What's your story?

One of the reasons we write stories from our life is to make sense of our journeys. 

What have we accomplished that has made a difference? What lessons should we pass on? What wounds need to be healed? What do we celebrate, and who do we forgive?

The answers to these questions are revealed in the stories we tell about ourselves. 

Periodically we need to pause and assess how our lives are unfolding. Understanding the twists and turns that our lives have taken gives us a choice to move forward on the same path or in a different direction. "They" say that we cannot change our past (and they are right). However, we can start fresh with a new beginning at any time in our lives. 

We were created by a loving God who gives us the gift of free will to be authors of our life stories. How is your story unfolding? Are you the hero(ine) or the victim? As children we depended on others to give us a good life, and sometimes they let us down in tragic, even horrific ways. But we are the adults now--the ones in charge--the ones who are responsible for our happiness and peace of mind. The truth is, we can keep doing the same things over and over expecting different results, or we can have the courage to change and embrace the life we were meant to live. 

What story are you creating for yourself?

The Big 5-0

My 50^th class reunion is this summer.  I’ll go, of course. I look forward to seeing the people I grew up with. We have so many stories to share.

We will remember and retell how we began locking the bathroom door after seeing the movie “Psycho”; how terrified we were during the Cuban missile crisis; how we swooned when Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show; how we cheered when John Glenn went into earth orbit; how grief-stricken we were when President Kennedy was assassinated; how we divided over the Vietnam war.

Fifty years ago, we were imagining our lives after high school. Most of us did not have the life we imagined for ourselves, but many of us can admit we’ve led interesting lives. The members of my graduating class went on to become journalists, military officers, politicians, physicians, judges, ministers, educators, artists, financial wizards, attorneys, a couple of drugstore cowboys, and a rodeo clown. (Okay, I made up the rodeo clown, but the rest is true.)

Among us are also survivors of divorce, alcoholism, cancer, and bad investments. Survivors is the key word in that last sentence—we may have gone a little crazy and howled at the moon, but we did not succumb.

So we have stories to tell.

Interesting stories, and lots of them.  

The Power of Story

My friend Maddie died the day after Christmas. For the record, she died sober—she celebrated 28 years in November—but succumbed to cancer.

We had a memorial service yesterday at an AA club that was packed beyond what the fire marshal would have desired—the chairs were filled, no standing room remained in the back of the room, and yet people still crowded in. We all loved Maddie, and we needed to console each other in our grief and share our memories of her.

She was a creative force in our lives, a warrior woman, with a grin that captured our hearts. Surely she would’ve captured yours as well had you ever met her.

We shared hours of stories. Recounting and reflecting on those memories, we began to grasp and appreciate the full impact she made in our lives. As one person put it, heaven received a beautiful angel while earth lost a lovely soul. Through our stories we nurtured our memories, keeping our beloved Maddie alive, in our minds, in our hearts. That is, after all, the power and le raison for stories.

The last time I saw Maddie alive was Dec. 12. She was in remission—or so we thought. She and I dined at a Vietnamese restaurant, sharing shrimp spring rolls and steaming bowls of chicken pho. I showed her photos on my iPhone of the Victorian home I’d purchased in a small town about an hour from Houston. The house is on Church Street, and we agreed I should name the place Church Street Retreat because my vision is to facilitate writing retreats for women there.

Even in death, she inspires me to embrace my vision. We need to share the stories of our lives with one another because in our telling, we will find our strength, our value, and our joy.

This blog is about bearing witness to the stories of people’s lives and reflecting upon the process. I’ll post every Sunday and hope the blog will stir your own memories, so you’ll begin putting your life stories in a journal, notebook, or computer file. In this way, we will begin telling our amazing stories together.

*Just so you know, TOAST is an acronym for Telling Our Amazing Stories Together.