Changing This Story

"If you keep telling the same, small, sad story, you keep living the same, small, sad life."
--Jean Houston

Yeah, sometimes we wish things could be different.

High hopes, best laid plans, good intentions rise and fall.

We're challenged, broken down, exhausted, taken to the edge, again.

And this, my friends, is where things get interesting, where we show, truly, what sort of humans we are.

Years ago my fiction mentor said you have to push characters to the back wall, that this is how we see what they are capable of.  Do they crumble and weep?  Do they take a stand?  What story rises from the ashes of a dream?  Who becomes more real as a result of their trials?

The stories we live are the stories we tell, and the people we become are shaped by the stories we speak right now.  

Let me be clear, I don't believe that we all create each and every experience we encounter.  I think that line of thought is as limiting as the idea that everything in our lives is preordained and set in stone.  Fate and free will have been argued since the beginning of philosophical discourse.  The answer, I feel--notice the distinction from "think"--lies somewhere in between, in a co-creative relational universe.  Where the patterns are larger than our knowing, yet we each are weavers.

So.  What story do you choose?  What story would your change? Art from The Woman and the Owl

"The truth about stories is they're all that we are."
--Thomas King

When transition occurs, our old stories--the ones that maybe we didn't choose, the ones we've lived unconsciously, the ones we thought we worked through, exorcised, buried--those old stories rise.  When we are vulnerable, worn out or stretched too thin, they creep back into being.  

This summer, the moving and timing of the move, the mothering, the work and inability to work, the financial strains of all of the above, these spinning arcs have unearthed my oldest story.  It is a story of grief, of not being good enough on every level--partnership, motherhood, work, creatively.  It is a story of lack, of not having enough, of self-denial.  Of exhaustion and illness.  It leaves me bereft and depressed.

I felt the pressing of this story's edges the moment we found out we couldn't buy our house.  Home is so important to me, roots are vital.  I spent the past four years turning a lawn into a garden, a house into a home, a neighborhood into a network.  I didn't want that to change. Four years later, the lawn was gone, replaced by medicinal herbs, native plants, fruit trees and vegetables. There was a morning in late July where I didn't want to get out of bed.  Where I couldn't be sure of anything except overwhelming exhaustion and sadness.  All of my transitions piled up on the floor around me, all of my old stories shouted in my ear.  I wanted to give up.  Everything.  Felt a deep panic, a crazy pain.

Then I told those old stories to fuck off.

I am not those stories any more.  Correction:  I don't need those stories any more.

I don't need to be sick to rest.  I don't need to be poor to be selfless.  I don't need to be taken advantage of to feel kind.  I don't need to struggle in each moment to prove my worth.  I don't need the worst to play out to understand my character.

Something struck.  My inner warrior, my ancestors, all of those grandmothers I've been promising to do better for.  My sense of self, my desire to LIVE DIFFERENTLY and belief that all is possible when we act with spirit and heart.  

So here I am.  Making plans for the future.  Nice to meet you, future. Strong and brave and free. My thoughts about some stuff have changed, now that I'm in fierce mode.  I've decided to offer a live version of the Moon Divas classes in NE Portland, starting September 10th.  More information will be up about this soon, but the biggest news is that these will be informal, casual, drop-in and by donation.  Really, this is to get the oxytocin flowing, the intentions built, and to craft new possibilities for the road ahead in a group of hilarious and powerful women.  I hope some of you will join us.

Also, the online programs are in the process of a revamp, and I should say that if you are a current or former student in the Moon Divas directed self-study programs, you are eligible to receive any program revisions for free.  I want you to be part of the community, forever and ever--or as long as you wish to be.  Revamping includes several live events and a new community space--more accessible and convenient for all, I hope.  All the details will be up on this website sometime before Labor Day.

And here's my third thought:  I am giving some time to my kids, in a relaxed and focused way, for the next couple of weeks.  Our summer schedule is our only cohesive time together, and so much of it has been eaten by moving and new space/family navigation, that we need to connect.  I can do this, take this time.  My new story says it's okay, that Fall is good for resuming motion, that the rhythms of planting and harvest are very much part of our psyche and to work with them is never a mistake.

Elsewhere, inspiration abounds in the quiet moments, and I so look forward to sharing all with you as it unfolds.  It has been an incredible year of building.  May the foundation remain.  May the structure grow in collaboration.

With you.  With love--