Why Bother Telling Our Stories?

Why do we bother to tell our stories?  We do, you know, in one way or another. Sometimes purposefully, to our children, in the hopes they will remember, or, perhaps, to teach them something. To ourselves, to convince ourselves of something, or to keep ourselves on the track we are on- whether that is good for us or not.

I’m writing you today to tell you why I do it, tell my stories.

You are a big reason. I know that life can feel hard; how you sometimes just want to step off fro a moment; how there are days that you just know you have nothing left to bring forward.  I know how that feels.

And, like you, I am still here.

I’m not just present, but allowing Life to regale me with beauty and awe, not just through the welcome gifts it brings, but also in its full, daily monotony, in its commonplace-ness. (Is that even a word?)

I am here, not just present, but full of awe and gratitude and joy.

And I know that you have that in you, too.

In doing it, being present in awe and gratitude and joy, we open up our Life to more of those feelings, and open our Self up to our sacred gifts, the ones that are uniquely ours, quirky and strange, and delicious.  And through them, we can regale the world with our radiance.

I am here, writing you, to be the one to remind you of this possibility for your Self.

And I am here to remind myself. Because I forget, too, and struggle with my smallness and discount my experiences, sometimes disparage my gifts, and, what’s more, deny my own true nature. So I write to remember.

And the main thing I want to remember, myself, and you, too, is that the process of unfolding into our Self is mysterious and ephemeral, and we don’t really need to understand it. We just have to be willing to allow it, and keep showing up for our Self, willing to open up to it. Life leads us where we are meant to be, offers us new opportunities to grow, to learn, to choose, no matter what we do.

And a great way to feel the truth of this, to grasp it with our senses, as well as with our thoughts, is to set aside sacred time, to go on retreat.  I am teaching a small group of people, both in person, and virtually, how to have a powerful retreat experience. Check it out!