the hope of discovering their own voice. I explain that my way of seeing myself is often through metaphors that dance around being a storywriter and a storycatcher.  I long to be a tiger lily in full bloom because I want to stretch, grow, learn and write my story as fully as I can in the last decades of my life. I ask what metaphors or images frame their lives now. In the past? In the future? They embrace this search and easily find their words.

Susan sees herself as “a sopping wet sponge.” She asks, “Is the water that drips from the sponge soapy? Clear? Or dirty? And for that matter am I overflowing with ideas? Excitement?  Or am I filled with dread and doom? Do I have too much to do? Have I taken on too many things?” With the onslaught of work, emails, and social media directing our lives, we can engage with her metaphor. It reminds us that we are squeezed and that what pours from us can be creative and exciting like an Andy Warhol painting —or we may be so drained our energy pours out as dark, grimy bits of sludge like the splatters on a dark Pollock canvas.

“Why are we tormented by our critical voice?” asks Bev. Why do we often seize our negative metaphors to define us, and can we choose a better way of viewing the self? Jackie and I are partners on this day, and I ask her if she struggles with being an introvert. She nods, but this is what she wrote and what she shares with us–

I Am the Quiet in the Desert Before Sunrise

By Jacklyn Anderson

I am an introvert on the far-left side of the scale with extroverts being on the right. On the outside I appear calm and cool. Inside my head, my thoughts are swirling around as I over think everything. When I go out for dinner, I have to look at everything on the menu, and then after fifteen minutes or more I eventually make a decision.

That quiet hour before sunrise is often the coldest time of the day. The knowledge that the sun will appear and warm up the air brings a hopeful spirit to the beginning of a new day. Those words describe me, quiet, slow to warm up, and hopeful.

I desperately believe that I have much to give. Waiting inside me is something awakening.  First it will come in pale blues, then purple, orange and finally it will blast out in a bold fire of red burning clouds on the horizon of a new day.

I am still in that early morning stage, and even if I am past middle age, my best years are not behind me. I am only moving forward toward another dawn, because each day is another chance to start over, to make a different choice, to pick something new off the menu and try it for the first time.

What I love about Jackie’s piece is that she introduces us to herself at a dinner table where she struggles with her menu choices as she probably struggles with being an introvert. She ends this piece in the same spot, but we have come to understand the beauty of her metaphor as well as the beauty of Jackie being an introvert.

Children as Teachers

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The Christmas season began with the traditional sleep-over for my granddaughter.  Macy embraces traditions and decorating the tree is one of her favorites. We debated how to string the lights. Macy likes the colored lights. I like the clear ones. We ended up using both and placing way too many of them on our tree.

When we finished decorating, we hid the extra Santa ornaments all over the house. I marveled at how clever this eight-year-old has become in hiding them—under cushions and inside coat pockets! When her dad texted to say he would be late to pick her up, we squealed with delight. We agreed to play Weird but True.  She beat me soundly. She actually knew that butterflies taste food with their feet.

When her dad tapped on the door, Macy was busy making a list. “We have to plan ahead, Gigi. Last year our gingerbread house collapsed. Check this one out on Amazon. It is prefab!” She pointed to my computer screen. The post-it note she crunched into my hand had the make, the model, even the number!  “My intention is to build you the best gingerbread house ever!”

“Intention?” I asked. “Where did you get that word?”

“From you!” Macy laughed as she hugged me farewell.  Intentions. Lists. Plans. Wasn’t this the year I was determined to ditch Christmas lists. Wasn’t I working on being in the moment? Anyway, I ordered the prefab gingerbread house.

Often Christmas feels like I have watched a feel-good Hallmark movie, but I have not lived it. With mile-long lists, the holidays slip into a blur of delightful—but rushed—moments. This year I consciously set about cutting back on intentions, lists, and “must-do’s and choosing activities that would give me joy. I wanted to live these moments. It proved to be a challenge.

I held space for events like three-year-old Harper’s Christmas program and Macy’s Christmas recital. I didn’t buy many presents this year, but I tried to choose them more thoughtfully and be mindful of why I was choosing them. But in the weeks before Christmas, I still proved to be more Martha than Mary.  I cleaned. I scrubbed. I baked coffee cake from my mom’s recipe and iced dozens of sugar cookies. (I ate a good number of them, too!) I relented and made endless lists in preparation for Christmas brunch with cheesy eggs, bacon, and cinnamon rolls that my youngest son claims is his favorite meal of the year—although he no longer eats bacon.

On Christmas morning my family arrived, and there was a flurry of opening gifts, surprises, and the experience was laced with mimosas, coffee cake, and followed with the celebrated cheesy eggs. But this year was different. I did ignore the dishes, and I let everyone find their own coffee or tea. After breakfast I hid behind my Christmas tree with the overload of twinkling lights. There for nearly an hour I simply held my son’s newborn, Evy, and she graciously rewarded me with smiles and baby coos. I was able to reflect on all the wonder of Christmas. A child. A tree. The day slipped by too quickly, but I felt there.

Nearing dinner time, Macy took my hand and guided me to the dining room table where she and her three-year-old cousins Harper and Steven had been laboring over my present. When I entered, Harper shouted, “Surprise, Gigi! We made you a beautiful gingerbread house!” Steven clapped joyfully. Perhaps in the back of our minds was the collapsed gingerbread house from last year. This memory made the children’s success—even with a prefab house—all the more magical.

Late Christmas night, after I cleaned the sticky candy bits out of the carpet and swept the gum drops from the floor, I found my gingerbread house sitting on the kitchen bar. I paused again to reflect. While I will never fulfill all of my intentions or plans, I need them—just as Macy did, but most importantly I realized I need to pause, reflect and seize magical moments before they slip away. I am still learning how to find this balance—but the children are such wonderful teachers.

To all of you, now and in the coming New Year, I wish you intentions, wonderful plans, moments of magic, and, of course, children as teachers.