Driving Forward Into the Past, #365StrongStories 37

“Does it feel like a good sign or a bad sign that the dealership uses your old plant as a carpark?” I asked my husband this on our way to the Poughkeepsie Mazda place. This wasn’t a particularly triumphant trip. My husband had walked away from a totaled car last month (thank the gods!) and we were on our way to find a replacement. We weren’t excited about a new car payment and we all would have been happier spending our Saturday hiking in the woods.

But here we were on one of those commercial strips that make America mediocre doing what consumers do as Presidents’ Day draws near.

We did the car browsing dance, learning the steps as we went along. When my two year-old got tired, she and I went back to the mess of an SUV that is the family vehicle.

That’s when I got the text. “The red one in the distance. It’s parked right where my old office used to be.”

And so, we met Karma, the “soul red” sedan that's going to be a necessary addition to the family.

It felt destined and blessed and we were grateful for something more than reliable transportation.

My husband loved that job before the factory was shut down. We were looking for a sign that we were doing more than signing away five years of monthly installments. We needed this to be something more than a car.

You might say it was fate or you might say we were making up a story to make the whole deal more palatable. Either way, it worked in a way that no sales pitch ever could. What about you - what big move did you make based on “the universe said so”?

Where does telling a nice story really take you? #365StrongStories 36

Stories don’t generally emerge from self-discovery style writing prompts. At least not directly. But sometimes, a probing personal question exposes a persistent inner villain - a calculating, weakling narrative that somehow threatens to sink all your strong, heroic stories.

Today, I stumbled across of a collection of expert advice on the heroine’s journey curated by a beloved colleague, Saundra Goldman.

It includes this prompt rom Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones:

Women are allowed to be powerful. You’re not going to find your voice being nice. You’re not going to find who you are. This is your lifetime. You want to say to yourself, “I want to live out of a more genuine, real, connected place,” and keep looking. And it takes time. Ask yourself, “Is this really something you want to do or is it another thing that makes you crazy?”

Questions for writing and reflection: How has being nice held you back? What are you doing right now that doesn’t feel genuine or coming from a deep place?

Last night, glancing over the daily stories I’ve written and shared in 2016, I started to panic. Goddesses, birth, fairytales, motherhood, and occasional mentions of football and entrepreneurship… what sort of lunatic businesswoman thinks that random, personal collection is going to bring in paying clients?

Apparently, this one does.

Playing it cool and trying to write what’s popular hasn’t ever worked for me. My power isn’t ever going to be found by writing nice posts that speak to my conception of the mainstream because I’ll end up feeling like a fraud who gets left high and dry.

All I can do is explore my power and exert the strength of my inner storyteller each day. I can dive deep and listen to the voice that says “you have something the world needs to hear.”

After all, how can I ever believe in your stories and help you make them sparkle and shine if I don’t believe in my own?

Caught in the Mists of Story, #365StrongStories 35

“Mists of Avalon? Haven’t read it. My sister’s college roommate went insane when she read that book. Drew all the characters names and connections on the walls around her bed and never finished the semester.” I don’t remember who said this to me, but I have shelved the conversation with all the other memories of the book I credit with changing my life.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s sweeping Arthurian epic with all its feminism and paganism and didactic wonder rewrote my relationship with religion. It the long process of questioning, abandoning, reconciling, and finally building my own mature relationship with the Catholicism of my childhood.

It was a big deal for me. But I didn’t flunk out of high school because I thought I was Morgaine.

And yet, I do get lost in stories. I know my addiction is stronger than most, but every person craves and creates stories. These days, it’s not just writers, but also psychological researchers, marketers, and neuroscientists who talk about how stories are at the core of our humanity.

Is it strange to rearrange one’s spiritual beliefs based on a book? It feels a little embarrassing to admit I’m so vulnerable to story.

Oh, wait, isn’t that exactly what all religions with a written tradition rely upon? Myths, legends, oral tradition captured on paper generations later that eventually become the backbone of an entire faith? I’m in good company (and some not so good company). It’s just part of being human.

Testing the Truth of Two Birth Stories, #365StrongStories 34

It went on for pages. Exacting descriptions took the reader minute-by-minute through the entire 28-hour process. Though the story was written over several weeks, the narrator would tell you she remembered every detail because she'd been exultantly present in every moment. The journal pages filled more than four years later were more like notes on a dream. The writer lingered on the result, not the road that got her there. When you finally do find out what really happened, entire hours are summed up with “I was lost in the torturous, incremental progression of it all.”

Though the stories were written by the same hand, it would be hard to say that the same woman gave birth in 2009 and in 2014.

After my first daughter’s birth, I considered myself a force of nature - triumphant and ecstatic at the power of the female form. When I survived the second, I was a deeply humbled creature who contentedly swore “never, ever again.”

In truth, the second birth was probably the safer one… transition was a long, brutal hell, but I pushed that baby out in the space of eleven banshee-screaming minutes. The first time around I flirted with “failure to progress” and I’m sure the story would have ended very differently if I wasn’t in the care of trusted homebirth midwives.

Both stories were rooted in my truth as I understood it, but none of it was necessarily true.

Birth is ascending to the stars and falling to your knees. It’s all hope and despair, euphoria and desperation, and the words on a page can only offer a distant view through a cloudy glass. For something so sacred, that is just as it ought to be.

Birth From Wrath to Realization, #365StrongStories 33

It had started at one in the morning. By midday, I was frustrated and angry and already tired. And then Husband looked into my eyes and said “this can’t be like the last time.”

Cue the rage of every birthing mammal in the history of the earth.

Yes, dear, let me make sure I keep the groaning, writhing, and screaming to a minimum. Yes, dear, this time I will clean up after myself as soon as that cord gets cut. Yes, dear, I’ll have her tucked into her own little bed in time for kickoff.

I hissed. I spat. I thundered off as only a woman in the midst of a very slow, so far uneventful labor could be.

It was Super Bowl Sunday, you see. To say that my husband is big fan is to say that natural childbirth is hard - understatements of the century. So, when I heard him tell me that he didn’t want this time to be like the last 28-hour ordeal, I was certain that he was more concerned with the big game than he was with my big belly.

How is it that the human race creates the relationships that make beautiful babies when we can't communicate in such crucial moments?

Time collapses on itself when all you want to do is meet the creature who has been sitting on your bladder for months. I’m not sure how long it took for me to accuse him “you care more about a bunch of stupid linebackers than me and our baby!”

But I still remember the pained disbelief in his eyes when he said “What are you talking about, babe? I don’t give a damn about the game. I know how tired we are and I don’t want us to have to do this at five A.M. again.”

In that moment I realized that pregnancy may be a long, lonely journey, but birth isn’t. Not when you ask the person you love to watch helplessly while you storm about in the boredom of early labor, struggle in the wilderness of transition, and turn yourself inside out in the final push. Not when you ask him to hold you up so the midwives can do their work of catching the person you created together.

Not when you expect him to hold the little one’s other hand while you hold the other and, together, you promise to teach this child to navigate the world.

Brigid's Blessings, #365StrongStories 32

We lived one hundred feet from the fastest flowing river in Europe. At least that’s what the guidebooks said. Those same books also hinted at the legends of fairy forts and the mysteries of those standing stones that anchored farmers’ fields in something even more ancient than Guinness and junior year abroad programs.

We’d been in Galway for six months and had the audacity to call it home. Myth and poetry were the most important things in the world. Even more important than kissing Irish men. Well, that’s the story I’m telling my kids anyway.

And so, on Imbolc, it was time to honor customs that were as old as that frantic River Corrib. Brigid - the goddess who sculpted the land before anyone had ever dreamed of Christ and his saints - this was her night. Legend has it that this is when she passes by, blessing the cloaks of the faithful.

Brigid is one of those handy, all purpose goddesses. In addition to being the patron deity of home and hearth and smithcraft, milk and fire and birthing women, she wore a healing mantle that could be hung on a sunbeam and her coming was the herald of spring.

Being a fresh faced pagan girl on sojourn from a Catholic college, I hung my new shawl in the damp night. I was going to soak up every drip of magic in the Celtic twilight.

Did she stop that night? Did an American girl who knotted her own story with this green, rocky place get the attention of a goddess? That Imbolc feast was almost half a lifetime ago, but I know I met Brigid this very morning in my New York back yard.

She lingered in a warm breeze that had no business shaking the bare trees of a February Hudson Valley. I stood by the summer fire pit in its neat iron bowl, looking back at that house that glowed with the babies I had birthed and nursed.

Without a doubt, I knew she’d graced my every step from then to now.

Bright Brigid blessings to all - especially the brilliant Suzi Banks Baum because it seems that we've been sitting around the same sacred fire all along. Read her St. Brighid's Day post (and learn about the invention of whistling!) here.

Filling the Storyteller's Chalice, #365StrongStories

“You look like you’re in agony, dear one.” “Oh, I’m not. I’m just… It’s the next story.”

“I thought you were happy with this arrangement. The chance to take the stage in the square each day… It’s such an honor. And I’ve heard wonderful things.”

“Of course you have! You’re my husband,” she closed her eyes and pinched at the bridge of her long nose. “I do love doing it and I feel the good of it. I just don’t have anything left.”

“Nothing left! You told me that you were born a storyteller and I’ve never doubted that for a moment since we met.”

“Oh, but you know what it is to be tired when a deep place within your mind's worn through. Like all the creative fires has been put to bed in preparation for a night that just may not end.”

“I’m a glass blower, wife. When the fires go out I bid the apprentices to stoke them hotter than ever and I make thick tumblers for the publicans.”

“Ach, you’re no help! And I have to get up on the stage in less than two hours.”

“You are the Rememberer for these people. You hold their chalice and you wield their sword. Only you dare speak all of their dreams and their fears. You know the secrets what makes them proud and what makes them glad they weren’t born to some other savage race - no matter how rich their kings or fierce their warriors.

“Tell them of the goddess you love best,” he said, leaning forward to tuck the stray curls behind her ears. “Tell the women about how she stands tall in battle and how she births a dozen sons without dread. Tell the men about the swell of her breast and the warmth of her mystery. Tell the children that she holds the keys to the fairy realm. And, when you come home, tell me how you’re just like her.”

The storyteller sighed, but as she closed her eyes, it was not with weariness but trust. Trust in the man who held her chalice and called her to take up her own sword. Trust in the stories that guided her and everyone who gathered when she raised up her voice.

Sometimes this storyteller's chalice feels empty... If you'd like to contribute a story to the #365StrongStories project, read the submission guidelines here.

Part of Him Came Home, #365StrongStories 30

He left. And then he came back. In the midst of it all, we survived on wholesome, fresh food an the stuff from back of the freezer. We wrote notes to say how we missed him and we FaceTime'd every night. We counted sleeps 'til he came back - even the that were nights so disrupted it felt as if no one slept at all.

He returned a conquered hero... all airport flu bug and Greenwich Mean Time lagged.

Soup was made and blankets fetched.

We hope he really comes home tomorrow.

Like Mother, Like Daughter, #365StrongStories 29

“What are you going to give me if I write it?” The rage of million distracted mothers wells up and I snarl, “What am I going to give you? You are writing a thank you note because you were already given something!”

I leave her to her folded bits of computer paper and the array of pencils she’ll use to painstakingly craft every letter in a different color. The mom I want to be admires her creativity and attention to detail. Generally, the mom I admit to be sees this artistic devotion as a stalling tactic.

We’re five weeks past Christmas and after rehearsing this scene a few times, all of the thank you notes are in the mailbox. Though I have lost track, I am reasonably certain that sending this round of cards will cancel the debt we have running from October. It seemed tacky to say “thanks for the 6th birthday gifts too!”, but I am hoping this transmission of gratitude covers all presents received in the last quarter of 2015.

But it’s family. They understand that manners (and a clean house and a recipe that includes all the essential ingredients) are something that Marisa strives for, but can’t always deliver on. My standard excuse would be “but I’m good at other things!” Heck, in 2016 I’ll be able to say “sorry I didn’t mail a note, but I celebrated your generosity in a story!”

But back to that flash of anger at what was actually an innocent question.

We have a child who believes “help” is a four letter word. She buries her nose in books and drawings and growls at anyone who dares interrupt her to request she lend a hand. I’ve explained to my husband that this is just history repeating itself, but that doesn’t make her behavior any less frustrating.  

So we bought her a piggy bank and promised to arrange some sort of incentive plan for helping around the house. After all, we want her to develop a positive relationship with money, it seems important that she connect value with her efforts.

But clearly something hasn’t been communicated. As usual, I was busy being good at other things… like writing a story about how I felt about the whole affair.

Ask Your Beloved Creations to Love You Back, #365StrongStories 28

A teacher of environmental biology asks her two questions at the start of each semester. “Do you love nature?” Yes, of course. Every hand is raised.

“Do you believe that nature loves you in return?” Not a single earnest academic was going to be caught dead admitting to something so… pagan.

Elizabeth Gilbert tells this story in Big Magic to prove that we have a right to be in conversation with Mother Earth, with creativity, with whatever great superhuman force we happen to love.

I keep coming back to Liz’s idea when I secretly reread the stories I have written over the first month of this #365StrongStories project. The way these pieces flow through me and the streams of information and experience rush on, even the post from a few days ago can take me by surprise.

It’s fashionable to bemoan the narcissism of the age. All those selfies we take proves that we’re self-obsessed, right? When I admit that I go back and look at my own work and smile when there’s so much other worthy content to consume… does that prove I have some 21st century sickness?

I don’t think so. Instead, it feels like I am giving my creations a chance to love me back.

You know what it takes to write something that feels worthy of publishing. And you know how hard it is to connect to the reader, even when you’re pouring your best into a post. There’s no guarantee the right people will see what you write and that they’ll have their thumbs prepared to send a response that assures you all the hard work was worth it.

Based on my experiences telling my own Strong Stories, this is my invitation to you: do the work (at your own rate) - the thinking, the writing, the posting, the publicizing. Then, ask those words to love you back when you revisit them.

I never really believed that you need to write for yourself first. Not when I was so desperate to be seen and validated. But finally, I’ve arrived at a place where I give myself permission to stop and see myself and recognize what I’ve made… That’s the nature of real creative magic.

How to Evolve Like a Freaking Mother Goddess, #365StrongStories 27

The modern world likes its goddesses to look and act a certain way. Gorgeous nymphs in gauzy gowns. Abundantly bosomed beings who offer wealth and well being. Great mothers who nurture their beatific babes.

Once upon a time, I used to agree. Six years ago this January, when I was leaving my first daughter to return to my J-O-B, I wrote this:

Want a surefire, foolproof, 100% guaranteed way to become a goddess on earth?  Follow these steps:

• Be born a woman.
• Make love at your most fertile moment.
• Act as a hospitable vessel for nine glorious months.
• Love the little creature that you have created with all your body, heart, and soul.
• Leave aforementioned angel child with a trusted caregiver after she has been lavished with two and a half months of dedicated attachment parenting.
• Return within four hours to a child with eyelids slightly purpled and swollen from much weeping.
• Hold her in your arms and offer her that sweetest mother’s milk.
• When this child falls back in a delighted coma of sleepiest nourishment, witness the rapture on that flushed face.

That’s lovely, but I’m revising what it means to be a goddess. The sweet innocence of a milk dripping deity is great, but there’s another way to earn your place in the pantheon.

I’m nearing the end of my breastfeeding journey with my second child. My boobs can still soothe a crying kid, but I’m less amazed by my alchemical powers. (Wow! I eat food and it ends us as someone else’s poop!)

Now, as I endure the two a.m. screaming that I can feel in my teeth simply because I will not submit to being treated like a human chew toy, I discover I have another superhuman skill: the firm but gentle “no.”

Every mother who resists the desire to devour her young - even when they seem hell bent on swallowing their mother whole - yeah, she’s a goddess.

There is something divine about cradling an infant and pledging a lifetime of nourishing devotion. The refusal to turn into Kali in the darkest hour before dawn? That’s the love that creates the world.

The Moment a Princess Becomes a Queen, #365StrongStories 26

The woman drew her spine straight though no one would accuse her of slouching. She glared at the shoulder blades of the retreating clerk but soon sighed deeply and settled her face back into its usual expression of benevolent calm. It wasn’t this dreadful man’s fault that the news he carried was so bleak. She had never known an officer from the merchants’ bank to come bearing anything but vague threats and insincere apologies.

In truth, she had inherited an impoverished realm but wasn’t given a single clue about how to rescue it. For more than two generations the family had eked out an existence on the afterglow of remembered opulence alone. But even that dance with delusion had ended, finally and without ceremony. She smiled wryly to think that there wasn’t money for ceremony anyhow.

Regardless of what the bankers said, there would always be enough to keep them fed and clothed. Mostly, she didn’t care if they had to move to the castle gatehouse because the roof of the Great Hall finally caved in. Though she hadn’t realized it at the time, she had made that decision long ago.

Before she ever wore her father’s heavy crown upon her head, she married a good man who would always be able to provide the essentials of life. But, of course, she had always been raised to expect more.

Nothing but the finest dreams and most gossamer promises were good enough for the young princess. She had been permitted to marry a man for love and was still allowed to keep the expectations of a bride who had made a strategic match based on riches and position.

Only now that the princess’s fantasy had dissolved into a sovereign’s reality did she see the weakness in the story of happily ever after. Now, she had her own daughters’ legacy to consider. And what about the ancestral ghosts that would lose their home if this palace was allowed to slide into the sea?

She took off her crown and looked at her reflection in the rosy gold. Her mind made up, for the first time in her life she looked into the eyes of a queen.

Thank You For Marrying Me Even Though Was Trying to Change You

I  scrutinized the handwriting. Yes, most certainly mine. It must have been inscribed to the last boyfriend. Everyone knew I took everything much too seriously during that particular affair.

Christmas, 2005

My Darling - for another chapter in our beautiful, healing journey.

All my love, Marisa

But, no, it said 2005. That was the year we were engaged. It was also the year I struggled with Lyme disease, the Epstein-Barr Virus, and an emergency appendectomy. Apparently, it was also the year my then-fiance managed to love a woman who thought marriage was about turning every hellish personal experience into an “our.”

My husband of ten years - the engineer, the craft beer connoisseur, the once and future mountain biking enthusiast -  I gave this man a book about Chinese medicine for our second Christmas.

Granted, he does believe in acupuncture. Meaning: he'll make an appointment when he can’t walk. He also believes in back surgery and flat out ignoring the pain and devoting himself to making everyone else happy.

Thank goodness he also believes in accepting dumb gifts with good grace because no one remembers 2005 as the year I cried under the Christmas tree when he said “why did you buy me some book about Asian herbs that nobody is ever going to read?”

I came across this forgotten volume while cleaning my office today and I have to share this story now so I can laugh quickly and get over the embarrassment of it all.

Oh, the foolishness of youth and new love!

Oh, the way I tried to make my life partner into some idealized earthy crunchy mate!

Oh, how glad I am that he didn’t change just to suit me because, as it turns out, I’m generally more interested in sipping a finely made IPA than I am in balancing my yang energy by ingesting foul tasting plants whose names I can't pronounce!

The Exhausted Heroine's Inevitable Death, #365StrongStories 24

There comes a day when the heroine is no longer exhausted. After an arduous journey, she simply vanishes. In her place, you get a crabby lump of protagonist. Creativity, passion, and proactivity have all given way to listless desperation. The new character is simply named “Exhaustion” because no one has the energy to argue or come up with something better.

It’s nearly impossible to write a story about Miss Exhaustion. She’s drained of dreams because everything is so dreamlike. She doesn’t think she has the resources to make a single useful change. She prone to conflict, but it’s all petty and dull stuff that everyone has heard too many times before.

And yet, Exhaustion loves story.

She binges on Mad Men instead of listening to thought-provoking podcasts. She lets the kids watch a movie. And then all the cruddy straight to video releases in the series too. She rereads paperbacks that comforted her in high school and every chapter is a surprise because her memory is shot by this chronic, crushing fatigue.

Exhaustion find it impossible to write a story. Her own story isn’t worth a second glance. But at least she has gratitude for all the authors and showrunners and exuberant children who fill the days and nights with narratives that give her hope to awaken to another day.

When did you stop telling stories that mattered to you? #365StrongStories 23

I’d been born a storyteller. Fearless. Impassioned. Believing that it was just as easy to write a story as it was to read one. But then…

I fell in love with a more ambitious, committed writer. Praising a story became more important than writing one.

I got caught up in the scholarly race of college. Analyzing literature became more important than creating it.

I landed a job in academic library administration. Managing the collection became more important than adding to it.

I built a series of website and copywriting businesses. Marketing strategy became more important than getting to the core of the stories I was always meant to tell.

For almost half my life, I nudged my stories at the back of the line.

I told the stories I felt I was supposed to tell. The stories that served and supported others. The stories that seemed useful. The stories that I prayed would be practical and profitable.

Funny. Very few of those stories were worth a damn.

Writing for the sake of writing. Writing for pleasure, passion, expression… That was a nice hobby, confined to the journal page. It seemed like the greatest decadence, a suspect and selfish act, to craft stories of my own.  Growing up, it seemed, meant putting aside the stories that really mattered to me.

I know there are countless creative women - and men - who stand beside me and say “me too.” I know that I am amongst the fortunate who has found her voice and can say aloud “not any more.”

Bring on the selfishness, bring on the devotion, bring on the act of being in service to the page - even when someone hangs on my elbow and reminds me that I need to keep my mind on other stories too. If I’m really a storyteller, I can balance and juggle and spin all these tales together into work that makes life sing.

... And so can you. I believe that every strong story told for the greater good begins with devotion to what you really need to say - it's the first step to telling a story that connects.

Every Family Story Is About One Thing, #365StrongStories 22

“Mama! Why are you crying about that letter from Tatu?” My perceptive first-grader recognizes my grandfather’s handwriting. Sending clippings from the Wall Street Journal, prayers and pictures of saints, and packets of stamps for my husband’s inherited collection, Grandpa is our most faithful correspondent. Today, it’s a half-page ad from the New York Times. Grandpa would like to buy me an audio course on storytelling, if I’m interested. Even as I tell the story now, the tears well up again.

Marketers and people who help you build online visibility like to expose your pain by asking “what do you do when the only person who reads your blog is your mom?” It’s rather a rude question and, since my mother died in ‘09, I especially loath that line. Perhaps now I’ll merrily substitute “your grandfather” and forgive the speaker for being so glib.

You’ll hear different perspectives on “what makes a good story.” Conflict and tension are two of the more common answers. To me, one thing makes a story compelling and meaningful: transformation.

A good story is one that changes the reader in some small way.

A story about how nice it is to get gifts from my grandpa isn’t exactly wrought with tension. Admittedly, I wondered if it were fair to ask him to spend his money on one more piece of content I barely have the time to consume. But that evaporated quickly. If you’re a 37 year-old woman with a letter-writing, blog-reading grandfather who thinks of your business and your passion while he peruses his daily paper, you say “yes, please.” You then compose a very nice thank you note complete with pictures drawn by the great grand daughters and you gratefully make the time to listen and learn.

Instead, let’s focus on transformation.

The story of any family is one of constant change. The endless rising and ebbing of generations. The perpetual fluidity of roles that only children get to ignore.

Now, when we’re navigating a crazy supermarket parking lot during a Saturday visit, I’m watching for Grandpa’s footing as much as I’m making sure the kids don’t dart into traffic. We have all been transformed, but then, that’s where all the meaningful stories come from.

Guess Who Seth Godin Calls “The Best Storytellers” #365StrongStories 21

“Who are the best storytellers?” After a serious binge on this particular podcast, I knew this was the host’s pet question. As ever, he indicated to the guest that he wanted a “creative” answer that would challenge the assertion that marketers are the greatest storytellers. (Only on a marketing podcast does anyone assume “marketers are the best storytellers” is the most interesting answer). Seth Godin, the man behind All Marketers are Storytellers and so many other brilliant books, broke the mold (as usual). According to Mr. Godin, the best storytellers are:

Mothers.

The host spluttered. He dissolved into nervous laughter. He tried to explain Seth’s answer for him and talk about how mothers are empathetic and caring. Then he trailed off about how he wasn’t going to get all “soft and fuzzy.”

Seth didn’t go there. Instead, he described mothers as people who devote 15 to 20 years crafting a human being. They don’t use tools or hacks learned at a conference. They merely set standard and live a life that leaves a story behind.

On behalf of the mothers out there - those of us who know we’re storytellers and those of us who haven’t discovered that yet - I thank you Mr. Godin, from the bottom of my maternal but not-so-soft-and-fuzzy heart.

The greatest story you’ll ever tell is the story that you live and devote to someone else. This is the foundation of my approach to telling stories that connect.

Get My Free Storytelling Guide

The Gift of the First Reader, #365Strong Stories 20

Story has been trying to find me all day, but I’m too tired to draw together myself together and let narrative arrange my scattered pieces. And so, I flip through the books that crowd my office couch hoping someone else’s words can conjure the magic that eludes me.

Just don’t pretend to know more about your characters than they do, because you don’t. Stay open to them. It’s teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It’s that simple.

My copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird was a used one, apparently. It’s so easy to lose track of how books find us these days. Generally, it’s enough that they find us at all. The harder thing is finding time for them, of course.

The pen that underlined that passage was black and inky, just like mine. I assumed the marks were my own until I noticed how straight the lines were. When juggling a nursing child or reading in bed by flashlight, all a mother can hope for are bold zigzags that don’t obscure the text too much.

And as exhaustion-warped as my memory is, I know I’ve never read that paragraph. A stranger had absorbed this book and let it go long before it made its way to me.

These days, I have little time for characters. My writing is focused on the “you” of the reader and the “I” that strives to tell good stories.

I do, however, try to make as many tea parties as I can. And I am as kind as I can be to the dolls at the table, and under the table, and even those who gouge the small of my back when I roll on them in the night.

Tonight, when I’m too weary to be the writer, I can be grateful for Lamott’s story and the book’s mysterious first owner for teaching me to be a better mama.

The iPad Time Machine, #365StrongStories 19

Must. Download. All. The. Ebooks.

You’ve been in this click-happy place. Perhaps when you’re feeling vulnerable in about your parenting skills or the size of your email list?

A few years ago, when “oooh! free stuff on the internet!” was cool and noteworthy, many of us were guilty of sacrificing our Gmail addresses for a dozen reports a day. (We didn’t realize we were paving the way for the billion dollar data storage industry, but I digress.)

At our house, the antiquated iPad is now streaked with tiny fingerprints, but it used to be the storehouse for all my entrepreneurial dreams. I imagined I would absorb all that material and suddenly awake to find that I too had broken the six figure barrier! You can guess how that’s worked out for me…

Anyway, when I was searching for an ebook to keep the kids interested in the car this weekend (I was in one of those moods when an app or a tv show would be proof I was failing as a parent), I stepped into the iPad time machine.

And I discovered storytelling. PDF after PDF about storytelling and business. Thing is, I don’t remember being particularly interested in storytelling back in 2012. I certainly don’t remember shunting any of those docs onto the iPad for future inspiration.

Though I’ve always been a writer who loved to immerse herself in fiction, “storyteller” felt too big. I hadn’t finished a novel, after all. That wasn’t what was holding me back from diving into storytelling though. It was something much more personal and painful:

I didn’t know, like, or trust my own story enough to believe it was worth telling. I was judging my ability to be a storyteller because I had passed harsh judgment on my own story.

In the last few years, I’ve come to believe that everyone is a storyteller. I know that stories are what enable us to make sense of our lives.

And I’ve had a chance to heal and fall in love with my own story too.

Finally, I’ve come to understand that my work is to help emerging thought leaders explore, own, and tell the stories that will change lives.

Because a good story comes full circle, this one does too. I've written my own ebook on storytelling.

This isn't some relic created  in 2012: it has been crafted for this moment in time and crafted for you, the emerging thought leader who doesn’t have years to waste on fears that your stories aren't worthy.

Download it now and read it now. Your 2019 self will thank you for it!

The Story You Have the Right to Tell, #365StrongStories 18

The words had stuck in the storyteller’s throat, and so she went to her teacher for counsel. “They have asked me to tell a story at the Celebration of Kindness and Justice. They wish me to speak for those who have suffered.” Her mentor was wrapped in furs and cradled a steaming cup. “An honor to be sure, dear one.”

“Not an honor I sought!” I have no stories to tell. Give me one, please, Teacher. You saw what it was like. You know what I must say.”

“Saw what it was like?” the old woman’s husk of a voice cracked. “My father ran the ships that carried them. I saw what it was like to be a spoiled rich girl. I saw what it was like to hate the freedom fighters and to consider emancipation a betrayal of divine right!”

“But you don’t believe that now, of course!”

“I don’t have the right to any beliefs at all. I lie in my bed and pay the granddaughter of the woman I once owned to bring me my every meal and wash my crumbling flesh. I’m too old to wonder how the story has changed.”

Our storyteller learned her craft from this elder - all the myths and the sagas and the legends that had built their little country. It was true, teacher and student rarely discussed what went on in the marketplace or spoke of rumors from the castle or across the sea. But the storyteller had learned that every tale had to speak to the joys and sorrows of the day. How had her teacher forgotten?

“The story that ends the forgetting,” she said as she rose. She could not leave the dark chambers fast enough now that she realized what she had to say. “Thank you, dear teacher. I must go!” She would not spin a tale that was not hers, but she would use her moment at the center of the circle to invite in the people who had lived and earned the right to tell it.