Is there a story you can’t stop thinking about, but never have the time to write?

Carla’s story

I want to tell you about an amazing client of mine who we’ll call Carla (for the sake of privacy) who sought me out during the pandemic. She had slips of paper everywhere, journals and actual stories already written that she was not sharing.

She joined the 12 Week StoryTelling Circle and was very quiet at first. We worked on folks opening up by sharing why they wanted to write.

Then when she shared about the end of her marriage and how having kids, a career, the loss of her mother and a high powered corporate job with a relentless demanding boss made her feel; something profound happened.

As she told her stories in the midst of this empty nest phase of her life, we were recording them. Then each person’s stories were read by another person.

When she heard herself out loud for the first time, it was as if she was speaking to her younger self, her dreams that she had left behind in service to every one except herself.

She didn’t need anyone to tell her why she was stuck. As she recalled each and every time she spoke up for herself and was shut down:

Each moment she sacrificed her dreams in service to

the family’s dreams,

the husband’s dreams,

her mother’s dreams.

She realized how far she had stepped away from her own.

You see Carla was living to make other peoples dreams come true over and over again. Once she heard her words read aloud by another person, she started to remember who she dreamed of becoming.

Every woman in the circle was totally invested in her story. Using the Rashomon Technique which I use to help writers create character and authentic POV, she could reimagine step by step where she could have made a different choice for herself without compromising the ones she cherished.

She realized that her ever-present exhaustion was less about sleep and more about an inability to see options for herself.

But, once she started writing and hearing her words over and over again, week after week in a supportive environment with lots of personal attention; she could finally see herself like a character in her story choosing to act from a sense of agency and excitement about the new life she could create once she left the punishing job; the absence of the high maintenance ex husband and the support of her adult children, she saw opportunity instead of chaos.

Writing her story and having the accountability of showing up each week like a Weight Watchers meeting with a small group of women supporting her every step, eager to hear what new adventures she set her mind to was exciting.

Results

That year, not only did Carla outline and write the first half of her memoir, she also, left her job and started teaching her process of writing as a place to heal and reshape your future.

The transformation

She also learned to stand up for herself and draw lines in the sand. Her ex-husband was no longer showing up at her door uninvited for a meal; her boss who had spoken to her as if she were an recalcitrant child while her ideas were catapulting the business forward was sent packing. She left with a nice severance package to get her started in her new business venture.

You know what else the writing process taught her?

Remembrance & change

As she tracked each moment in her life where she had learned to be silent, to be quiet in the midst of horrible things happening; she went back to where she learned that pattern.

And lo and behold, she started telling the story of her mother, grandmothers and aunt who were German women who hid Jewish people from the Nazis in Germany. Her family was eventually discovered, the uncle was detained never to be seen again and they had to flee Germany for America with the clothes on their back.

Carla had learned to be quiet when horrible things happened because her family’s response to war, genocide and concentration camps was to quietly hide people to save their lives.

Carla was a child of war and resistance. She learned to sacrifice her voice as an act of resistance. But when the war was over, her family was still practicing suffering in silence and it stifled the voices and power of a truly magnificent, brave family of women.

Telling her story in The StoryTelling Circle, is where she identified the moment that derailed her life and writing it down helped her regain her footing.

In finding her voice as a writer, she found her lost voice in her life. Carla’s story was the lynchpin of that group of storytellers who met faithfully every week for 2 years.