Story Sessions Write In: My Voice

This post brought to you by a Story Sessions prompt. "When (and how) did you find your voice? And if you haven't yet, what do you think it's going to take to find it?"

My voice is playful. Caught up in this never-ending game of hide and seek. The first time I found her, I was 13, bored out of my mind in school, She showed up in elaborate stories where the heroine was always rich with an older brother to protect her, a boyfriend who loved her and her parents were no where to be found.

I started high school the next year and my voice went back into hiding, intimidated by the creativity of my peers and overwhelmed by life. I'd catch glimpses of her as she moved from one hiding place to the next. But I never could quite catch her.

This past Spring I took Story 101. Instead of chasing my voice, I sat down and created a space for her. I listened to her, saw her need to run, to be a little wild. She didn't want to be caught and forced to write on straight lines, words lined up like little soldiers. She loves the freedom of ink spilling across a page and the smell of a new journal. She wants to write in half thoughts and run on sentences that we come back to later to clean up, or not as the case often seems to be. She creates in shapes and spirals that circle around the blank page.

I'm still finding layers of my voice. My voice is more than just playful. Her whispers are powerful. They shake tears from my eyes. They scatter truth as they fall.

Finding my voice is tied into finding me. The me still trapped under the layers of rubble.

I found part of my voice the very first time I introduced myself in a 12 step meeting. I found it sitting in a circle every week, whispering truths through tears.

I found my voice every time I put pen to paper, jotting down the phrases and sentences that ran in my head and captured me.

I found my voice at the top of a hill, screaming at a God I could no longer understand.

I found my voice in darkness, when mental illness swallowed me whole, chewed me down and spat out what was left.

My voice found me as I learned to say yes to things like leadership and E-courses. She found me as I wrote and spoke through my fears and inadequacies. She found me through thousands of journalled pages and therapy work books.

It turns out in that game of hide and seek, I was the one hiding and she was the one seeking me.

Story Sessions Write In: Simpler Times

Written at a Story Sessions Write In this morning. Our prompt, courtesy of Jamie Bagley, one of the amazing Story Coaches was to write a letter to yourself remembering simpler times. 

Dear me right now,

Yes you, the one who just cringed at this prompt because you've never known a simpler time. It's okay. There is room for your messiness, the overwhelmed chaos that seems to have always churned in your heart. I see your tears, those longings spilling down your face as once more grief hits you - these is no simpler time for you.

There were no carefree days of childhood or wild self discovery in college. The story, your story up until now is one that have been anything by simple. That reality, it doesn't have to define you. It doesn't have to shape how you respond.

You have moments when your heart rests, your spirit soars. Moments between the fights of chasing the sunsets with the man you love and who loves you. Arms spread wide to catch every last ribbon of colour.

You have moments - perched up at that tall corner table, coffee in hand as you hold the words and hearts of others. Moments of being fully present and alive knowing that this is part of the beauty rising out of your ashes.

Your simpler times - you create them for yourself. Stealing away yet again to sit on the rocks by the river, capturing peace with words and lens and paint. Storing it up, treasuring how it teaches you, reminds you that even if you haven't lived it yet, there is more to your story.

Your simpler times are coming dear one. There will be springs in this desert for your dry bones. There is a door of Hope that leads you out of this valley of death. Your day is coming. It won't always be this nightmare journey of loss stacked on top of loss til your heart crumbles under the weight.

Hold on precious one. Your moments of simpler times and quieter heart, they too are stacking up. Building a framework that supports your mending heart. A scaffold that currently only allows glimpses of the beauty and simplicity being created.

There's a difference you know between external simplicity and peace. Yes simplicity can be a doorway to peace, but it's not THE one door. Trust your intuition. She is leading you where you need to go. It isn't simplicity, yet there is a rhythm all your own that balances the internal and external chaos. It works for you - don't belittle your rhythm because it isn't anyone else's. Learn your dance. Allow the music to sweep you into and guide you through this whirlwind of a dance. It looks different, but your stomping feet are doing what they were created for.

I know you can't look back with fondness and looking forward only brings fear. Watching your feet makes you stumble. So throw your head back, raise your face to the burning hot sky and dance.

It is enough. You are enough. And this, this is your time.

Love,
your 30 minutes into the future self.

Real Talk Tuesday: I Give Myself Permission

Growing up we often told each other that it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. It was true and not true. In my world, half the time I got in trouble for asking for permission in the first place. Permission has always been something external, this mystic power that authority figures held over me. There is fear here as I consider what it would mean to take that power back, to allow myself to be the one who grants permission in my own life.

What if though permission wasn't about power and control? Just because I've always known it as that, doesn't mean that it has to continue to mean that in my life now. What if permission could be a gift, a mercy, a treasure that I welcomed into my life? I'm learning to see permission as a doorway, one which leads me further into hope and healing.

It is in that spirit that I wrote this letter to myself:

Dearest Me,

You have fought against the rules and restrictions of others, battled to find the right way, the way that brings acceptance and belonging. I give you permission to stop. You're allowed to go your own way because you already belong. There is already acceptance of you here.

Acceptance of your humanity - in all of it's glory and mess. You have permission to get it wrong. To react badly. To not always map everything out with multiple contingency plans, just in case. You have permission to get it right. To respond with brilliance. To point others towards wholeness. To feel settled and comfortable in your own skin.

You have permission to stop apologizing. Your existence is no longer something that needs to be forgiven.
You have permission to struggle, to have bad days that stretch into bad weeks, which stack up into awful months. You're allowed to ask for help on those bad days, to admit that you cannot do this all on your own. That doing the laundry or the dishes or cooking one more meal is more than you can handle. You have permission to have good days. Glorious days. Days when you skip and dance and twirl and laugh. Days when you accomplish it all with energy and joy to spare.

Your performing for others, for God - those days can be over now dear one. You can let those chains fall off your shoulders. Who you are is beautiful, right here, right now and you have permission to celebrate that, to struggle with it, to wrestle with it until it is a truth worn deep in your bones.

You don't need my permission, but you have it. It's a gift. There are no strings here waiting to trip you up, to tangle you in impossible expectations. There is no fine print, no gotcha.

I am here, cheering you on, as you live out your story. A story that doesn't get wrapped up in 30 minutes with a neat bow covering up the messy bits. You have permission to own your story, to shout it from the rooftops, to whisper it in trembling bravery. Your cage is unlocked and you have the only key. That key is your permission to leave this cage of fear and lies. You no longer have to live here.

You have permission to be loved, cherished, accepted.

Love,
Me

Linking up with Marvia Davidson for Real Talk Tuesday. Come join us. :) 

Story 101 Prompt: Why?

why bother?
why care?
why fight?
why push through?
why keep going?
why God?

why haunts me

At times because it's the only word that gets close to the depth of my grief, that give legitimacy to my anger.
I remember being told to stop asking why.
For years it was all I did.
Why God, why both, why stop, why live?

Most of my whys have been quieted - hush did that for me last year.

Why is never a question that needs an answer. In our culture, it's the only safe expression for pain.

Why marked my years of despair, the years of hopelessness, the years of death

I don't seem to need it now - not the way that I used to.
It's still always an invitation, to dig deeper into my own heart, into the hearts of others.

Now why opens the door to more. It can be despair, it can be accusation - it's also an invitation, an opening, a way to ask for the piece of story that is hiding in someone's eyes, begging to be called out, needing to be seen.

Why is a gift - a heart question, a pleading. I forget that when my women ask "Why does he do this?" they don't want my experience or explanation. They are asking for my heart. They need my heart to see them, to see their pain, to open myself up and offer to bear a burden that is too great to be borne alone.

Why is a sacred calling - a glimpse into being hands and feet, of living His heart.