“Share what is vulnerable, not what is intimate.”

Share what is vulnerable, not what is intimate - Brene Brown | #365StrongStories by Marisa Goudy | writing coach for therapists, coaches, healers, thought leaders

"I don't share anything until my feelings and growth aren't still dependent on it."

- Brené Brown

A slide with this quote on it lit up the chat box during the recent Story Triangle webinar.

We were deep into our exploration of what makes stories work and what makes them fall flat. At this point in the class, we were talking about how a story loses its balance when you, the writer, get lost in the details of your own story.

It's almost always a struggle, deciding what story elements add depth and what's going too deep.

As I hit publish, I’m grateful to have Brené to look to when I worry “Is this TMI?

After all, when writing is both your private, emotional processing tool and the way you communicate publicly and professionally, it can feel like a tightrope walk.

How do you tell the difference between a rich, compelling story and simply pouring out your guts?

Again, there’s a Brené quote for that. (Isn’t there a BB line for just about everything related to relationships and speaking truth?)

“Share what is vulnerable, not what is intimate.”

Sharing vulnerable stories reveals your humanity and creates connections.

Pouring out the intimate details into a public space where people who aren’t prequalified to hold you in all your glorious imperfection…

At best, you get no response at all. At worst, potential clients judge what they do not understand, turn away, and seek out someone who they believe is more in control of their sh*t.

So how do you tell the difference between the vulnerable stories that are ready for the spotlight and intimacies that need to be held in reserve?

1. Check in with your own process. Can you say “I’ve healed this” and feel you’re being completely honest with yourself?

2. Decide why you’re telling the story. Do you have something to teach based on your experiences or do you just need someone to be your witness?

If your answer to #1 is “I haven’t healed this yet,” that’s great. Pull out your journal, call a friend, make sure your on time for your next therapy or healing session.

Do. Not. Blog. This. (Yet.)

If you your answer to #2 is “I need a witness,” embrace this beautifully human moment. Everyone needs to be seen, heard, and understood.” Yes, be fully present in your need to be seen, but do so with the people you know and trust - not your professional audience.

The Light In the Tunnel is Not a Train

My dad has taught me just about all the unusual expressions I use. “We’re in the weeds” (we’re screwed). “86 it” (toss it). “Some days chickens, some days feathers” (you can’t win them all).  

He came of age in the restaurant industry, so these are probably the cleanest phrases you’ll ever hear in an industrial kitchen.

Today when I called my father to tell him that my storytelling for business webinar was a great success, I was finally able to talk about how bloody hard the journey to “yes!” has been. As an entrepreneur himself, he can relate to the bright dances in the sun that I want to share and the long shadowy walks I don’t want to talk about.

Perhaps he has been watching my struggles from afar and holding on to anecdote he shared with me for some time. It certainly isn’t something you tell someone unless they’re smiling and feeling a tiny bit invincible.

Back in one of the nastiest economic slumps he ever endured, he told me, he read an article with the headline that read something like “For the foreseeable future, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.”

Going through that collectively must have been awful - even if misery loves company. So often, however, I know that we solopreneurs and private practice owners go through the same terror. We can't stand the thought that all this hard work won’t pay off, but we're too battered and tired to be hopeful. We’re terrified we’ll never get to the “I did it!” day.

This, of course, brought us to consider how, as a small business owner, you often wonder if the light you’re seeing is the promise of daylight or some terrible train bearing down on you.

At least for today, I am riding on that train and I see nothing but blue sky.

Thanks, Dad. And thanks to everyone in my community who participated in my Story Triangle webinar. You can still register to receive the recording (available through April 11).

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The only inspirational quote you need as a writer & entrepreneur

Nobel prize winning poet and Irishman Seamus Heaney's quote is scrawled on a post-it above my computer. It fights for space with love notes from my daughter and memos about my many accounting goofs, but it's the only inspirational line I keep in my line of sight.

"If you have the words, there's always a chance you'll find the way" is the only guidance I need because it speaks to heart of my work as a writer and as an entrepreneur.

These words are going to open my Story Triangle webinar that's set for 1 PM ET tomorrow (Tuesday, April 5).

Even in our multimedia world where video talks and images sell, words are always at the heart of our work. We need the words to build the narratives that change minds and touch hearts.

We tell stories to find a way - a way to connect, to inspire, to build a business and a livelihood, and, ultimately to make this world more beautiful, bearable, and bold.

Please join me tomorrow. I'd be honored to show you a new way to use your words and stories.

Save my seat at the webinar!

The Dark Side of Professional & Creative Overcommitment

Stories of overwhelm and overcommitment can be funny or tragic. Picture the comedy montage of the woman trying to do it all who ends up passing the dog a sippy cup, placing a bowl of kibble in front of the toddler, and leaving the house in her slippers. You've seen these pictures by Danielle Guenther, right?

The un-funny tales of a woman weeping in the school drop off line and staring blankly at her computer screen, willing herself to get something done aren't the stuff of Facebook shares - though they might be the stories that you use to connect to clients who need to heal overworked minds and bodies and who need support to heal and feel whole again.

Sometimes you can't be funny enough to cover up the ache

I'm running the risk of giving my "oh, silly mama, you can't do it all!" story into something way darker and related to a breakdown. I hope I am seeing this soon enough to make a change so I don't end up really letting myself, my clients, my readers, and my family down. Instead, I am rumbling with what it means to make a daily commitment and what it means to change it or even break it.

Still, I don't have an answer. Still, I am not able to tell you a strong story with a beginning, middle, and end about #365StrongStories. Still, there's no satisfying resolution to my #365project dilemma.

Instead, from the messy middle of it all, I can share with you a daily practice sister who understand - Saundra Goldman is re-examining her own continuous practice routine.

Saundra's current project is a 100-day commitment to meditation, not a year of public writing, but I am inspired by her willingness to listen to her physical, emotional, and creative needs and recognize that life happens. We need to flow with life and the muse and honor ourselves enough to reevaluate when necessary.

Saundra references Karen Brody's yoga nidra training in her post. Here's a guest post that Karen wrote for us last year.

One of the things that is inspiring this #365 review is my free online class, Connect with Readers & Clients: Discover the Story Triangle. Ultimately, the triangle is about keeping your writing is in balance - a lesson I think we could all use in all aspects of work, story, and life.

Save my seat at the webinar!

Can we be honest about the kids' birthday party thing?

It is possible to be deeply grateful, even as you the shudder shakes your spine. You realize that all little girls have the same ear-splitting screech and your daughter is not the only one who could break glass with her heedless enthusiasm. That's something consider as you cling to the corners of the joyful, germ-infested pit of a childhood birthday party venue. Even if the noise is making your vision blur (funny how the senses seem to get so muddled in the midst of extreme stress), you can also pray that your kid will be so funned-out after the party that she'll be happy to go home and color. Or stare at the wall. Silently.

If it's an especially good day, you can find another parent who looks equally as sick and terrified. You can sidle over and - using hand gestures and exaggerated frowny-faces, if necessary - express that you too understand the birthday party obligation to be worse than 28 hours of labor. You may understand each other well enough to stick to walls of the next celebratory obligation like a small colony of anxious barnacles.

I admit I am this mom. And though I am a little worried about seeming like an anti-social ingrate, I kinda hope it will mean that we'll get fewer invitations.

Except today, we went to one of the loudest, germiest spots of all, and I am still smiling. Even though I briefly lost my two-year-old and I had to bellow like a belligerent foghorn to get my older daughter to get her shoes on, I am still smiling.

In truth, I am a bit concerned. Have children finally broken me? Am I going to be the mom in the bouncy house at the next shindig?

Oh, wait, those spine-quaking shudders just began again. Eek... What if I actually become the mom that learns how to play?

This morning of motherly mayhem seems anything but productive, but it proves that you can use your experiences and craft them into stories that help you connect with your prospective clients. Learn more about how to do this at the free Story Triangle webinar coming up Tuesday, April 5.

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It's Time to Open Up the Definition of "Story"

The classic definition of story: a narrative with a conflict and a resolution. A story has a beginning, middle, and an end. These days, we've lived ourselves into a broader definition of story, however. Now, we talk about "the stories we tell ourselves." This is about positive thinking and inner gremlins. It's the internal monologue that is either filled with lots of "you've got this" or "you suck."

As entrepreneurs and private practice owners, as creatives, as people trying to make a livelihood out of personal passion, that inner voice is often heavy with doubt and fear.

Let's see how we can shift that story.

My own doubt and fear is growing fat and scary because I'm overcommitted. I pledged too much creative energy when I said I would write a story every day. I committed more time than I had to give to conceiving, writing, designing, posting, and sharing a story and an image.

I'm toast. I've discovered that quantity over quality really is a losing proposition.

It's not time to quit #365StrongStories. Not yet. Not when I have so many dedicated guest storytellers involved. Not when I find out that people around town are talking about this crazy great undertaking of mine. I'm waiting until at least day 100 (today is #92) before I decide to make any great changes in the schedule.

So, in the meantime, I am going to tell a different sort of Strong Story. I'll be offering up a few powerful lines that I hope will stick in your head and help shift your mindset into something that sounds a whole lot like hope, confidence, and peace.

And so, today: my work is worthy.

This is what I tell myself when I stress over webinar sign ups and the size of my community. It is what I tell myself when I decide that I can be seen even if I'm not pulling off the mad feat of creating and posting every day.

Your work is worthy too. Let's make it our mantra today.

Storytelling Is About Relationships

Is this your fantasy too? You get to be the person with the space, the time, and the luxury to simply write. Uninterrupted days are lavished on your own ideas without a care for the reader or the marketplace.

Well, that is certainly my fantasy, but we all know I have an incurable addiction to words and sentences. Maybe your fantasy is that you'd never have to write another word again! Maybe you pray that you'll be able to build a solo business or practice without creating online content and telling your brand's story.

Whether your a born writer or you're someone who needs to be tied to the keyboard to get the blogging done, we all need a reality check:

Stories depend on relationships and relationships depends on story.

Next week, in the Connect with Readers & Clients: Discover the Story Triangle we're going to explore how stories build relationships and how stories depend on relationships.

We go a little in today's Facebook live video (below). Be sure to sign up for the free webinar to learn how to make these relationships work in your own writing. Save my seat!

Luis: A Study in Breath by Guest Storyteller Liz Hibala

It was a simple passing by most standards. A friend’s cat, Luis, died. I knew him in a cursory way.  He was an old fellow when I met him, an orange tabby with bowed front legs and a raspy smoker’s meow.  He had a remarkable, intentional presence even when he clumsily circled my lap looking for the precise place to lower his ancient bones. As if to make full contact, he kneaded my legs along the way, claws extended, completely unaware or unconcerned the pain this ritual brought. He was himself.

Here, then not here, totally dependent upon the absence of an inhaled breath.

We move through time and space on ephemeral wings of breath. Experience and emotion, relationships and solitude -  all dependent upon the repetitive motion of inhale and exhale. It is breath that maintains our presence here, it is breath that connects us to all life. At times intentional, mostly automatic, our breath is a constant companion. It moves with us through joy and struggle, triumph and heartbreak, with unwavering loyalty. With each breath, change. Each breath, a unique motion of its own. A microcosm of cosmic movement and eternal change.

I sit in the corner of my couch, writing. One of my cats lounges against my leg in a quiet, seemingly contented mood, drifting in and out of sleep. His long black fur gently rises and falls with each breath. I marvel at the simplicity of this scene and the simultaneous enormity that it holds. A quiet morning, a soft peacefulness, and the rhythmic movement of muscle directing air.

It’s all in the breath.

Liz Hibala is an emerging Crone, Reiki Master, and author living in the mountains of western Montana. Learn more about her book Óran Mór and her Reiki practice.

This is when you ask for help

I just made a cup of coffee without the cup. A great brown countertop and a smug looking Keurig machine didn’t photograph well so you’ll have to take my word for it. There’s no use weeping over spilled caffeine - I tossed some towels over it, firmly placed a cup beneath the spout, and asked the coffee gods to give me one more hit. Instead of collapsing into exhausted tears, I’m resorting to prayer.

Note that this coffee incident happened at noon during my first of two solid work days this week. There is no time to get on my knees or pull out a meditation cushion. All I can do is sit at the keyboard and say the prayer that a red-haired Celtic Mary Magdalen named Maeve has given us:

Help, I prayed, help.

(Help, help is one of the best prayers I know; you just have to be prepared for some bizarre responses.)

Another line from this fabulous Maeve creature: “A story is true if it’s well told.” That means that this character in Elizabeth’s Cunningham’s brilliantly told novels are a kind of truth we can tuck into our hearts and swirl into our coffee to get us through.

Ask for help and, somehow, the universe will send you what you need.

When I prayed and typed and clicked and sipped, I wasn’t exactly sure what sort of help I was asking for.

House cleaning. Toddler sleep training. Webinar advertising.

I’m willing to take help in any form it comes, really. Since you probably can’t come over to clean under the coffee pot and my kid won’t let anyone near her but me at 4 AM, I’ll ask you for help with the last one.

I’d be honored if you would share the news about Connect with Readers & Clients: Discover the Story Triangle webinar I am teaching on Tuesday, April 5 at 1 PM ET.

Will you please come too?

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Shared Passions and Outlandish Secrets

It’s rainy, cold, and Celtic as hell out there on this March afternoon in New York. If I ever mention the weather in my writing, you know it is exactly this kind of day. The heavy fog is the perfect screen for my imagination to play out its most fabulous, fantastical visions. This almost makes up for the loneliness, nostalgia, and “what would life be life if only I had…” thinking that soaks through me. I have a great library of memories and stories to wander through as I stare into the mist, tea cup clutched to my heart. But Outlander has been romancing the collective imagination lately, so it’s easiest for my daydreams to gallop off to join Claire and Jamie in the Highlands.

The Frasers belong to anyone willing to pay for premium cable now, so it’s no longer a private reverie. Back when I first discovered Diana Gabaldon’s first novel at 15, it felt like an unknown otherworld. Occasionally the books would find their way into conversation and it would be like finding a member of the underground “Je suis prest” sorority, but generally the series felt like a guilty pleasure you couldn’t really discuss in mixed company.

Now, I’ve gone and given copies to my mother-in-law and my stepmom. My husband is working his way through book 2 and I fully expect my dad to give it a try soon. The television gods have ushered these stories off the pages where we could only imagine the look in Jamie Fraser’s slanted green eyes. Outlander makes the cover of Entertainment Weekly and their whole world has emerged into the culture with such confidence and acclaim that I almost forget it contains a dozen scenes I’d rather die than discuss at a holiday dinner.

And yet, I find these are still secret stories. I can only write about the external phenomenon of sharing the books and watching the show, not the thoughts that swirl around me on a quiet gray day halfway around the world from Craigh na Dun. These visions are still mine, intimate as a reader alone with a book or a couple whispering together in the night.

Claire and Jamie belong to everyone now, but in the most important ways, they will always belong to me alone. If you knew and loved them once upon a time, they’ll always belong to you too.

Writing Prompt: The Most Dangerous Thing

As we prepared for the Easter bunny yesterday, I decided to try blowing the good stuff out of a few eggs (mostly because I cracked half of the hard boiled batch). My daughter looked at me with a mix of horror and hilarity. She declared that what I was doing was "the most dangerous thing I have ever seen!" Clearly, she lives a sheltered life (and I feel pretty proud of that fact), but what about you? What is the most dangerous thing you have ever seen or tried?

Based on this video, I hope you'll see that tongue in cheek answers are encouraged and perhaps even preferred. After all, Easter is a day that can use as much laughter and joy as possible.

Share your own "danger mom" or even "danger bunny" stories on the comments or tag me when you share them on social media.

The Shame of Shushed Story

The Shame of a Shushed Story, #365StrongStories by Marisa Goudy

“Oh honey, let’s not tell that story.” The words flowed easily from my lips but they were terribly hard to hear, hanging there in the air. I’d delivered them as kindly as I could in the voice of a woman with too many worries and too little sleep. All I wanted was the oasis of a quiet shower and to make it to my first cup of coffee before anyone pulled hair or screeched or required a bandaid.

But I know that silence and distrust and disconnection are born of distracted admonishments. This was a tiny sin that hinted at a deeper darkness.

My six year-old was remembering the beach house that the family rented for several summers. Her memories of eating a dozen clementines gave way to remembering when one older family member had fallen and knocked out a tooth.

I don’t like that memory. It was upsetting and it wasn’t pretty. I felt the pain and the worry of that Cape Cod morning. The guilt that I hadn't been very helpful at the time was (my excuse was morning sickness, but that seems paltry now). None of these thoughts were going to ease me into what was going to be another challenging day, so I shushed her and kept moving.

As I dive deep into what it means to tell stories, I'm learning just as much about how to receive and keep stories. Stories need to be held and reviewed when they bubble up. When they are stifled they become the monsters of shame and doubt and fear.

In trying to protect myself from unresolved hurts, I create new ones for my daughter. In trying to stifle the pure, spontaneous sharing of memories, I am creating new ghosts that are bound to be much more ghoulish the next time they come around.

I am a storyteller. I ask people to walk into the shadows with me so that we can appreciate the light. That means I also need to allow others to tell me their stories - even when I find them unsettling or inconvenient, even when I want to wish the memories away.

Learn how to tell your own stories with greater sensitivity and awareness. Join the free online class, The Story Triangle, on April 5.

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The People Need Stories, Not To Do Lists

The difference between telling a strong story and writing “just another blog post”

There are million different ways to approach a topic. Say you wanted to write about how to talk with your partner about a struggles a creative entrepreneur.

You could use the good old “people love list posts” approach:

Seven ways you “should” approach the situation including “make a spreadsheet that he can understand!” and “make sure everyone is well-rested and ready to fully engage in the conversation.”

If your readers are worrying about how to get their partner to be more supportive of a business venture, they just might come away with a tip that helps them along.

But then there’s the storytelling approach:

It’s one a.m. when she gets to bed. She’s chilled from sitting at the computer for so long and feels so grateful when he entangles his sleep warmed limbs with hers. Visions of Facebook ads and YouTube clips swim before her eyes as she tries desperately to sleep. The kids will be up soon and there’s so much more work to do to get this new course launched.

He knows the pattern of her breath. He knows it doesn’t mean anything good. “Did you get everything done?” he asks. When she snorts, he asks, “Did you get at least one thing done? Are you upset?

“Yes. And yes.” She starts to cry because finishing up a LeadPage doesn’t feel like much when the to do list stretches across so many notebook pages.

She is not ok. She is tired and she is scared and she is so desperate for all of her work to pay off.

It would have been easy to mumble “it’s all good” and roll over to feed her fears into the lonely darkness. Instead, she chose to be honest. She chose to speak her truth and ask her husband for the kind of help that only he can give - to listen to her in the darkness and make the world feel safe again.

Though they’ll both be exhausted in the morning, there’s one less brick in the wall between them. There’s space for sunshine and support and connection to flow in their marriage, in her business, and in their bank account.

This is why storytelling works

Because it’s a story, the reader connects with you in a real way that builds trust. They get drawn in by the emotion. Even if they’re not looking for “quick and easy tips for having tough conversations with your spouse about your business,” people who understand the challenges of entrepreneurship will be drawn in.

Stories are like giant magnets for the brain -  people want to be invited into the room, into the conflict, and into the resolution. A story like this one shows them they’re not alone and exposes the other side of “grow your six figure online business” sales pitches.

How to make storytelling work for you, your audience, and your business

Is that my story above? Well, I can tell you that I am launching a new course and I’m pretty sleepy today…

That’s not the point of all this, though. My goal is to help you understand that stories are what connect you with your readers and with your potential clients.

We dive deep into why we need stories and list posts in the Connect With Your Readers & Clients: Discover the Story Triangle webinar. The recording will be available through Monday, April 11.

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Traveling Distances by Guest Storyteller Peggy Acott

Why had she taken a train out of Minneapolis instead of making a direct flight to Seattle? It postponed the inevitable conversation with Bea, true, but made the anticipation of it a torment, stretching out like the endless lines of cattle fence rushing past her window; she had spent the last several hours (last several days, if she was to be truthful) running over various scripts and monologues in her head of how she was going to approach the topic with Bea. Hell, I can’t just walk into her house after all this time and say “Hi! Guess what? Daddy’s alive, but not for long, and he wants to see you.” She groaned audibly though no one heard, unless her moan got picked up by the wind and was now startling some poor prairie dog family minding their own business in their den. But Alice couldn’t deny that she had been happy to see him, terrified by his cancer prognosis. She, who avoided all things having to do with sickness and mortality; she, who could not summon up the courage to visit her mother (for she still thought of Adriane as her mother) until the week before she died; couldn’t bear to see her sick and failing. She knew Bea was furious with her, maybe even hated her. She felt an ugly, malignant sort of cowardice that she wouldn’t admit to anyone. Well, now she was getting paid back in spades.

Alice gazed out into the distance. The parched, dry ochre hills and plains were so opposite to the life she made in the lush Hawaiian Islands; this landscape seemed like the no-man’s land threshold separating her past and her present. Unbidden, her memories started to bubble up: Daddy teaching her about fireflies; dinners around the wooden kitchen table in the dining room or the picnic table in the back yard in summer; her mother reading to her and Bea at bedtime in the room they shared, the warm pool of light from the bedside lamp illuminating the page of Wind in the Willows and their mother’s concentrated expression.

Peggy Acott is a writer in many forms, who shamelessly takes advantage of the rainy weather in western Oregon to help maintain her (mostly) regular writing practice.

The Alchemy of Envy (Or, Why I'm In Love with Glennon)

Glennon Doyle Melton of Momastery began her blog because she needed a place to be honest. That journey into honesty has created an international community of humans who want more love and hope and a whole lot less fear and separation. Oh, and a best selling book and some epic charitable giving.

So, here’s my honest confession: I’ve envied Glennon too much to read all the words and feel all the feelings and experience all the virtual hugs that happen in her digital world.

Based on what I heard in Glennon's must-listen interview on Rob Bell’s podcast, I think she would lovingly escort me into therapy if she heard I envied all that she’s survived in this life. I get that. But envy is one of those stupid emotions that really just needs alchemy - the magical process of turning something base and blah into something shiny and brilliant.

I’m done with envy and it’s petty, perspective stealing black magic. I am done with missing out on all the good stuff because I am terrified I’ve already missed my own “good stuff” train. I’m through with assuming that Glennon’s world is already too full of passionate, big-hearted, creative beings. Who is served by my believe "no one needs little old me to like, comment, and share"?

I’m ready to SHOW UP.

That doesn’t just mean I’ll hang out on her Facebook page more often and pre-order the new book (though on both counts: check). It means that I will choose respect and admiration over envy and isolation. It means I will read and reach out to all the bloggers, authors, and thought leaders I adore and become an active participant in their worlds. 

Choosing participation over envy means I will free myself from the depressing chains of competition. It means I'll get over myself and my "I shoulda created something this vibrant and important already myself" crap.  

When I tell the universe - and all the wonderful, caring people in it - that I am open to play and explore and be a part of all the eye opening wisdom and heart cracking connection I can find, love wins. We all win.

On Being a Woman With Stuff To Do While Children Are Underfoot

It's spring break week here. At a playdate today, my friend asked how I was going to have the time to get out today's #365StrongStories installment. While we spoke at three this afternoon, I had absolutely no idea. I  just knew or would happen somehow. This yearlong writing project has forced me to get even more vigilant about carving out for "me time." But trying to make time to work and create isn't a new problem - it's as old as the concept of women with stuff to do even with kids underfoot.

This story is excepted from last year's post on the trials and tribulations of meeting writing deadlines even during spring break:

My stepmom kindly recommended I take off my coat and get some work done while she took the kids for a walk.

Clearly I was exuding deadline stress, and I risked infecting everyone around me.

How could I be surprised that I couldn’t get clear on my writing and I felt choked with “bad mom” guilt? I wasn’t asking for the dedicated creative time I needed and so I was spreading myself too thin as I tried (and failed) to dot it all. 

I felt like a fraud, offering advice from and “I’ve got this” blogging pulpit when I was actually just being a terrible, distracted house guest with a couple of needy dependents.

Gratefully, I took that gift of thirty minutes free of mom responsibilities to check back in with my real message, my lived experience, my own imbalance.

I think I found a story worth telling and I drafted a new container to tell it. And then I discovered the space to walk to the beach with my girls – twice.

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“But how can it be a good story if it’s so sad?”

“But how can it be a good story if it’s so sad?” It was hard to make out the words because she was burying her face in my belly, but I understood exactly what she meant.

It seems impossible that we could love something that awoke our darkest fears and left us in a weeping puddle. It seems like madness that we would subject our children to such pain. But, like countless parents since the beginning of humanity, I’d merrily offered up some entertainment that would terrify as much as it delighted.

Within thirty seconds I figured out the basic plot of The Song of the Sea, the fantastical animated Irish film about the silkies - those seals who came to shore and became human women for a time. This is another mystery of story - why would we devote so much time and lavish so much emotion on something so predictable?

Well, I could predict that the pregnant mother singing so sweetly to her young son wasn’t going to make it into scene two. What I couldn’t predict was that wondrous journey and the magical images that would pull us along for the next hour and more.

These tales of otherworldly parents and children on a quest for happiness in the real world pretty much always end up the same. When I kept reassuring my six year-old that it was all going to end well I was pretty sure I was telling enough of the truth. After all, everyone was smiling in a sweet family tableau at the end. But my daughter couldn’t see all that through her tears.

While the credits rolled I reminded her of how much she’d loved the rest of the movie. I told her to think of how the children were so happy with their daddy even if their mama was off with the other fairyfolk in the sea. Most challenging of all, I tried to make her understand that the best stories are those that open our hearts to experience something powerful and meaningful. Considering that now, two days after that initial viewing, she wants to see it again, I can only assume she heard me. More likely, it’s just a testament to our devotion to stories that transform our everyday view of the world and make us feel.

Writing prompt: Defend what you hold sacred

I came across this cartoon in The New Yorker. Though I don't have much experience with reflexology, I think there's something to the acupuncture points that correspond to the overall health of the body. I felt the usual "there they go, judging the healers, the ancient wisdom keepers, and the 'airy fairy' contingent" and just kept reading the Annie Proulx short story that had my interest.

This is something I'm used to. And I bet you are too. If you're a vaguely interesting human you hold opinions that will be ridiculed by the mainstream press, the intelligentsia, macho culture, you name it.

Today, I invite you to write into a time you had to defend something you hold sacred. Perhaps it's a story about a time you didn't speak up and you still regret it. 

Tell me about the writing process in the comments, share your story and tag me, or submit you quick piece for publication in a future #365StrongStories guest storyteller post.

I’ve got a creative problem for you, Liz Gilbert, but I am almost too afraid to ask for help

Elizabeth Gilbert, the magical creature behind Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love is inviting us all to come to her with our creative aches and pains. (See her Facebook post here.) As we prepare for house guests to arrive - scrubbing just enough to make the place look decent before our families destroy the place again - I’ve been writing and rewriting my 100-word submission in my head.

You can read what I'm sending below, but first, an admission: I’m afraid to admit I have a creative problem.

So much of creating and manifesting a livelihood and leading a life seems like a head game. “Your thoughts create your reality” and “Where the mind goes, the energy flows” and all that… If I spend a day thinking up all the ways I’m a pathetic creative lost in the woods who needs a brilliant best selling writer to save me am I giving up whatever creative power I have? Thing is, being afraid to ask for help, of course is by far more isolating and disempowering. This crafting a business and doing the creative work is hard enough. Let’s all hold hands and ask for guidance and healing when it’s offered.

My Magic Lessons Submission

As a “creative entrepreneur,” I try to make the writing I love to do serve the work I have to do as a writing coach.

I launched my #365StrongStories project to give myself a creative outlet and to show potential clients that it’s possible to “create content” (Ie. tell stories) every day. Most of the time, however, I seem to end up in a no man’s land trapped between the stories I want to write and the stories that I hope will help me build a business.

Entrepreneurship is a necessary creative act, but it threatens my true creativity.

What to do when content you loved writing doesn't get read

Even though every creative entrepreneur and every thought leader looking to make a difference has been there, it still hurts. It's hard when content that you poured your heart into does not connect. This morning after St. Patrick's Day, I woke up with a different kind of hangover than might be considered the traditional type you often experience "the morning after the night before." I had something of a "creativity hangover" because I was disappointed the content I had loving crafted in honor of one of my favorite days of the year didn't get read.

Today's #365StrongStories post is a video that explores that tension between the need to create from your core and the need to connect with an audience.

When you take the risk of exploring your passion and focus on telling the story that is important to you, you are almost guaranteed to take your eye off the marketing ball (at least for a little while). You have to do that from time to time if you want to grow new, provocative ideas that will make into someone worth listening to.

Here's to understanding that not everything you write or produce is going to have the luck o' the Irish - even when you post it on March 17! Here's to valuing the comments more than the numbers of retweets. Here's to recognizing that this happens to all of us from time to time.

Created something that you loved that just didn't get seen? Post the link in the comments and I promise to visit and respond!