People Remember Stories
“Let the story of who you were
send shivers down the spines
of our granddaughters.
Let them hear about you,
as the woman who was ‘herself’,
who did her own thing
and helped others along the way.”
I am a collector of quotes. I still have journals from my college days full of quotes. These days, copy/paste and a computer make this collecting so much easier. I am most drawn to sentences from fiction, insights into life that leave me breathless. Essayists and journalists evoke similar feelings – Rebecca Solnit, Margaret Renkl, and Barbara Kingsolver – to name just a few.
I am sharing some quotes with you in this blog post that feed my passion for life stories.
But first, some background. Last week I opened registration for my winter life story writing classes, Women Rowing North: Writing Our Life Stories. Level 2 filled up immediately. And my inbox, as is usual when I announce new classes, had inquiries from women asking questions about the Level 1 class. The most common questions? I can’t write; should I register? Or, I want to explore my life stories but do I have to share my stories with my family?
I am hoping the following quotes will provide you with some food for thought. I also want to respond to your inquiries.
I have yet to meet a ‘bad writer’ in one of my life story workshops. You would not believe how many women in workshops state - my story is not very good - I’m not sure if I should even share it. And then they leave the rest of us stunned, speechless, or wanting more because of the brilliance of their stories. The stories women share are sad, beautiful, painful, insightful, and compelling. In fact, the stories are so compelling that as I saw the names of past participants registering for the Level 2 workshop, snippets of stories they wrote over a year ago sprang into my mind. That is how powerful life stories can be. People remember stories.
Most women who register for my workshops are interested in just writing their life stories. At the beginning of this journey, many are unclear about what they will do with their stories. Personally, I write three types of life stories. I write stories I share with you, stories I write for my daughters, and stories that provide insight and clarity into my own life. Sometimes these stories overlap, and occasionally stories are secreted away in a password-protected folder because I never want anyone to read them. I don’t always know before I start writing where my story will fit.
The following quotes will give you a sense of why I am drawn to writing life stories:
“The best writing you can do is the writing you can’t not do. You have to tell the story that is bursting to be told.” - Maggie O’Farrell
“Our family histories are simply stories. They are myths we create about the people who came before us, in order to make sense of ourselves.” – Taylor Jenkins Read, Malibu Rising
“But because she knew me when I was a kid, she had all the ammunition she needed to push every one of my buttons and took great delight in doing so.” – Lesley Crewe, The Spoon Stealer
“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.” ― Flannery O'Connor
“Many of us had thought that myth meant not true, when in fact the older meaning of myth is precisely always true!” - Richard Rohr
“Memoir is not what happened (if we’re lucky, that’s the best journalism). It is what has happened over time, in the mind, in the life as it attends to these tantalizing, dismaying, broken bits of life history. Such personal writing is, as the essay is, ‘an attempt.’ It is a try at the truth. The truth of a self in the world.” - Patricia Hampl
“So many people from your past know a version of you that doesn’t exist anymore.” – Author unknown
“The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence; the past is a place of learning, not a place of living.” ― Roy T. Bennett
“Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending – to rise strong, recognize our story and rumble with the truth until we get to a place where we think, yes. This is what happened. This is my truth and I will choose how this story ends.” - Brene Brown
One final comment I want to share with you. I also get messages from readers who say they are not interested in delving into their life stories. And that’s okay, that’s your choice. I am the daughter and granddaughter of women who never talked about their lives. During this last year of my mother’s life, she shared several stories I had never heard before. Stories that made me view both my mother and grandmother through a different lens. Stories that, if I had heard them years ago, might have changed our relationship. So I want to end by sharing some excerpts from a podcast that one of my blog readers, Claire, shared with me. Partnerships, Patterns, and Paradoxical Relationships is an interview Brené Brown did with Esther Perel. This podcast is broad-ranging and has a depth far beyond the topic of this blog post. Perel speaks of stories about trauma and why some may not want to share their stories; it also speaks to how that impacts younger generations.
“Do you have parents who talk or do you have parents who never talk? Do your parents tell, or do your parents not tell? And what do they tell?”
“I think one of the primary reasons not to tell is to protect the children, to protect the others…So some parents do not speak to protect. Some parents do not speak because they don’t want to relive. Some parents do not speak because they feel shame. Sometimes they feel shame for what they experienced… sometimes they feel shame for how they survived... Sometimes they don’t speak…because they didn’t believe that people would believe them.”
“Now what happens to the second generation? … When you sense something, you sense something that was never told…You don’t know, so you fill in the gaps, in general, when we don’t know, we fill in the gaps. It’s like Swiss cheese and then you start to invent all kinds of things, you start to imagine things. And you have no idea if it’s true or not, and often you imagine worse than what may have been.”
I have spent most of my life filling gaps, trying to make sense of my generational past and my relationship with my mother. I know some stories can be painful to share, but I wish I had the life stories of the women in my family to wrap around me, give me strength, and keep me warm.