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.