Tuesday, March 22, 2011

No one said it would be easy

Highly edited photo of a sticker at the bottom of a street lamp near our apartment in SF.
Around the age of 13 or 14, even though my strongest subjects in school had always been math and science, I latched on to the idea that I wanted to be a novelist. A writer. I loved imagining that someday the dog-eared book on someone's nightstand would have my name on the cover.

Now even though I wanted to be a writer, I didn't really spend a lot of time writing. I wasn't bad at writing, but I didn't do it unless there was a reason - an assignment, report, paper, etc. On the other hand, I loved to read. Summers were spent waking up to pull the novel from my bedside and reading it until I could barely walk downstairs because I was fainting with hunger. Libraries weren't safe from my methodical hand (still aren't) as I would check out as many books as they would allow at a time.

Still, the idea of writing books was so strong in my imagination that I purposefully went to a university with a Creative Writing program. Ever the over-achiever, once I was at college, I found myself adding a second major - Music - and soon falling in love with Dance, which would become my minor on top of my two majors.  As a side note, they don't let students at my university have two majors and a minor any more and I totally understand why. Yet somehow, amidst all of the rehearsals, classes, performances, my campus job, studying abroad, etc, I managed to get myself in the position of writing a thesis for my Creative Writing major during my senior year.

Now a thesis for a Creative Writing major sounds great, right? No research. No documenting sources. No experiments or data. Just doing what I had dreamed about doing - writing. My thesis was to be a novela that told the story of young girl from an Arthurian story I had read in one of my literature courses. She was a minor character in the story who did an amazing thing that was glossed over to get to the more important parts about, you know, the men. So, I was going to give her a voice and story. Sadly, she ended up stealing mine.

Early on in the process, I started to panic a little bit.  Over three years, I had never created a habit of writing so actually making the time to do it was very difficult. And when I did make the time, I couldn't think of anything to write. After a few months of struggling, I had pretty much psyched myself out. My story revolved around my character doing nothing over and over again. I couldn't articulate my problems to my advisor, so I just kept trudging along, alone and afraid of when everyone would find out that my work wasn't really going anywhere.

Needless to say about three weeks before my thesis was due, the lack of anything substantial in my writing came to light. And the stress and negative feedback from my advisor over the following weeks was enough to make it completely impossible for me to write for the next two years. Slowly over time and with help of amazing mentors in the dance community, I was able to begin writing again. It's been seven years this May since I graduated from college and I still struggle with writing today.

But each little step - carrying a notebook around to jot ideas in, writing a grant for the organization I worked for, starting a blog with my mom - is helping me get over the trauma of that experience and to continue struggling towards my dream of my own dog-eared book.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Telling Our Stories

Butterfy tagged and ready to be released at Tremont in the Smoky Mts.
This venture into writing is intimidating to me. My story is my story and comes from my unique perspective. Or does it? I begin reflecting on my own privilege and good fortune as compared to the statistics and the numbers are staggering. The fact that I am well fed, can read, write, use a computer and live in safety puts me in a category of small numbers compared to the world at large. I am grateful for the goodness in my life. If I have gained any wisdom over the years, it is to count my blessings. So I have incorporated being thankful as a daily practice. I can only imagine what true struggle for survival must be like. I am indeed fortunate and though I tend to take my life for granted on a day to day basis,  I like to think I am aware of the bigger picture. For me it comes down to the question, "What kind of difference does one individual make? There are many examples of individuals I can think of that have made a difference in my life and the lives of others through their impact on society. Here are just a few.
  • Maya Angelou
  • Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Thomas Jefferson
  • the Dali Lama
  • Maria Montessori
  • Dorothy Menard
  • Eric Butterworth
  • Willard and Evelyn Jones 
But for most of my life I have felt that I did not make a difference in any area of my life. The choices I have made and the people I have encountered have influenced me, but I have always had a hard time believing I impacted others in any meaningful way.

I have come to understand part of this tendency is because of my personality type. Intellectually, my understanding is, that the impact is there because I believe everyone is interconnected. We are born needing connection. In my many interactions with others they have expressed both positive and negative feelings about what I have said or done. As a teacher, I impacted the lives of my students and as a mother, well, I hope I have had a positive impact overall, but there have been times in my parenting (and teaching) I have been ashamed of my actions or words (or both)and forgiveness is a blessing. I've been reading Brene Brown's book I Thought it was Just Me, and in her introduction she writes about the basis for her research and studies about shame.
We are wired for connection. It's in our biology. As infants, our need for connection is about survival. As we grow older, connection means thriving-emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually. Connection is critical because we all have the basic need to believe that we belong and we are valued for who we are. Shame unravels our connection to others. In fact, I often refer to shame as the fear of disconnection- the fear of being perceived as flawed and unworthy of acceptance or belonging. Shame keeps us from telling our stories and prevents us from listening to others tell their stories.
Here is a link to Brene's blog Ordinary Courage. Near the end of her entry she talks about the value of struggle and how important it is to give our children the gift of seeing us struggle. She says, " Watching us struggle gives them permission to struggle. Talking openly about the difficulty of forgiveness is an invitation to them to talk openly to us." So I guess my story isn't just my story after all. To live authentically and with wholeness is to value the connections in our lives. Our stories have meaning and so I am a little less intimidated in sharing my stories, given that I belong to a family, a community, a country and a world where my showing up each day matters.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

A privileged life she leads

Mosaic/mural in the Mission/Castro district of SF
Struggle is not a word that I would use to describe my life. That's not to say that it has always been easy. I have experienced challenges, grief, fears, disappointments and regrets.  I have felt overwhelmed, depressed, scared and out of control. I have struggled with emotions, relationships, experiences and beliefs, but I don't feel like life has been a struggle. Which has made it difficult for me to tackle this new koan. In many ways, it has brought up for me, again, awareness that, in this world of 6.5 billion people, I am an extremely privileged individual.

Consider these things:

I'm not sure how many 28 year-old women on this planet can say the same.

I mention my age because I know that I say all of this from the relative perspective of youth. I have a lot of living to do and I expect there will be challenges and experiences that I struggle with in the future. As terrifying as it is, there is one bullet point above that I can never be sure will remain true. And as one gets older and more entrenched in this world, the opportunities for grief and injury grow more real.

I am also aware that I began looking at this koan from perhaps the opposite perspective that my mother did. While she thought of the struggle of the individual experience through the story of the moth, I thought of the massive struggle of human and women's rights. So, having stood upon my soapbox and reminded us all of what we may often forget, I have decided to look at this koan from a more personal lens in my next few posts and really explore struggle within my life experience.