Creating a New Story

Narrative Therapy.  This is what my therapist describes to me--a method of "rewriting" your story to include those parts of a life that may have gotten overlooked as I slipped into a groove that was familiar and I believed.

For instance, my story has become a long string of incidents where my desires or who I felt I was did not get validated and, more often than not, "denied support."  As a young child there was little I could do about that situation. Yet, as an adult I continue to follow that narrative, acquiescing to others wishes, demands, directions and even just suggestions; I saw them all as a authority I had to follow.

As I hold on to those points of the story they become the overwhelming plot points that I connect together. In doing this, trying out for the play, becoming student director, moving to Massachusetts with four kids on my own, applying for an MFA (and getting accepted), all of which took tenacity, courage and strength, become minor details.

In rewriting my narrative I bring those to the for front and, forty-eight years into my life, I make a plot shift or flip the railroad switch.  The story is then shifted to a different track and, in the end, I wind up moving along through different scenery and end up at a completely different destination,

That this idea coordinated directly with the reading and research I am pursuing about neuro-plasticity, and a recent awareness that I could go back and find the "good parts" of my life to hold onto and let go of the rest, solidified my theories.

I am not sure what the next step is.  I do know that even the "awareness of" has allowed me to consider and shift even in the last twenty-four hours.  The setback I have had of late has led to desperation and further depression.  But, as I sat in a room and heard yet again another "provider" for my son tell me about the dynamics between my son and I create a certain outcome, I could have fought it.  I could have gone into the story of how someone in authority is not validating my experience and telling me how to do something in a situation they are not familiar with.  Instead, my thoughts paused at that switch in the nuero-pathways and I considered, "Be right or be happy?"  I could continue to hold onto that belief and, like the monkey in the Aesop fable, never get my hand out of the jar.  Or I could let go, open my mind to those forgotten or unnoticed strengths ad work at getting both of our stories headed to a new direction.

It hurts. There is pride, disappointment, a desire to blame, trying to place the control somewhere else so I don't have to take the responsibility.  But the truth is what I have told my children, "At anytime we have a higher power who will help us let go of the past and become our best selves."  Free agency allows us to choose between holding on to the past or letting go and opening ourselves to healing and empowerment.