The Story Before the Story

Week in and week out, in individual sessions and groups, I hear clients start stories at what they think is the beginning. It happens to me when I’m the storyteller too. I’m sharing what I think is the “origin story” of a struggle, false belief or source of shame but the choices I made in a pivotal moment were shaped by the stories that came before.

It’s the ordinary scenes of my childhood where I learned how others would respond to my needs, what I had to do for connection and the expectations I was expected to fulfill. These are the defining stories that come before the dramatic ones.

In Dani Shapiro’s podcast Family Secrets, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich’s explanation about where we start stories is…

98 seconds of brilliance!

Listen here (Time Stamp 38:00-39:38) to an excerpt from an episode entitled “The Goofy Ring”

*Trigger Warning: Though not graphic in nature, this episode is primarily about Alex’s story as an incest survivor.

One of the things I’m really interested in is how much where you start a story shapes what its meaning is. You interpret my family’s actions and their turning away from the abuse differently if I begin the story shortly before the abuse.

If you tell a larger story about why they would feel compelled to turn away from the past you start understanding it was an extraordinary amount of grief and fear. I think it’s possible to have more empathy for why it would be so important for them to pretend the harms of the past hadn’t happened.

Finding the true beginning of a story of heartache takes community because what is often difficult for us to see from inside the story is obvious to outside witnesses.

Two July opportunities to step into a storytelling community…

Denver In person Story Group Launch Night

Date: Wednesday July 28th 6:30-8:00pm

Location: 8321 Sangre de Cristo Rd (Suite 200) Littleton, CO 80127

Cost: $25 for intro night then $75 per month beginning in August

Online Story Membership Guest Opportunity

Date: Tuesday July 27th 6:30-8:00pm MST

Location: via zoom

Cost: First month FREE then $95 per month beginning in August

5 Things That Are Making Me Strong

#1 Emma Stone’s powerfully edgy voice in Disney’s new release Cruella. It’s tied with Wicked, the musical, for my all time favorite origin story of a villain who’s not really a villain.

*Watch LeCrae’s fabulous Ted Talk for the truth about heroes and villains!

#2 The Poetry of Pádraig Ó Tuama

From his poem How To Be Alone:

There is a you
telling you another story of you.
Listen to her.

From his poem Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

You knew the touch of a friend
was not dependent on their cleanliness, and you knew this
because you knew need, knew the way that story bleeds
through actions of a day, and how shame makes us
play parts that are beneath us.

#3 Dani Shapiro’s podcast Family Secrets (recommendation by Nadia Bolz Weber). So many great truths around why stories need to be told so we can be free!

Because growing up in a family in which a secret is being kept from you, is like growing up in a family which has its own poltergeist. Maybe you can’t see it, but know you can feel it, you know you can hear it rattling things in the attic, you know something is wrong but the truth of it is hidden from you. And when there is a difference between what you are sensing and what you’re told, it erodes your trust in yourself and in others in a way nothing else can. Many of us who grew up in families with secrets we sensed while everyone around us was saying nothing’s wrong, just come to the conclusion that well….then something must be wrong with us.

#4 My clients tell me about the most fabulous agents of healing on the planet. This month’s gem is Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. I’m only halfway through but here are just a few of my many underlines.

Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions. What is surprising is how many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support, patriarchy.

The problem in the church is not strong women, but rather weak men who feel threatened by strong women, and have tried various means, even by dubious exegesis, to prohibit them from exercising their gifts and graces in the church. (New Testament scholar Ben Witherington)

Glorifying the past because we like that story better isn’t history; it is propaganda.

#5 Finally, this prayer, read by an amazing group of Young LIfe staff at a graduation ceremony, is completely beautiful and from an instagram account I’m blessed to now follow: Black Liturgies.

Strategic Ambiguity

Having lived in Asia for 17 years, I still geek out over news articles tracking cultural and political trends of the continent. In April, The New York Times published an article entitled The New Taiwan Tensions in which it stated:

“President Biden may need to choose between making a more formal commitment to Taiwan’s defense or tempting China to invade.”

Much of the United State’s access to China since President Nixon’s historic visit in 1972, was founded on the idea of strategic ambiguity. Strategic ambiguity was the US’s refusal to acknowledge Taiwan’s right to self-governance in its relationship with Beijing while simultaneously seeking to protect the island from being invaded. It was helpful 50 years ago in walking a political tightrope, but the lack of clarity grows more costly as China’s power increases.

In the past month, I’ve thought a lot about strategic ambiguity in my life.

• What tightropes did I walk growing up?

• Where did a lack of clarity about what was happening help me survive?

• What truths in my story do I want to leave unacknowledged but also protect myself from?

• In what ways is refusing to “choose a side” in telling my story as an adult cost me deeper relationships in the present?

I’m always grateful when clients are honest about the difficult fork in the road that comes when they are clear about their story. Shifting their focus from “what’s wrong with me?” to “what happened to me?” creates a painful dilemma. To name the harm in their homes growing up feels like it invites them to shift the blame onto theri family for how they struggle. I often remind them they aren’t blaming, only naming. In the naming of what others, often their parents, did (or did not do) they invite all the characters in their story to be more human. The naming helps them turn from self loathing towards forgiveness which opens up more loving connections with themselves and possibly with those who have hurt them.

Why Story?

Check out Brene Brown’s May 5th podcast with Oprah & Bruce Perry to hear such a great summary of how vulnerably sharing our story in community sets the trajectory for our healing path.

“If you have the best therapist in the world and you see them once a week but you have nobody else in your life the rest of the week, you’re never going to get better—relationship are the agent of change.”

Join Me!

In June, my online story membership will explore the film Searching For Bobby Fischer (1993). Themes such as competition, contempt, giftedness, underachieving as defiance and chasing phantoms will take us deeper into our own stories!

Five seats open for 90-minute virtual groups to explore our stories in community.

Where Does This Leave You?

With the passing of Easter Sunday, those of us who celebrate the liturgical church calendar now turn towards the coming of Pentecost. I can’t think of two more challenging realities to integrate into my life—that death is not the end of the story and I have been given great power.

As a therapist I think a lot about power. What experiences leave us powerless? How do we cope? What power were we meant to have in our stories that was taken from us? But recently I’ve also realized:

We suffer not only when innate power over our personhood is shackled but also when we are forced to exercise power we were never intended to hold.

The movie The King’s Speech (2010) is a fascinating study in the ripple effects of abdicated power. When King Edward VIII hands over the throne to his younger brother, the course of both men’s lives, a royal family and a nation are changed forever. At one point in the movie Geoffrey Rush’s character, a speech therapist named Lionel, asks the Duke of York (soon to become King George VI played by Colin Firth), “Where does this leave you?”

It’s a poignant and important question. Who abdicated power in your story and where did that leave you stumbling through a role you were never prepared to play? What were the gifts and scars those scenes embedded in your life?

This month, my online membership program, Between Touches, will use this piercing film to exam the role power played our own young stories. Join us, in this unique spiritual season, as we long to rest in the reality that death has been conquered and yet still find ourselves desperate to see that same power manifested in our lives.