Storytelling

Our stories are so important. They tell us who we are. Shannon and I are all about the stories these days. We have just initiated a Story of Place project with our community on Lake Hortonia. More about that in the future. For the moment it means that we are out there making connections in and around our community as well as with the storytelling experts, such as those at the Vermont Folklife Center. On Wednesday we went to see their exhibit, Ice Shanties, and ended up getting a tour of their archives in the process. Then yesterday we went to an event/workshop that they were co-hosting in Burlington. It included a “story booth”, where everyday common folk could go in to tell a bit of their own personal story. We decided to take it for a short test spin just to get the feel for it. Shannon (very quickly I might add) took the role of interviewer, which meant I had to be the interviewee. Sample questions were posted around the booth and I pointed to my favorite. It was simple: “What time period of your life would you like to talk about?”

I quickly realized that just because I liked the question didn’t mean I had an immediate answer for it! Or to be more precise, I knew, but I wasn’t ready to go there in that moment. There are some things that are easy to talk about and others not so much. I went with something easy. We were just practicing after all. One of the main points of yesterday’s event was to share research that shows that the better we know our family stories, the healthier we are. Yes, that is what the research shows. The organizers of this event were interested in extending the same thinking to the community at large. If we better know the stories of our community, does the community become healthier? I suspect that it does. It’s pretty simple really. The more we know our stories, the more connected we are. The more connected we are, the more whole we are. The more whole we are, the healthier we are. Simple. All we have to do is open our mouths and start sharing.

It should at least be easy to share the nuts and bolts stuff, the joyful stuff, the fun stuff. Yet now would be a good time to ponder how much you really know about your parents and their parents and so on. How much of their stories have/did your parents and grandparents actually share with you? How much did you listen?! There are a ton of questions that get at your parents’ stories such as “what jobs did your parents work when they were younger?” I know that my father pumped gas and changed oil at his father’s gas station growing up. But as it turns out, I don’t know what jobs my mother may have had growing up or up through college until she became a Registered Nurse. In addition, I know my paternal grandfather’s work history, but not my maternal grandfather’s. This could well be because I wasn’t paying enough attention, but it’s also true that my father happens to be a talker (I mean storyteller!) whereas my mom is not quite so much. Well, Mom, you now have your assignment. You have three days to get your story straight! I am looking forward to seeing you both for your birthdays on Wednesday.

So it is interesting to discover where the holes are in what we know of our family story, and it is important to fill them. It should be relatively easy to share and to discover the easy stuff. Just volunteer the info or ask the questions. That is a great start. Yet if health is what we are after, then we can’t just stop with the easy stuff. We have to keep delving. All the way down into the hard stuff. The messy stuff. The stuff we don’t talk about. The taboo stuff. The off-limits stuff. The family secrets. All those things that we lock down in the basement never to be seen or heard. I’ve explained why before. In short, because those are the things that in large part are subconsciously controlling the story that we are writing right now. That is how unhealthy patterns are replicated through families, communities, cultures.

This is delicate work. It requires every empathetic bone in our body and then some. Starting with the easy stuff really is the best way to start. That helps to build our empathetic muscles. I would say go slow and tread consciously. That and be gentle with yourself and with others. It’s scary work. This isn’t sprint work. This is training for the marathon work. Best not to plow through it. Let me give you a case in point.

I’ve mentioned something once or twice in passing throughout this blog, but unless you are personally in the know about the previous chapter of my life, you are likely to have missed it. If you are somebody who got to know me only in my most recent chapter, you are likely to not know this about me (as I discovered from a recent reflection from somebody who had no earthly idea). Actually, there are even people from the particular chapter of my life that I am referring to who don’t know this about me! Here goes, because apparently I failed to make the announcement: I am a parent. I have two daughters, Madison and Kristen. Those two beautiful people in the photo above are them. There are a million and one reasons why not everybody knows this. As Madi said to me two days ago, “Out of sight, out of mind.” I see I have some storytelling to do.

Why has this been out of sight, you ask? Let me start by explaining that Madi and Kristen are technically my step daughters. My first partner is their biological mother from her previous marriage to their biological father. The kids were 4 and 6 when we partnered, and 16 and 18 when we split. So technically, yes, we are “step” to each other. The step never really mattered to me though. As far as I have ever been concerned, we are family.

But if step isn’t hard enough as it is, we were a gay couple on top of that. In the first place, we were not allowed to be legally married either in Texas or federally at the time. This is to say that we had no legal protections. On top of that, while things were changing in this country, they had not changed yet. My partner was deeply afraid that our kids would be taken away from her/us. This in spite of the fact that their father always knew the truth of our relationship and was supportive. So out of her fear, we remained closeted for most of our kids’ childhoods. And when I say closeted, I mean closeted… even to our kids. How we managed this, I cannot even begin to wrap my head around these days nor would I try to justify it. It was never my preference. But I was the step, so it wasn’t my decision to make. At least that is what I thought at the time. If I had to do it over again, I would choose not to participate in what was essentially a lie. In other words, I would force the issue. I would bring it to the surface. In retrospect, every single one of us would agree that being honest would have been much healthier for all of us.

But that’s not what we did. There were two schools of thought at the time. The first was tell them as early as possible such that all forms of love between two consenting adults are included in their worldview. The second is wait until they figure it out on their own because that means that they are ready to know. We went with the latter. It. Was. Crap. When Madi finally did pop the question at age 16, she was pissed. And rightfully so. In one fell swoop, the entire story of her life was upended. She no longer knew what was what, if she ever even did. Her response: “Why didn’t you just tell me??!!” Indeed. Why? And further, “If you had just told me from the get-go then it all would have felt so normal.” Right. Kristen, too, had her own processes, revelations, and breakdowns. The whole thing just sucked.

And that, to be honest, is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many things that I won’t share here, not because I don’t think that all things should be brought to the surface, owned, and released to the world for all to see. I do. But remember that this is delicate work, and it is a marathon not a sprint. Our family is still very much in the process of processing our story for ourselves and with each other. It is slow work. So slow. Painfully slow. I have been sitting here waiting, watching, holding space (at a painful distance) for my kids while the second hand ticks for over twelve years now. Madi is now 30 and Kristen 28. In that time there have been glimpses of progress, of readiness, of hope, and then… silence. Nothingness. Emptiness. Most of the time. I won’t even try to describe that pain or the sense of hopelessness that goes with it.

Let’s just say that both of my kids had, in Madi’s words, “volatile childhoods.” Yup. Very. My role in that was to be the behind-the-scenes stabilizing force. Nobody knew what was really going on or how I was handling it save my best friend Micki, probably my parents, and maybe anybody else who was observant enough to surmise what was not readily visible. Our lives were a mess. Yet as Micki likes to remind me, without me there in it, it wouldn’t have just been a mess… it would have been a disaster area. My every move was aimed at stabilizing the ship, at keeping us afloat. And I did, until I couldn’t any longer. I exhausted myself in the process. Over the years I was slowly disintegrating from the inside out. By the end I was one step away from comatose having completely forgotten who I even was anymore.

Yet even then, if I could have taken one more step for my kids’ sake, I would have. God didn’t let me. God, in her infinite wisdom, pulled the plug. That’s not the story that has generally been told about how that chapter of my life came to a crashing end, but it’s my truth. My Instructions were to model a healthy decision for my kids. Not that I really had a choice in the matter, because I didn’t have the capacity to take one more step anyway. I’m stubborn and the Universe knows it, so when push comes to shove It knows to force me to my knees in order to force my hand. I had no choice left but to trust the Universe. In that, I had to trust that the Universe was going to take over the care for my kids. I had to, because not only did I have no legal rights, I could never expect them to choose me over their biological parents. Not to mention they were young adults with minds and lives of their own by that time. I knew exactly what was going to happen next, it terrified me, it broke my heart into a million pieces, and all I could do was… watch. The aftermath was in fact all that and a bag of chips. If my kids’ childhoods had been volatile, their early adulthood was hell.

I won’t even try to describe to you how painful it was to be utterly helpless to be of any help. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I didn’t want to be there for them. Boy did I. Actually, truth be told, what I wanted to do was rip them right out of that set of circumstances. But I couldn’t. I was effectively cut out. All I could do was gently make my continued presence known to them without forcing them into a choice between parents that I never wanted them to have to make. For the most part, they couldn’t (quite) hear me. Not yet. But maybe now. Part of that has to do with the fact that I have my own wounds to heal, my own protective walls to tear down. Part of it has to do with their wounds, their walls, their own healing process. I have been doing my work, and they have been doing theirs. Perhaps we are ready now.

These days I am much better equipped to be a parent than I ever was when I needed to be. But in spite of that, I don’t regret any of it. You see I had to go down that path. I needed to be completely dismantled in all of the ways that it dismantled me. By the same token, I know in my heart of hearts that this was all part of my kids’ paths too. It made them into the beautiful people who they are today. The ways in which they have each been able to show up to their lives, to face their shadows, and to step into their authentic, loving, brave selves astonishes me. It takes my breath away. It gives me hope for the world, who we are as a species, and our ability to turn things around. We can do this by sharing our stories- even and especially the painful ones.

Madi told me a couple of days ago that her memories of childhood are foggy. I was there. I was conscious. I was an adult. I remember. I know things that shaped her life that she had no container for at the time. Same for Kristen. Sometimes when we choose a pattern- wait until they are ready to ask- we get stuck with it for awhile, until it fully plays itself out. But if we are patient enough, every choice and every path will lead us home. In the (ultimate) end, every story has the same ending- Oneness, Love. In the meantime, we each get to tell our own story as a continuation of the stories that came before us. The better we know the stories we come from, the better story we get to tell.