The shape of our stories
Back when I was working on Druidry and the Ancestors I spent a lot of time thinking about how we tell history stories. Tales of change and progress tend to dominate usual ways of telling. We don’t talk so much about continuity, wrong turns, or mistakes. The tales we tell of our own lives are differently shaped, influenced by when we see ourselves as being at our peak. Is that ahead, (progress narrative) or behind (decline narrative) or do we stay much as we are?
I was fascinated by how Theo writes of her life in this recent post on Wild Yoga. It’s a mode of telling that emphasises change without any great sense of progress towards a specific outcome. There is no invalidating of past selves, no hierarchies of achievement. I find that really interesting and it prompted me to think about how we shape personal stories. In my teens I would have told you tales of progress, in my early twenties those would have become tales of change, with as much lost as gained and no sense of direction to establish whether progress is made. In my late twenties and early thirties I would have avoided telling you stories at all because at that time there were too many things that had locked me into silence. It was a decline period for me, with no scope to admit how much had fallen away and how much damage I had taken.
At the moment I am telling continuity stories. I am doing all the things I used to do – writing singing, crafting, making wine and preserves, swimming, walking and dancing when I can. I feel closer to my teenage self. The things I do, connect me to more recent ancestors, to my arty grandmother (now departed) and to my father who is also fermenting and preserving things. I tell stories of childhood kitchen adventures.
I feel more like me, and because of that shattering period, I am keen to tap into things that connect me to an older sense of self. Looking for substance, for identity and familiarity, for the things I enjoy and that give me a sense of fulfilment, for feelings of rootedness, groundedness and belonging. Tales of continuity help me to heal the legacy of the hard times, and are helping me rebuild a sense of self.
Different times call for different kinds of stories. It is worth thinking about what the stories we tell do for us. Carrying us forwards, helping us let go, or making us miserable and tying us in knots. We make ourselves and our lives when we make our stories. We tell ourselves into existence, with little tales we create in our own minds. The process of making sense of life is one of making narrative, and how we tell the story, how we shape it, informs who we think we are.
What is the shape of your story? How is that story shaping your life?
