Sandra Marinella's Blog

About Friendship and Loss

Firefly begonias are one of the few plants still blooming in my badly tended garden. The temperatures have tipped over 100 degrees almost every day this past month. I have had to do my walk at a local mall, and there is little chance that I will convince myself to pull the weeds or grasses that are strangling the roses and knocking out the delicate, whimsical stems of white gaura. This is my favorite plant, but you have to pull the weeds to avoid choking it.

You have to tend to friendships, too. Today I am packing again for a class reunion in Indianapolis. At the last reunion, we did the twist. We even tried to do the chicken, but I just jerked my limbs around and imitated my friend who was a master yoga instructor. After a few decades, we knew how to laugh at ourselves and celebrate our silliness.

The best part of that time together was being able to legally sip wine while sharing our stories. Forty years of them! I left Indy after college and the move to California was intentional. I wanted new experiences, a new way of life. I found it. Still, every time I return to Indy, I am grateful I grew up with these salt-of-the-earth people. They are kind. They listen. Rudeness has not wrapped its roots into the soil here. I feel grounded when I come here and visit with them.

At this last gathering, we celebrated our lives. Freddi had a photo exhibit at a gallery downtown. Penny and Gus flashed photos of charming grandkids. Ellen talked of her work helping refugees settle in her community, and Larry, who had moved to Washington, D.C., shared his experiences in working with homeless shelters.

But there was sadness, too.

I learned I had lost my best friend from high school to suicide, and this hit hard. She was the first friend who was careful to tell me the truth: “If you wear your hair that way, you look like a cat.” I changed it. “If you date Paul, you will have fun. If you date Bob, you will die early on a motorcycle.” I had fun dating Paul, and Bob was in a terrible wreck our senior year.

We called her Star. She did shine but more than the aura of her light, she had a gift for seeing the world as it was. I loved this about her. After high school, she moved first to California and then up north and landed in Idaho. I called but after a few years the phone numbers were wrong. Since we had lost touch years earlier, I was surprised that I struggled painfully with her death.

I still do. Tonight, I will pull the weeds that are wrapping their way around the white blooms of gaura. I will tend my garden in Star’s honor. Each day I realize more fully that you have to tend each friendship carefully. I will work on that, too.

Community — Wherever You Find It — Matters

“How did you ever find Skaneateles, New York?” a friend asked when I said I was heading there for a book event. “It’s a lovely hidden town,” she explained, “but when you said you were headed to New York, I hoped you meant the Big Apple.”

Truth is I did not know much about Skaneateles. I looked it up and found it was in upstate New York and about 62 miles from Rochester and 140 miles from Buffalo. The most recent population count was 7,209. Make that 7,211. My friend, Sarah Goode, and her husband Kevin had visited there a few years back and decided to stay. Permanently. She and the local librarians invited me to come and talk about my book, and the work I love doing — sharing stories and the power of our personal writing. I went.

The first day Sarah and I hiked over to Skaneateles Lake, a charming “Finger Lake.” On our hike we passed dozens of small little shops sporting local art, women’s apparel, cooking goods, and locally made treats. Small and unique shops such as the Chesnut Cottage and the Rhubarb Kitchen Shop. At each stop someone said “hi” to Sarah, and often someone would wave at me, too, and say, “You must be the author!” Let me make this clear, I am not famous. Not even remotely. But this gracious town had plastered posters of my talk in the shop windows. It was heart-warming how they reached out to me!

We made our first stop at the community hub. It is the Skaneateles Library where librarians extraordinaire, Nickie Marquis and Deanna King, welcomed me as any writer dreams of being welcomed — they had promoted me, set up press interviews, and accommodated my talk with the perfect space and the latest technology.

That evening I opened my talk with a bit of my story. A tale of teaching story and writing to students, cancer patients, veterans, and writers. As is often the case, the crowd was eclectic in age and experience, but there was one common denominator. The room exuded an energy. A positive energy that could only come from a place where people felt a part of something wonderful. A caring community.

I shared stories of a Marine who wrote his way past his PTSD from combat and a stage-four breast cancer patient with a newborn who wrote a blog to help her find her find her path through cancer. I closed with poems by a woman who has overcome the trauma of rape by creating “you can overcome” poems. The audience laughed and even teared-up with me. They understood our need to break our silence, find our words, and use them to heal and transform our lives.

Afterwards, the locals asked wonderful questions. “How do I begin to write my story?” “How do I write about my trauma and not hurt others?” A local lawyer in purple tennis shoes stood in a long line to greet me, “I just wanted to say thank you for coming here. I had forgotten the power of writing, and I know I must tell my story!” The next night, a tall stately woman with a cream-colored straw hat, stopped me at the library’s guitar concert to whisper. “Thank you. I want you to know I am inspired by your work. Last night I pulled out my journal for the first time in a long time. I had forgotten how we need to find and share our stories.”

And I knew it was true. It was important to come here. The community I found was a treasure I will hold in my heart for a long time. It will make me work harder to build and find a greater sense of community in my own life. Small towns can be gems. Community — wherever we find it — matters even more.

Unexpected Beauty

Last week before the temps skyrocketed past 100 degrees in Phoenix, Steve and I headed north to Sedona to hike. We rose early for three days and scaled a couple of summits. Not huge summits. I am a wimp of a hiker, but the red rocks inspire me to find my way. Climbing up Sugar Loaf Summit, I talked with a local hiker who told me that Walt Disney had lived in the area and that the twisted juniper trees scattered across the landscape had inspired his creation of the trees in the movie Fantasia.

While I relished this story, I could not verify it. Still — that did not stop me from being completely smitten with the long, twisted, gnarly branches of the juniper tree. I kept snapping endless photos and falling behind on our trek. As I age, I have noticed I seem to be more connected to bits and pieces of nature — rocks, birds, and now a tree

Later that week when I returned to the valley and taught writing at Mayo, I was sad to learn that Elizabeth could no longer write. She stayed behind after group and told me she believed her arthritis had recently stripped her fingers of the movements needed to form words. She did not seem overly bothered. “I am aging, and perhaps I had a mini stroke,” she whispered to me. Then she held out her weather-worn hands and showed me the bony knobs.

She took my hands in hers. In that moment, I realized of late she had often sat in a meditative trance with eyes shut as the other writers in our group scrawled in their journals. “And still — you keep coming.” My words were both a statement and a question.

She beamed. “Oh, yes. I believe more than ever that telling our story and finding our words matters. Even when your fingers become oddly twisted, you must write your story. Even if it is only a story written in your head.” And her wisdom flooded me with joy. Here in the presence of other writers, Elizabeth comes to hear their stories and to find her stories. Perhaps she can no longer lift a pen, but she lifts her heart.

As we compile our words on paper, Elizabeth sifts through decades of memories. When we share our stories, she shares hers. Her narrative is one of illness and aging and learning to face it with surprise, wonder, and grace. Often her words leave us silent. In awe.

The juniper is a strong tree that can live to be a thousand years old, surviving the baking heat of a summer and the bone-chilling cold of winter. And now as I look at my pictures of junipers, I notice the photo of Elizabeth standing in front of the writing group. You cannot see her twisted fingers. But like the juniper branches they are beautiful. For she, too, is resilient and strong.

Interested in more stories? Check out my book The Story You Need to Tell.

I connect with this beautiful piece of writing. Thank you for sharing it, Jenna!

I connect with this beautiful piece of writing. Thank you for sharing it, Jenna!

Finding Your Hero Story

Finding Your Hero Story

I hope your spring is giving you the gift of surprises. Last week was filled with wonderful surprises for me. When I arrived at a retreat center in Chaska, Minnesota, the lake was still frozen over. Amid the beauty of the earth trying to shake off a late spring snow, I could not stop marveling at the images of small waves frozen in the air. Surprise one.

The next morning over breakfast I met Berit. I loved her Estonian accent as she talked about her efforts to introduce books and poems as forms of therapy in her country. She had made the long trek to be with other word-lovers at the National Association of Poetry Therapy Conference. On break, I sipped tea with Alison who was recently hired to take poetry therapy to the homeless in Minneapolis shelters. The surprises kept coming.

On Saturday morning therapist Karen Newcomb and I had the joy of teaching “Finding and Writing Your Hero Story” to a room packed with want-to-make-a-difference counselors, teachers, administrators, nurses, etc. We started with Joseph Campbell’s hero journey and shared models of how to use personal stories to help us find and create our own hero story. (See the prompt below.) The group shared powerful insights and asked deep questions. I came away from the session inspired and recharged — another surprise!

The week ended with a visit from Deborah Alma, a poet from Wales who is as charming as she is funny. Talk about surprises. Years ago, this poet was inspired to purchase and outfit an old ambulance. Deborah decided her dream was to be “the Emergency Poet,” and she has succeeded! She visits events and festivals where she offers consultations inside her ambulance and prescribes poems as cures. Her experiences are heart-warming and makes one believe in the power of our words to heal and change us. Here is a BBC clip of her work.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-29352405/poetry-on--from-the-emergency-poet

I fully believe we can all chart our own path forward using our words; these words can help us find our own personal hero journey — and that can be a rewarding surprise for all of us!

April, 2018

Interested in more? Check out The Story You Need to Tell

Turning Points and Transitions

Turning points and transitions are always with us. Some are hard. Recently I learned of young Adrienne’s death. A young mom, she died of metastatic breast cancer that caused her liver to fail. Gone — and all too soon.

Some are joy-filled.I had lunch last week with my friend Jen who recently had her second child. Four years ago, I wrote her story for my book — afraid that cancer was going to take her life. But it did not. For four years we attended off-and-on-again chemo and wrote our stories. And then her scans began to be clear. Consistently. We began to laugh and dance. We began to believe she could leave cancer behind. She did! Recently she gave birth to her daughter Noelle.

Some turning points present huge challenges. In her new journey, Jen continues to face ongoing scans, and these scans capture new spots. While cancer free, she is a chronic sufferer of sarcoidosis, an immunological disease. While her daughter is a blessing, she also keeps Jen up many nights with hunger and teething.

But in leaving cancer behind, the biggest quandary Jen has faced is how to redefine herself. No easy task. When she had cancer, Jen became a passionate advocate for both patients and cancer research. Now that she is cancer-free she questions if it is legitimate for her to continue down this road. For those of us who know her — we believe she is authentic and legitimate in all she does. Slowly she marches forward, continuing to care about and advocate for cancer causes. While faced with ongoing challenges (we all are), Jen remains — and I remain — grateful that she can continue with the wonderful challenge of deciding who she will be now.

Her writing helps with this turn in her road. She chronicles her struggles in her blog, Booby and Beast http://www.boobyandthebeast.com/. Reflecting about your turning points by writing about them is one of the least expensive and most helpful strategies to improve our lives. Remember — writing about our difficulties can reduce stress, strengthen an immune system, reduce blood pressure, and lower symptoms of PTSD and depression. Overall it can improve our health.

These are only a few of the reasons I write, and I hope you will, too.

Want to learn more about how our stories can transform our lives? I share more in my book, The Story You Need to Tell .

Personal Writing Can Change Us

A few days ago a friend fell off a ladder while picking oranges. She broke eight ribs and punctured her lung. Yesterday my neighbor backed out of her driveway and into my car. Life is filled with challenges! One way to help navigate them is with our personal writing.

If you still harbor images of English teachers slashing red marks on your papers, work to erase them. Personal writing can be done privately. It can be shredded, burned, or locked up if it needs to be private. You can do it on a computer, in a notebook, or scribble notes on a napkin! When it is private, it can be messy and even unedited. But you may want to polish and perhaps share your words with others — and you can! You can share your words with a family member or friends. Blogs work if you want to find your public voice and publish your thoughts for others to read.

Now why should you do this? Here is what is most important. Our written words help us understand who we are. These words become our stories. Our stories define us. Create us. If you give your writing a chance, it can serve as a mirror into your soul and give you powerful insights into who you are — and who you can become. It did this for me. It can do this for you, too.

Yep. Personal writing can help you find out more about yourself and even allow you to recreate how you see yourself or who you are. It is well worth the journey.

If you are new to this, begin with five minutes of writing. Ask yourself, “What is my challenge today?” Then write. Try it. Let me know how it goes.

(The Story You Need to Tell by Sandra Marinella)

If you need inspiration or writing resources for this journey, check out www.storyyoutell.co m or find Sandra’s book, The Story You Need to Tell.

A Writer’s Resolution —Fire Your Inner Critic!

With the New Year comes a chance to reset our intentions and our goals. Perhaps a chance to admit we don’t like to write, or we are afraid to because we still see those red streaks English teachers slashed on our papers years ago. At one Christmas party, I had a young college writer ask me, “How do I stop that inner voice that keeps channeling my writing teacher? The voice
that seems to whisper, ‘You simply cannot write!’”

“With all respect to English teachers, and I was one for over thirty years,” I answered, “you try to learn from the marks but erase the memory of them. And more important,” I added, “please fire your ‘Inner Critic’ immediately!” We all have an Inner Critic who lurks in the recesses of our minds and tries to sow havoc and discord. I suggest watching today’s news if you want your fill
of discord and havoc. But if you want to write, send your Inner Critic packing. Tell him you have a story that must be told, and that he can return another day to help with editing.

Most of us have a story that needs to be shared. Eighty-one percent of us believe we have a book inside of us. The reality is you probably won’t write if you allow the Grammar Nazis and the Inner Critics to interfere. These fears can paralyze the writing process. Please don’t let this happen!

To write is to accept that we have a voice and in our early efforts that voice may sound garbled or confused. It should — we are busy finding it. It is rewriting and polishing our words that makes for good writing. Author Pam Houston once told me she drafts a piece about eighty times before it goes out. I don’t do nearly that many drafts, but I love watching my writing evolve as I work on it. So I hope in the new year you will set aside time to find your words. To explore you. I believe you will reap the rewards.

Joe Robbins, This book will be well worth you time!

Joe Robbins, This book will be well worth you time! I would love to hear your thoughts after you read it. All the best!

Why We Need Books More Than Ever

Why We Need Books More Than Ever

In 2017 reading books is more important than ever. In a world where social media, news sound bites, and unfiltered political Tweets, clutter our thought processes, reading books allows us to quiet our minds, focus, and think. Reading books gives us a great gift — the gift of knowledge and critical, clear thinking.

When I headed off to college, I hit a bad funk. I was at war — with myself, uncertain about God, faith, and meaning. And I had no outlet for all the questions stacking up inside me. Amid this struggle, a friend gave me a well-worn copy of Man’s Search for Meaning. It changed my life. It told the story of Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who was deported during at the height of his career, to a German concentration camp during World War II. Beneath his coat he hid his only copy of an unpublished manuscript. But in one instant this manuscript, his life’s work, was taken from him and destroyed. He could have given up, as many of the prisoners chose to do, but Frankl decided to find meaning in this event. He learned — and taught me — that we can’t escape tragedy, but we can control how we think about it, we can find meaning in it, and we can move forward. Books can serve as a life raft during hard times. This one did for me.

Books can show us how to live and how to answer the existential questions we face. Where did we come from? What is our purpose? What is good, and what is evil? What happens when we die? I learned to be inquisitive from dozens of Nancy Drew mysteries; to care about others, from Scout and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, how to stand tall in the face of danger from Anne Frank. Books unlock the door to the wisdom of others.

Psychologist Keith Oatley argues that our stories are “the flight simulators of human social life.” When we read books, fiction or nonfiction, we travel through all kinds of experiences in the same way that a pilot travels through a flight on a simulator. We watch characters face difficult situations and overcome them. We feel what they are feeling, and we learn from them. Our books become our teachers. In today’s world, we need them more than ever.

Your story matters. Want to learn more about writing yours?http://storyyoutell.com/