A Song for the Accidental Digital Creatures Caught in the Medium

Beyond the blessed curse of connectivity
Beyond the broken codes and unwritten rules
Beyond these modern innovations too convenient to question

There exists a realm larger than the screen
Vaster than the newsfeed
Mightier than the network

Will you meet me beyond the metrics and the algorithms
In the hinterlands
Where the programmers of truth and the arbiters of worth can’t reach?

They say that “the medium is the message”
That the delivery is more important than the essence of the idea
Perhaps, once when this mediascape was new,
This phrase left room for wonder, creativity, flow

But now, we’re subdued by relentless cycles of “see me” strategy
Our voices reduced to characters
Our character distilled to brand
Our brands diluting the power of story

What if we’re called to embody rather than perform,
Generate value rather than profit,
Serve the entire spectrum rather than our addiction to one box of light?
What if we recognize, celebrate, and transcend the medium all at once?

I claim myself as medium, as storyteller, as seer. Could you?

As medium, you're here to speak what you see
Expressing what’s beautiful and terrible
In the heart, the mind, the union, the whole

At once holy witnesses and dancers in the dance
We can thrive along the edges,
Just outside the reaches of the boundaried infinity of our digital den

Channel the shadow as well as the bright
Cry out from the gut
Open lips wide and eyes even wider

Live without fear that anarchic laughter looks like a scream
That honesty looks like anger
That the sacred looks too much like the profane

Vision sharper than any camera lens
Fingers freed from their constant communicative claw
Tear your narrative from the hem of a dream cloak
Woven of the stuff more real than pixels and bytes

Remember you're here to rattle the world
And you can't always do that with a phone in your hand

---

The Story Behind the Poetry

I wrote this poem for us, for all the creatives, healers, artists, and entrepreneurs who, even after all these years, are still navigating the love-hate relationship with our digital world. O wrote this for all of us who are grateful for the connective magic that’s never more than an arm’s length away, but who also know these devices and networks are changing reality and warping the narrative.

These words flowed through when I started to gear up to once again promote and lead my Stand In Your Sovereign Story course.

At first, I was frustrated. To do online marketing “right,” I needed to show you the power of story and tell neat little tales that revealed former students’ and current clients’ results. I needed to embrace and display everything I know about captivating my readers and using the digital tools to draw new eyeballs.

Instead, I found myself spooling out lines of ambivalent verse as I pictured the “push-me-pull-you” relationship I’ve always with the internet and social media.

There’s power in this paradox, of course. Good stories rely on tension. The world I know and the material I teach is always grounded in the both/and - the real as well as the virtual, the struggle as well as the solution, the work as well as the love.

Part of my power - as writer, a healer, and a teacher - comes from being able to hold your hand as we leap between the personal and the professional. Together, we realize it’s all soul work.

The kind of storytelling I offer invokes your passion, your pain, and all you’ve learned along the way so you can create a bridge that connects you to the people who need you most.

A Sovereign Story heals the writer as well as the reader. These are the stories that transform lives and build livelihoods as they communicate, teach, and inspire something true.

Maybe it’s time for you to uncover the stories that mean the most so you can continue to build your world-renewing business. Maybe it’s time for you to stand in your Sovereign Story? I’d love to have you with us when we begin in September.

Before the Business Plans and the Paragraphs... the Poetry

What's on the other side of the stuff you need to write, the marketing you gotta do, and the emails you should return?

Desire. Sleep. The passions l that aren't born of what's clearly public, profitable, or popular.

Oh, and poetry.

It was so wonderful to appear on Linda Bonney’s podcast to talk about something as delightfully subversive as poetry. She’s a brave soul on a mission, showing us how verse matters in a world obsessed with prose.

We wrote poems in the margins before we pushed quotes into the Instagram feed 

Once upon a time, phones were used to place calls and recent college grads had jobs at desks without computers. I used to fill legal pads with stanzas that never, ever rhymed.

But that was a long time ago, and I tried to dance away from Linda’s invitation to talk about the role of poetry in my life today. Though I try my best to read a poem rather than get lost in the news feed from time to time, I haven't written purposefully written a line of poetry for years.

Linda has a way of finding the poet within and inviting you to find your own poetic soul in the midst of the distraction and the full sentences.

Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence

I invite you to listen to our conversation, Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence. It was an honor to read aloud from a piece I wrote last month that celebrated the return of my voice. We also dive into W.B. Yeats and what it might mean to welcome poetry into the “real” work.

And tell me... where does poetry sit along your own life's journey? Is it a part of your distant past? A continuing source of inspiration and solace? A language you never quite learned to speak?

Walking Home by Guest Storyteller Dawn Montefusco

Today's #365StrongStories guest story is special: it's a poem. Our storyteller Dawn Montefusco is a writing coach, so she definitely knows the rules of story well enough to break them. As she describes it, the piece is the complete hero's journey. 

And this is a special time to be sharing "Walking Home." Dawn's free telesummit Write Because It Matters is airing now. She has collected 21 experts (including me!) to talk about how to get your own meaningful stories into the world. What a perfect time for this project to hold space for Dawn's story of strength, love, and evolution.

***

I believe I am strong.
I believe I am weak. I believe I am separate. I believe I am connected. I believe I had a rough childhood. I believe I am a blessed woman. I believe that if I love people they will love me back. I believe no one really loves me, they just say they do. I believe I am great at what I do. I believe I am imperfect and therefore messed up. I believe I want peace. I believe I hurt others. I believe there is a reason for everything. I don’t believe a thing. I believe my heart will break if he leaves. I believe we should part and it’s the best thing for both of us. I believe nothing is working out. I believe everything will be okay.

Dawn Montefusco is a writer, speaker, poet and coach who escaped the Bronx in the 80's and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

Please join Dawn, me, and 20 other experts in the field of writing and publishing for the free Write Because It Matters summit that is running now.

The Country You Can Visit But Never Call Home, #365StrongStories 44

If you wanted to flatter me when I was twenty, you would ask you to help you analyze a poem. Yeats and the handful of Irish women poets who found their voices at the turn of our own century were my specialty. To be awed by a turn of phrase, struck dumb by an image, transformed by the flow of a stanza… This was my drug. Caffeine and alcohol were welcome companions - poems are best shared in cafes and pubs - but even they weren’t necessary. The English language as crafted by solitary scribes and mothers scribbling between nappy changes were my heroes.

These were the people and the passions that mattered to an American girl who found her own country to vast and crass and disconnected.

And now, I pick a book from the shelf and I’m still transported. Yes, the verses themselves have power - perhaps even more now that I have almost two more decades of loss and love, suffering and survival that helps me understand their resonance.

But I’m also distracted by the person I was, the person who was so free to dedicate herself to words and ideas for their sake alone. I adore her, but I know I could never find my way back to a life spelled out in phrases that only flirt with comprehensibility. Now, it’s about message and clarity and capturing attention that you can never assume is yours for keeps. Poetry is a country I can occasionally visit, but never call home.