Introduction
I believe that life is a story and that many of us buy into the stories written for us by others. It’s taken me about five decades to come to this realization. Actually, there are two here. First, life is woven together through the stories that people tell to or about us. Secondly, we have the power to revise those stories, and to reclaim our lives by writing different stories about ourselves and our experiences.
Some of my stories
Like most women, I was raised to be the good girl and to serve others. To be self-serving to the point of obliterating any sense of my own self or my own needs. I was brainwashed by my father, my mother, and other authority figures in my life such as teachers, husbands, bosses, or anyone who appeared to have their act together––to behave in a way that supported their beliefs about the way life should work. I believed that they knew better than I did and I followed their advice to fulfill their demands––many times without question. I bought into their stories about me.
The women in my life modeled this subservient behavior perfectly. I watched my mother care for my grandfather, whose house we lived in when I was a child. I watched her arrange her schedule around my father’s ever-changing shifts when he worked in the cement plant. I watched her make one-pot meals that could be eaten in shifts. And I watched her disappear every so often into her volunteer work where she carved out a little time for herself, but also in the role of serving others.
I also watched how she allowed all of her roles to distract her from achieving a personal goal of becoming a nurse. She put all of us––my father, grandfather, brother, sister and myself––first. And in so doing, she failed to finish nursing school because her health suffered so much from trying to do it all.
No one was there to tell her it could be different. No one was there to let her know that she could rearrange her priorities and take time for herself––and even demand that the men in her life participate more in the running of the household. Instead, she was told that she needed to be there for all of us.
But she wasn’t really. She wasn’t present for us. She was emotionally distant and found ways to be away to satisfy some of her needs. But she never finished nursing school.
I called her just the other day when she was in the hospital recovering from knee surgery. She said, “I knew all the nurses here. They were the ones I was in nursing school with.” I put myself in her shoes for a moment. A 77-year-old woman, alone, with her children scattered across the United States and a widow for 2 1/2 years. All of those she served were not close enough to be by her side and dote over her. And those by her side were reminders of what she could have done, could have been, had she only carved out time for herself––and had written a new story for herself.
Thinking ahead to when I would be 77 years old, I shuddered when I thought of the things that I kept putting off because I was serving others or believed that others knew what was best for me. I could have left marriages that had run their course far sooner than I had. I could have taken better care of my body, my mind, and my spirit instead of pushing myself to keep up with the men in my life who needed me to work harder to make them feel better about what they hadn’t accomplished or to support their choices. I could have been writing more and sharing my experiences and my lessons with my readers, and perhaps been of greater help to others than I had been in my other activities. I could have began writing this book a lot sooner than I am. It’s been working on me for several years. Writing in general has always been put on the back burner for me. I’ve always found ways to allow the distraction of serving others to keep me from my calling, one that came to me when I was a child reading Marguerite Henry’s Chincoteague Pony series and reading Seventeen magazine. I knew then that writing played a big part in my life. Reading and writing makes my soul come alive, as much now as it did then.
David Whyte, author of Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as the Pilgrimage of Identity, says that we receive glimpses of our calling in our childhood. Even though our little minds may be swayed at an early age to conform, our souls know what mission we are meant to fulfill. Sometimes the detours are part of the authenticity training as coach Tiffany Walke Peterson calls it. Other times we merely give our power away to someone who speaks in such a way that we lock our souls yearning in a closet, thinking that is the way we will remain safe. But our souls always know best, even when the rest of the world believes we are too young or inexperienced to trust that inner calling.
Whyte says, “I remember the absolute sense of excitement at nine years old, when I picked up my first book of poetry and read it as if I had discovered a secret code to my future life––which, as it turned out, I had.” After years of accumulating other experiences as a marine biologist working in the Galapagos Islands and then later his own non-profit in the Pacific Northwest, Whyte took a leap and became a full-time poet. Now he not only writes poetry, but he also brings the magic of poetry into the workforce. To get to that point, he had to overcome the cultural obstacles that many of us face in reaching for our dreams.
Like Whyte, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. But I allowed myself to be swayed by my high school guidance counselor.
I remember that day late in the eighth grade so clearly. I can see Mr. Bowman, sitting behind his large oak desk, one that matched his frame. The florescent lights made the top of his head look like it had been waxed. The memory of the hard wood of the oak chair beneath my legs, cutting into the back of my knees is as real as if I were now sitting on it. Clutching her car keys and her wallet, with her arms crossed over her stomach, my mom sat next to me in a matching chair.
Mr. Bowman peered at me over the rim of his black framed half glasses, and asked what I wanted to do when I graduated. I said, “I want to be a writer, and I’m interested in the theatre.” He opened a manila file folder on his desk, cleared his throat, and said, “You’ll never be a writer.” He never addressed my interest in the theatre, and my mother never said a thing to support me or challenge Mr. Bowman. I’m not even sure if she was really aware of what I wanted. In fact, I’m not sure anyone had ever asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I was raised in a time when invisibility was required if you were to be an acceptable child, particularly as a girl. The most I could hope for was to be a secretary, perhaps school teacher or a nurse.
Being a writer wasn’t a reality for most people in my community, not the locals anyway. I had been raised in upstate New York where dairy farms, apple orchards, and cement plants abounded. My mother was a housewife, as were most of the women around me. My grandmother worked at Pero’s Deli, that served the most delicious Italian meatballs. My Aunt Veen, who lived next door, worked at the bank as the head teller. While she had a profession, when she came home, she jumped to the bark of her husband and son like a scared puppy. In the other neighbor house, the women there were under the tyranny of a man who screamed at his mother and beat his daughter. There were no role models around me to show me that I could be whatever I chose to be. Instead, the behavior that was modeled was one of subservience and of “man knows best.”
So I studied secretarial sciences, learned how to type, and do shorthand. When I went to community college, I studied accounting. Luckily somewhere along the way, my soul’s voice became loud enough to hear. In my mid-twenties, with two small children to care for and a traditional Italian husband to cater to, I returned to school and began to study writing. Like my mother, however, I put my studies on hold when I couldn’t juggle the demands of two small children, schoolwork and managing my household. Asking for help wasn’t in the realm of possibility.
Unlike my mother though I didn’t throw away every part of my dream. I may have suspended my studies, but I didn’t stop writing. At the time I was working four days a week for the local congressman. I had every Wednesday off. On Tuesday nights, I brought home the typewriter from the office, and I wrote while my kids were at school. I began freelancing for a local paper and my writing career took off. I was thrown off course a few times, but I never stopped writing or stopped thinking of writing.
Yet I wasn’t living my life completely. I was living a divided life. I carved out time for me, and sometimes that time was fractions of my week, instead of chunks of my day. I became really proficient at being one person when serving husband, family, and bosses, and another when pouring myself over interview notes and crafting profiles about artists, writers, actors, and other artistic people from New York City who made our little community in upstate New York a home away from home on weekends. There were times though, over the years, when I put my writing on the far back burner when the agendas of my husbands became more important than my own, and I believed that my safety, stability, and sanity called for me to be responsible and to live up to my choices. I tried, but my dreams found cracks in the containers I tried to stuff them in.
Years later, even after having a successful career in publishing as a freelance writer and editor, I returned to school and I completed my bachelor’s degree. I loved learning and when my daughter graduated from college, I felt the the twinges of regret that I hadn’t allowed myself to pursue that dream. It took me 30 years to complete my bachelor’s and I didn’t stop there. A month after graduation, I began my master’s degree in English, with an emphasis in literature and cultural studies. My thesis focused on the power of words and how storytelling can be healing, not only for the teller of the story, but for those who receive it. I also discovered that I enjoyed teaching, and the classroom became my stage. I thought that might be the end point of my evolution, writing academic papers and teaching freshman how to write. But instead it was just another point on my path that lead me to yet another discovery.
Teaching at the university as a lecturer wasn’t ideal. I had 150 students most semesters, and that meant a whole lot of papers to grade. My own writing was often put on the back burner, and the semesters were long. I gave my students every ounce of my energy––in part because I loved the teaching but the other part was that I was fearful that if I didn’t sell my soul to the university I might not be rehired at the end of my contract. The university became just another “man” that I was trying to work hard to please and it was costing me in body, mind, and spirit just as my previous situations had.
As the adage says, when the student is ready the teacher will appear and Jack Canfield and his book, The Success Principles jumped off the shelf at the bookstore one day. I began working with the book and subsequently made a decision to train as a life coach. Eventually I left the university, and this book began to take shape not in stolen moments but in big chunks of my day. My theatre has become the audiences who I serve in workshops and teleclasses.
Through the years, I’ve had a few detours or if I want to reframe my outlook on them––opportunities to accumulate experiences which have strengthened me, helped me to identify what it is I don’t want or what I do want, and lots of material to write about. In addition to my years as a freelance writer and editor, I was in charge of a district office for a US Congressman, I owned a fly fishing lodge on the Lower Laguna Madre of deep South Texas, and I was one of a handful of female saltwater fly fishing guides for a few years. I have had, as my second husband said, a writeable life. The only problem for most of it I wasn’t writing and I wasn’t living my life, not as I would design it without trying to satisfy other people’s expectations of me. In fact for much of my life, I allowed other people to convince me that the few hours a week or a month that I carved out for those activities that truly brought joy to me were enough. I was told that once I made choices that I needed to follow through on whatever path those choices put me on.
The irony was the very person who spoke that message the loudest to me used the right to make new choices to leave a marriage where he was unhappy. The cost for me to continue to believe that I “made my bed and now lie in it” as my mother often touted was spiritual death. Life became meaningless and I was often pulling myself up out an abyss of depression. I was also physically exhausted from years of working hard to live up to other people’s expectations, rising early in the morning and going to bed far to late at night to feel creative and inspired, whether I was managing and doing most of the work at the fly fishing lodge––which sounds romantic but isn’t––or commuting 110 miles a day to teach five classes of writing to thirty freshman, five days a week.
But something inside of me screamed loud enough for me to stop accepting the story that other people told about me and I started to look for ways to improve my story––to make it my own. I read books, enrolled in teleclasses, and learned with knees shaking and big lumps of fear in my throat to invest a lot in myself. I began to change. Some of the people around me were able to revise their own story to grow with me. Many people applauded my efforts. My children told me how proud they were that I was taking care of myself. They had watched their mother suffer emotionally, physically, and spiritually for years trying to keep the men in her life happy. Hearing their pride (and relief) that I was finally learning to put my dreams and desires first was so rewarding. Without directly saying so, I was giving them permission to do the same.
There were some people who didn’t make it to the new chapter of my life. While I had given my second husband a chance to join me in my adventure into a new life, one where I could claim some of the things I enjoyed, including living near my children and grandchildren, he couldn’t embrace my new journey. There were many things I was no longer willing to tolerate in my old story. Being isolated in an outpost in steamy South Texas was one of them. I had very few friendships because logistically the few friends I did have lived an hour or more away. Many of the things that I enjoyed like health food stores, good hair dressers, hiking, and concerts, good restaurants were hours away. Just going to the grocery story was a half a day chore. I was also separated from my daughter and grandchildren by more than 1500 miles. Flying out of “the Valley” was time consuming and costly. Seeing my grandchildren once every few months for a few days was not my idea of having family time. So I made a leap, and in doing so, I reclaimed my whole life. Not just part of it.
Rewriting my story hasn’t been easy. But it has been worth it. Reclaiming my life as my own, taking risks and responsibility for who I am and what I do, is something I wish I had done years ago. Dawn, a dear friend of mine from sixth grade, said to me not too long ago, “I hear something in your voice that I’ve never heard before.” Her statement peeked my curiosity, and I waited. “Contentment.” I smiled. It was true. Contentment was a state of being that I had never had much of, and I also had joy. Simple things made me smile: my grandson insisting on having tea with me during our sleepovers, joining in my nightly ritual as we read the adventures of Curious George; doing a backfloat in a pool and looking up to see the sunlight dancing through the palm fronds; spending Sundays writing, lulled into a creative bliss while listening to the rustling of the leaves outside my window.
Change hasn’t been easy, but it has been so worth it.
After struggling many years, and doing years and years of self-development work to unravel the story told about me and to me––one that was designed to keep me in a place of serving others, serving others agendas and needs––I now know that I can rewrite my story––and keep rewriting it as I continue to evolve throughout the next half of my life. My story keeps getting better and better, and more satisfying. I am happy. I’ve never been able to say those words before. But I am. My heart feels so much love and joy for those who are in my life. I never knew that much love and joy could exist...and it keeps on coming.
I’ve learned that despite what I was told by my guidance counselor and others, that I can be the writer I came here to be, and I can be on stage being the storyteller to those who need to hear stories of empowerment and of success, not those of limitation and subservience.
And I want to share with you, how you can rewrite your own story so that you too can feel contentment and joy and whatever else you wish to feel in your life.
ReWriting Your Story makes short work of the years and years of unraveling that I experienced. It provides you with a process that will take you through steps that will allow you to identify the story you are now living and the parts that you like and the parts that you need to change. It will provide you with a way to process the emotions that you have toward those people who wrote your story for you––and in doing so kept you from living to your highest potential. This is a necessary step because if you continue to hold anger and resentment toward them––and toward yourself for buying into the story––then you’re still stuck in their story. All the decisions you make to create a life out of your own story aren’t really your own because they’re tainted with reactivity over what you haven’t been “allowed” to do with your life up until now.
Up until now––this is a phrase that I want you to use to label the choices that you’ve made that brought you to the place where you now are living. Up until now gives you permission to change, to make new choices, and to acknowledge that you’ve been doing the best you can with what you have known.
Up until now, I’ve allowed everything and everyone to get in the way of my writing. Up until now, I’ve allowed the men in my life to tell me what I need to be doing with my life and when I need to be doing it. Up until now, I’ve believed that settling for what I have was the only way to live my life. Up until now, I’ve believed that all those things that I desired––freedom in my day to listen to my soul, a nice house near my children and in a walking neighborhood close to restaurants, parks, and services, and a good, loving supportive man who would be a true partner––were unreasonable.
This phrase––up until now––gives us permission to say, “Okay, well maybe I made choices that weren’t in alignment with my deepest dreams and desires, but that doesn’t mean that they’re set in stone.” Up until now means I can make new choices and dare to create a destiny of my own choosing. Up until now means from this day forward I am rewriting my story. Up until now, means I may have allowed other people to decide what is best for me, but now I’m choosing to believe that I know what is best for me. Up until now means I was a supporting actor in someone else’s story, but now I’m the star.
So let’s get started in ReWriting Your Story!
Complimentary Consultations!
If you’d like to have some additional assistance in ReWriting Your Story, I’m offering complimentary consultations for my ReWriting Your Story Coaching Program. Please email me for an appointment at kathysparrow23@gmail.com
I had been stuck for a long time when I started working with Kathy. I just wasn’t sure where I was headed with my career and in other areas of my life. She asked the right questions to guide my thinking and help me gain clarity about new directions. She helped to unravel the chaos in my head. Then her suggested action steps between sessions, and the accountability of reporting on my progress made a huge difference. Today, I’m not just talking about what I’m going to do. With Kathy’s guidance, I’m actually carving a new life. I am deeply appreciative for the wisdom, the caring, and the gentle nudging Kathy Sparrow offered me to make a fresh start. It has been and continues to be very powerful work.
Laurie Stoneham, Corporate Writer & Wellness Coach