Reveal Yourself - the stories we tell

One of my favorite memories of living in Paris was cycling along the Seine to an old movie house that was having an all night David Lynch showing. It was a small building located on the fancier side of town from where I lived in the 11é and had both an upstairs and a downstairs theatre. The lobby was musty and the seats were small and hard. That night, there were 6 films to choose from, and I was committed to sitting in the creepy dark with strangers to enjoy 3 of them. I watched Blue Velvet for the first time, Wild at Heart again, and was lulled to sleep by parts of Mulholland Drive. At the end, I was served an espresso and a tiny hard croissant, included in the price, and expected to stay and enjoy them. I cycled along the Seine in the dawn, awed by the wonder of my life, the effect of staying up all night, and the silence of a still sleeping city.

In a larger cosmological sense, we are everything. We share the same atmosphere with all living things and are made from the same elements and particles that compose the earth and one another. In our stories though, we can be anything, victim, winner, aggressor, bereaved.

When we are choosing our stories, we aggrandize some moments, and leave out others, carefully crafting an identity. If we consistently keep out the parts that are howling to be let in, we will throw away vital energy in keeping those things hidden. We will become the opposite of resilient.

So how can you allow yourself to reside in the center of your own story when it doesn’t make sense to you or feel comfortable? You start with awareness. Find the places that you would like to tell your story differently. Can you look at those places with tenderness?

I'm curious about the way that we tell our stories and how it informs the way we presently live our lives and I believe that there is great treasure to be found in failure, but only if you are looking for them. 

What story are you telling about your life? Is it helping you to live more in your heart?

We will always contain the essence of all things that we've experienced, positive and negative. But we can heal and write our stories again. We can place a flower at the ground of the feet of our trauma and honor that place as a sacred site.

This is my story of a girl who lived in Paris, where she learned to ride a mean bicycle and fell asleep to a Lynchian lullaby.

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I'm currently working on a program that addresses how we tell our stories, use our voice and come back to life. I'm only taking a limited number of people for the first go around. Sign up for my newsletter and you will be the first to hear about it. Look for it summer this year.