TELLING OUR STORIES

TELLING OUR STORIES


I have believed for a long time that it is so important to tell our stories.  There seems to be so much that is unsaid in families, in relationships, the kind of stuff that comes from deep inside, the stories we think no one would want to hear, our childhood dreams, our adult dreams.  We bury them in some box or write them down in journals that no one will see or we simply keep them close to our heart.   We don't speak about the crazy things we have done or the things that we may carry shame about.  We sometimes gloss over what we really wanted for ourselves, for our life; the places we wanted to go and the things we wanted to try never really telling the whole story.    Some of us have pieces of paper that we have kept for some important reason:  a memory, a special date, a love note, a ticket stub to an important event or concert or childhood recital.   Under our bed or in closets we have boxes of photographs that no one knows anything about but us.  Someone in our family will inherit these; some of the faces in the photographs may look familiar but they won't be totally sure who the people are or the story that image contains or why we kept that particular piece of paper.  

I have been in this place myself.   My dad and I spent three months together before he moved into a seniors residence.  In that time I was able to get him to talk a bit about our family, about my brother whom I never really knew.  (That in itself is a whole story.)  I made notes whenever possible.  It was funny because he couldn't understand why I wanted to know all this stuff and I couldn't understand why he didn't understand the importance of my knowing the stories.   We were one of those families that didn't talk or share alot.  Stories seldom came up except when there was a family gathering which didn't happen too often.  I learned a great deal about my dad.  He had wanted to travel but never did.  He had other siblings that I never knew about.  He delivered groceries on a bicycle when he was a kid through all kinds of weather.  He never finished school but I believed he was smart even without an education.   He told me stories about his days in the service and about being hit by shrapnel.

While I was with him I found some photographs in a box, a bunch of negatives, and an old album that my dad had planned on throwing away.   Due to macular degenerative disease my dad couldn't see the photographs to tell me who these people were and where the images were taken, the story itself.   I tried  describing them but that became frustrating for him.  I found other "things" that I kept like a service watch that he had from the war.  It belonged to one of his buddies.  This man loaned  my dad his watch one day when my dad had some R&R time so he wouldn't be late coming back.  When my dad returned to his  he found out his friend had been killed.  My dad had held on to that watch for all these years.  At some point he changed the strap.  Now I have that watch.

I know the importance of stories and sharing firsthand.  In my last blog, Imaginary Friends, I spoke about some of my childhood years.   I decided to share my blog with one of my cousins whom I have recently reconnected with.  She read the story and wanted to know more about my life.  We had been separated for many years; another story obviously.   That request became a mutual one and since then we have been communicating almost daily, sharing family memories, stories neither of us knew about, talking about our childhoods and finding through this cathartic process love for each other.  We also realized that we each had our own stories about how things were in our family, stories that we each had heard or were told differently, stories based on our own perceptions and the bits and pieces that we put together on our own.

Someday my son will be in the position of receiving my boxes of memories, photographs, ticket stubs and that watch that was through the second world war and now sits in a bag with some of his grandfathers things.   He already knows how important he is to me and how much I love him but I want him to know more than that.   I want him to know the stories, to know about his mothers life, about her secrets, her dreams and aspirations.  I want him to know about his family, my family.  So I write and scrapbook and talk to him and share memories whether they are wonderful, funny, or painful, sometimes even the ones that use to carry shame.  

Over the course of the last year I have been working with a mentor and through the process I have realized what I want to do at this point in my life.  I want to be a storyteller but not one who tells the myths and legends, the stories about history/herstory.  I want to work with individuals to help them  write their stories, to put together the memories and the images, the treasures and mementos, to help them dig deep enough to speak the pieces they may never have spoken about before, the stories they may have thought no one would want to hear.   And so it begins with me to find that you out there that is ready to begin the process of telling your story.

I end this post with a quote and some bits and pieces.

 "There's a world of wisdom in our personal stories.  Your life

is a legacy, a gift that only you can give.  Why waste 

something so precious."

Dolly Berthelot