As is so often the case, Anne Lamott said it best:
You own everything
that happened to you.
Tell your stories.
If people wanted you to write warmly about them,
they should’ve behaved better.
And yet…
I’ve guided a dozen memoir writers on their projects and this is almost always the key issue:
How do you tell your story honestly without hurting other people?
(Or its close relative: how do you tell your story honestly without spending the rest of your life defending yourself in lawsuits? )
I know this territory well.
My first job after college was as a researcher for a documentary filmmaker ( which also morphed into a nanny position midway through––but that’s a whole other story entirely).
My employer, along with her TV network, was in the middle of a multimillion-dollar libel lawsuit.
Her attorney was/is arguably the most important first amendment authority in the country.
(Wikipedia tells me he’s argued before the Supreme Court 13 times. )
He won the case with a series of very impressive intellectual slam dunks.
It was a victory with a deep, soul-satisfying quality.
Capital “J” Justice prevailed.
Anyway, ten years later I saw him on an amazing panel at the Writers Guild called “ Whose Life is it Anyway ?”
I remember it vividly because I was contemplating writing something about my own recent experiences.
I wondered what I was, more or less, “allowed” to tell.
And I’m still thinking about this to this day.
To this very newsletter, in fact.
The Austrian psychologist Bruno Bettelheim’s landmark book The Uses of Enchantment always resonates for me.
Bettelheim argued that fairy tales, with all their darkness ––witches, death, imprisonment, and abandonment–– allow children to grapple with their fears from a distance and through symbols .
That’s why the villains are most often STEPparents .
(It’s far too terrifying to consider that one’s actual parent could really be the villain in one’s narrative.)
My point being…
Early on, we learn that to survive we often have to shift the truth of a story to prioritize our safety over our honesty.
Right after I finished this newsletter last week ––one where I wrote about a friend’s funeral slideshow––after a Netflix binge, I walked Belle on our roof.
Suddenly, I found myself shaking with the chills.
By 3 am, my fever was soon up to 103.4.
(The Mayo Clinic suggested I go straight to the ER but…)
Good doctors, good insurance, good research skills prevailed.
I––who never get sick––had a sudden acute bacterial infection beneath the skin.
This illness is both extremely easily treated and quickly cured, but…
If ignored can kill you in hours / days.
Let me repeat: deadly in hours / days.
A few antibiotics later, I was filming promo videos for NY1.
Here’s the point of all this…
It’s not just that my pseudo near-death experience nearly killed me.
It’s actually the struggle about what I can and cannot say that is far more challenging.
There are, in fact, two stories about last week–– one very, very funny and another enormously sad –-that I’m dying to share.
And yet I can’t.
At least right now.
While I do own everything that happened to me––as do you––as Ecclesiastes tells us:
“There’s a time for everything.”
For me, in order for the promises of 2021 to arrive, there were a few things I really had to let go of.
Even if it took a fever of 103.4 to burn them away …I’ve emerged lighter and stronger and even more resilient.
So as 2020 wraps up, I hope you can do the same––minus the near-death experience, of course–– letting go of whatever’s still holding you back.
You may not be able to tell your story fully …
(…yet…)
But I guarantee it’s time to Let Go of a large chunk of it, the part of 2020 that needs to burn away.
Namaste for Now,
P.S. Again Meditation of the Month is HERE.
Only 1 Spot for Jan 2021 Creative Coaching Left HERE .
And those gifts I promised…they’re coming…albeit a week late!
