Tag: storytelling

Observable Characters

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“Nothing is more painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” – Mary Shelley

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” must be the most frequent question my young kids are asked. For adults that don’t really know them, it’s a good conversation starter. But I think it also indicates how attached our identities are to our work.

It’s what Vicki Atkinson and I talk about in this week’s episode of the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast. Identity at the unemployment office.

One of the fascinating positions that Vicki has held is as a career counselor at the unemployment office. She gives us a glimpse into how the jobs we do become our identity by telling us the stories of some of the people who she coached.

We talk about how being a helper or a boss manifests even when someone is no longer doing that job.

I love Vicki’s powers of observation and ability to draw thru lines – talents that show up when she writes, tells stories, and in the many professional roles she has played.

Here’s a snippet of the podcast where Vicki tells me about the people she met at the unemployment office (with captions so you don’t even have to have the sound on):

Vicki Atkinson and I are big believers in the power of story – to connect us, to create intergenerational healing, and to make meaning out of the events of our lives. Each episode of our podcast starts with someone telling a story in each episode.

Search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts OR Listen to it from your computer on Anchor Episode 72: Smiles from the Unemployment Office

Or subscribe to our YouTube channel to see a video clip of each story: @SharingtheHeartoftheMatter.

Links for this Episode:

Episode 72: Smiles from the Unemployment Office on Anchor

Vicki’s personal blog: Victoria Ponders

Vicki’s post: Different is Good

Vicki’s book: Surviving Sue

Wynne’s book about her beloved father: Finding My Father’s Faith

Related podcast episodes:

Episode 71:  Catching an Edge with Wynne and Vicki

Episode 70: “A” is For Ambivalence with Vicki and Wynne

Episode 69: All You Have To Do Is Ask with Wynne and Vicki

Safety in Stories

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“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So, write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can.” – Neil Gaiman

Three stories that have come up recently in my house…

#1

Four-year-old Mr. D loves telling the story about the parking ticket I recently got outside my mom’s apartment. Even though I have the pay-to-park app on my phone, I choose not to pay thinking we’d only be inside for 15 minutes. It’s a story I’d rather not think about given that I ended up paying $43 instead of the $2, but I have to admit, he’s told it so many times that it’s starting to get funny.

#2

The other day, Mr. D wanted to wear shoes with laces and put them on himself. He got them on and then tied about 10 overhand knots as we drove to school. I heard him in the back seat say, “Yeah, that looks good.”

#3

We bought a small red velvet cake at the grocery store recently. When eight-year-old Miss O had a slice of it, she pushed all the cream cheese frosting to the side. I asked if she didn’t care for it. When she said she didn’t, I swiped up a finger full. “Ugh,” she groaned and then added, “Sorry, didn’t mean to ‘yuck’ your ‘yum.’”

The Point

One of the things that I aim for in my house, is that we can express ourselves without judgment. That is, I want to be the place where the kids can tell their stories without worrying how they land.

The funny thing is that it’s had a bonus effect on me where I have to get to talk about the bonehead mistakes I make (like the parking ticket.) I’ve found it’s helped greatly to learn to not let my inner editor curate only the stories I want to talk about.

The Bonus

When I talk with my dear friend and podcast partner, Vicki, I get the boost of knowing she is a really safe person to tell stories to. Not that I always communicate well the first time, but she is such a good and encouraging listener, she brings out the vulnerable and brave me.

By contrast, in our most recent podcast, Episode 71, Catching an Edge with Wynne and Vicki, we talk about the unexpected responses we sometimes get to our stories.

I know I’m not alone in being surprised sometimes by how a story is received. We tell about an experience to a person or persons and then are shocked at how it lands. We thought it was funny and they thought it stupid. We thought it was deep and they only appreciate the surface. Whatever it is, it is out of our control for better or worse.

When our inner editor starts curating the content we share, we sometimes short-circuit our ability to be fully seen. So Vicki and I talk about the healing effect of telling our stories, no matter how they land.

Here’s a snippet of the podcast where I tell Vicki about a recent exchange of stories with a long-time friend (6 minutes with subtitles so you don’t have to have the sound on):

Vicki Atkinson and I are big believers in the power of story – to connect us, to create intergenerational healing, and to make meaning out of the events of our lives. Each episode of our podcast starts with someone telling a story in each episode.

Search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts OR Listen to it from your computer on Anchor Episode 71: Catching an Edge with Wynne and Vicki

Or subscribe to our YouTube channel to see a video clip of each story: @SharingtheHeartoftheMatter.

Episode 71 transcript of the podcast

Links for this Episode:

Episode 71: Catching an Edge with Wynne and Vicki on Anchor

Vicki’s personal blog: Victoria Ponders

Vicki’s recently released book: Surviving Sue

Wynne’s book about her beloved father: Finding My Father’s Faith

(featured photo is Mr. D’s well-tied shoes)

Lost and Found People

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“The good road and the road of difficulties, you have made me cross; and where they cross, the place is holy.” – Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Medicine Man

The other day I was sitting at the kitchen table with Miss O. One of the 20-somethings in our lives had just shared with us that she was pregnant and Miss O was so excited.

She asked, “Mommy, how did you tell Nana [my mom] that you were pregnant with me?”

I replied, “Well, it wasn’t that much of a surprise with IVF because she knew I went in to have an embryo implanted. Then 10 days later they did a blood test to determine whether I was pregnant. So I think I called her or I texted her.”

Then she surprisingly asked, “And she was happy?”

Trying to figure out the phrasing, I raised an eyebrow and replied. “She was thrilled.”

And then Miss O revealed why she’d asked like that, “Even though Bumpa [my dad] had just died?”

Oohhh, she was putting together the news with the story that she already knew which is that my dad died just as I was getting pregnant with her.

And then, my not quite 9-year-old daughter, replied, “We are the lost and found people.”

Whoa.

I’ve often thought of those months when I was writing a book about my dad, his remarkable life, our connection, and the reward for being open with him when Miss O was in utero. It felt like a dance between birth and death. I was saying good-bye to having him present in life as I waited for Miss O to come. Such a sacred dance.

But Miss O’s comment about lost and found people made me think that maybe we all are. It seems like many new chapters are ushered in after we’ve given something up: a job, a partner, a story we believe about ourself.

And then, when we’ve given it up, we can proceed. Seems like the trick is not to get mired in the lost, so that we keep working towards the found.

We are the lost and found people. I couldn’t be more grateful to my beautiful daughter for pointing that out.

(featured photo is my dad and me when I was 2-years-old)

My book about my journey to find what fueled my dad’s indelible spark and twinkle can be found on Amazon: Finding My Father’s Faith.

A Full-Circle Story

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“Be kind to yourself and share it with the world.” – unknown

The other day I opened my door to an older gentleman who was going door-to-door on behalf of Greenpeace. Let’s call him John. He was warm and friendly and told me he’d grown up in this neighborhood and named the elementary school he attended.

As we were talking about plastic in the ocean, he mentioned that he’d just been talking to a neighbor. She wanted to subscribe for an annual payment. She knew she’d remember to do it because the day he came by was her birthday.

Clearly this neighbor had made an impact on his day. He went on to explain that she and her husband invited him in to sit down as they did the paperwork. It gave him some rest for his aching knees.

I hazarded a guess based on the story he’d told me, “Was it Donna and Bruce?”

“Yes,” he laughingly confirmed even though they are two streets away. There are about 25 houses per block in this neighborhood so he must have knocked on about 50 doors between my house and theirs.

So, I told him the story about how I met Donna and Bruce one evening about four years ago. It was early on in the pandemic and my daughter was doing on-line Kindergarten. I was trying to optimize her desk situation. Someone up the street had put a great kids desk out on the curb to give away. I was trying to carry it home with my 5-year-old daughter, my 6-year-old neighbor, and my 1-year-old son in tow.

And then Donna, who I’d never met before, offered to step in and help. Her delightful spirit is just one of the reasons she’s one of my favorite people to run into in the neighborhood.

[The next time I saw Donna after my conversation with John, the Greenpeace guy, I told her that how John told me the story of how her warmth and kindness had made such a difference to him. It was so fun to see her reaction to one of the many touchpoints of positive impact she must deliver in a day.]

After John, the Greenpeace guy left, my kids and I went out for a walk. We came across him sitting on a garden wall on the next street over resting his aching knees. Because of the stories we’d shared, it felt like he was an old friend. We sat down for a moment and chatted with him before we all moved on, still connected by the thread of narrative.

For a story about an a-ha moment Vicki had as a child about the roots of her dad’s big heart, please listen to our Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast: Episode 67: Love the Ones That are Different with Vicki and Wynne

Vicki Atkinson and I are big believers in the power of story – to connect us, to create intergenerational healing, and to make meaning out of the events of our lives. Each episode of our podcast will start with someone telling a story in each episode.

To listen to the podcast, Search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts. Or subscribe to our YouTube channel to see a video clip of each story: @SharingtheHeartoftheMatter.

The Hook

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“Just because they are a story doesn’t mean they’re not real.” – H. M. Bouwman

I was talking to Adam, one of Mr. D’s preschool teachers who was a newspaper writer in one of his previous jobs. (I think there’s a whole post I should write of how lucky Mr. D is to have such interesting and experienced teachers). He told me that he once interviewed Jim and Lou Whittaker, the now 94-year-old legendary Seattle mountain climbing twins and entrepreneurs.

So I asked him what his favorite interview was and he said, without hesitation, Ginger Rogers. Apparently, the arts writer was sick the day Ginger Rogers came to Seattle to promote a book she’d written and Adam said he couldn’t get his hand up fast enough to volunteer. His memory of it was that “It was the closest thing to royalty I’ve ever experienced.”

I bring this up because Vicki Atkinson and I did a Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast interview with Stuart Perkins, of the Storyshucker blog. In my mind, he is part of WordPress community royalty. Part of this is strictly personal because he was the first person to follow me, and most of it is because of his ability as a storyteller. He told us he loves to use a “hook,” something to draw the reader in and it’s a tool he uses to great effect.

Talking with Stuart, we learned about his base – growing up on a plot of land in rural Virginia. His grandmother, “Nannie” had land there and gave each of her 5 kids adjoining plots so Stuart grew up in the rich base of family and garden that he describes so often in his posts. Nannie and that simple life as told in evocative, touching, and rich stories.

A great base, a simpler time, a big family of storytellers – all great hooks. Like Mr D’s preschool teacher, Adam described, I couldn’t have been more thrilled to do this interview with the fantastic and fun Stuart Perkins. I hope you’ll listen and subscribe.

Search for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts or click here to listen to Episode 12: On Storytelling with Stuart M. Perkins on Anchor.

Show notes are on the Heart of the Matter blog: Episode 12 show notes

A Voice From the Past

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“Would I rather be feared or loved? Um…Easy, both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.” – Michael Scott

On the first weekend of August, Seattle holds its Seafair festival. There’s a parade downtown, the Blue Angels do their airshow and at the center of the activity is the hydroplane races on Lake Washington. Most summers my brother hosts an outing on his boat to watch the Blue Angels fly. The featured photo is a picture I took from my brother’s boat this summer of the Blue Angels.

When my dad was alive and we were together watching, I’d make him recount the story of watching the first Seafair hydroplane race in Seattle when he was 15 or 16 years old. It was one of my favorite stories that Dad told.

So in light of this week of the anniversary of my dad’s death and of talking with Troy about writing about him, I put together this audio recording of my dad telling this story. It’s rough, informal and short (five minutes) – just a recording I made of him on my voice app but for anyone who loves my dad’s humor cards I feature on Sunday Funnies and is curious to hear his voice, here it is: Wynne Leon on Recording Your Loved Ones

Stories Again

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“The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt by the heart.” – Helen Keller

My 6-year-old daughter declared the other day that she had it all planned out. She was going to go back to being a baby. That way she could be carried everywhere, be picked up every time she cried and wear diapers so she never had to use the bathroom.

I started gently exploring this idea. I asked “So you are going to give up reading?” Her answer “No way!” And then I asked if she was going to sleep in a crib again so that she wouldn’t be able to get out and come sleep in my bed whenever she pleased. Again – “NO!!”

We’ve had extensive conversations about the fact that when she was 2-years-old like her brother is now, I only had one kid so she got carried everywhere and my attention was only on her. Not only did she get everything that her little brother is getting now, she got it in an even more focused fashion.

That logic does nothing to stop the feeling of jealousy over the easy life she perceives her brother has. Fortunately, they adore each other so she doesn’t begrudge him much. But she sure wishes she had more and it does not work to rationalize it away.

So on a whim I switched to telling her stories about when she was 2. Like the time we went to the Fall Pumpkin Festival and I was trying to carry her and a big pumpkin and then the pumpkin stem broke off. Or the time we went to Canada and how it seemed like the whole trip she was either on her uncle’s shoulders or being swung by her arms between 2 adults.

The stories work. They calm the sense that her little brother is loved more in a way that logic doesn’t. It’s like fighting fire with fire. They engage her heart and are proof that she is someone and has always been someone worth telling stories about.

It makes me think about the last time I heard someone tell a story about me. It was about the time I invited a family that I didn’t know to stay with me when my son was two-months old. The mom was a friend of a friend and she had come to town to help her college aged daughter after she had gotten hit by a car while jogging. The mom, her daughter, her son and the daughter’s boyfriend ended up staying with us for almost 2 months and we had a great time. The story I heard about me was, “Who invites strangers to live with them when they have a newborn?”

Hearing it makes me feel brave, strong, and open. Maybe a little crazy but in a good way. The stories people tell about us – they convey much more than just the adjectives. And of course, there are the stories we tell ourselves like I wrote in one of my favorite posts The Most Influential Person in the Room.

The power of stories keeps showing itself to me. In our spiritual traditions, in our self management, in our relationships, it seems we have the opportunity to reach down deep, touch our core and lift each other up at such a deep level with this one tool. So I’m practicing responding with prose instead of facts. Sometimes it feels like a lot of work. But hey, it’s better than changing the diapers for two kids if she goes back to being a baby!

The Most Influential Person in the Room

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“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain

When we drive to school, my son often says “go this way” as I back out and points to the direction opposite the way we need to go. The other day we had a couple of extra minutes so I humored him and went the way he wanted down our block – then I turned, turned and turned and we were back on our way. That little change to give him some control made him so much happier.

This little exercise reminded me of all the choices we make and as we do, how they help us narrate our own story. I also brought to mind the quote from humorist Kevin Kling “we need to rewrite our story sometimes just so we can get some sleep” that I talked about in the post I wrote for Aspiring Blog about the power of telling our own stories. I’m reblogging it here because I think there is so much goodness in remembering the power of our own stories:

I was listening to an On Being podcast where Krista Tippett was interviewing American humorist and storyteller Kevin Kling. He was born with a disabled arm and then in mid-life was in a motorcycle accident that paralyzed his other arm.

He was talking about the PTSD that came with his accident. With it came anger and inability to sleep and when it resurfaced with a vengeance years after the accident he was talking to his therapist about it.

She said that he needed to retell the story with a different ending – tell the story as if he didn’t hit the car and he reached his destination. He did that and it worked! He was able to sleep again. His takeaway was: “We need to rewrite our story sometimes just so we can get some sleep.”

That line caught me by the throat and hasn’t let go. Because it means that our bodies believe our own storytelling. It means that while I think a storyteller is someone like Kevin Kling, it is actually my own storytelling that matters most.

It means that the most influential person in my life isn’t my boss, my loved ones, a beloved actor or author, or even Oprah Winfrey – it’s me.

So I’ve pondered the stories I tell myself. The two most cataclysmic things that have happened in the past ten years of my life are when someone told me of the infidelities of my husband I’d been married to for eight years and the marriage fell apart.

Then once I was divorced, I choose to have kids on my own as a single parent. Someone said to me when my firstborn was about 6 months old, “I wish that he [my ex-husband] hadn’t wasted so much of your time.” And I replied something like, “It’s okay, that marriage and its downfall got me to meditation and where I needed to be.”

I rewrote the story of heartbreak and loss as the impetus to put me on my current path with these two beautiful children I love dearly. I believe that the Divine has used all of the past to get me where I needed to be which I genuinely believe to be true. But it is also a story that helps me be very happy where I am instead of mourning what I’ve lost.

In talking about the story he’s rewritten so that he can sleep, Kevin Kling said that of course he wakes up every morning and has to contend with the fact that his arms don’t work as a result of the fact that the accident did really happen.

Stories can’t change the circumstances of our lives, but they do change how we relate to those circumstances. Knowing this I’m carefully checking my current inventory of stories to make sure I’m telling myself the right ones!