Episode 188 – Own Your Story

Episode 188: Own Your Story It’s a fact that some people come through difficult times bitter, broken and cynical, while others emerge wiser, more empathetic and stronger. I believe the path connecting the two - the journey between the pain and the growth is maybe the most important part of the path. I have a story - it’s all mine. I write it everyday. Today I may throw in a plot twist as I get ready to change jobs, or free myself from a bad relationship, or adopt a child. I may create a peaceful scene at a coffee shop, because that sounds nice about now. And then maybe I feel like my story needs a little trip to the spa. I love girl spa days. They always look so great in the movies. Maybe I’ll have them put cucumbers on my eyes and cover my face in some gory green mud just so I know what that’s like. That sounds like a fun story to write. Or maybe I want to become an engineer or an opera singer…..hmmmmm what should I write on my life notebook today? Sometimes, someone else writes something we don’t like. A spouse gets abusive and all the sudden the story takes a dark unexpected turn that I get to frantically try to write myself out of. What about the shameful parts that have been shoved to the bottom of the story, a footnote we want no one to read ever? What about the fear of facing our dreams and failure and daring greatly?  While there are sometimes parts of our story that make us uncomfortable, part of loving your story is learning how to make peace with the bad as well as the good. At the very heart of learning to accept ourselves is learning to accept all the spaces we see as failures, short falls, down right horrible sections, the betrayals, the let-downs, the messy stuff we feel shame about.  This episode about owning your own story is not to focus on the rough spaces, but the rough spaces are a very real part of who we are, how we got to where we are, what we learned and how we see the world. We cannot be whole without the dark threads of our tapestry. So, let’s talk about owning it all!   It’s not a new story. It’s one we all know. You know the one, it’s where a personal loss or tragedy or need takes you to the realm from which you are certain you will never return. It’s the dark-days-of-the-soul story. I’ve noticed a few things about this part of life. #1 - It’s a sacred space. It’s often a private space, one where the deepest details are kept in our vaults for we can’t bear to show too much humanness, our mistakes, our heart ache, our private travails, our crawling, our moments of shaking our fist at heaven. #2 - That everyone has these. While we may feel we are alone and life has dealt unjustly with us, that no-one in our circles would ever understand, the truth is we must each traverse this path on the hero’s journey, because it is how the hero becomes the hero. It’s an important part of being alive.  The other day I spoke with a man who was absolutely crushed. After years of fighting an addiction and begging God for help, never to receive any additional and heavenly support by his estimation, his world began to crumble. If God wasn’t there to help him beat the very darkness God claims to want to pull us out of, then could God really be there? The idea that his sincerest cries from an aching heart were not enough, not worthy of the ear of God, only exacerbated his hopelessness, and where was he to go if everything he had believed in, his foundation, was not there to support his wobbly heart? His face crumbled in tears and his sobs tore at my heart.  This was a dark day of the soul.  I spoke with a woman who told me of 5 years of going without sleep as she raised 3 toddlers who seemed to never sleep....