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.

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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.

Enough with the Tortured Entrepreneur. Love the Process.

“It doesn’t have to be easy. Isn’t it enough that it’s magic?” Ohhhhh, Liz Gilbert, thank you! Thank you for this and thank you for piercing through my crunch week mania and my cranky mama is on a deadline B.S.

I’ve talked about how putting the finishing touches on my new course - You, Your Stories, and your Audience - has been a total grind. If you saw my sleep starved eyes and my messy ponytail you’d understand that I wanted your sympathy. And fresh brewed coffee. And a time machine. And full time care for my children.

But I am done with that. I am embracing this as the creative process it is. I am showing up to fix one more slide presentation with gratitude rather than resentment.

Enough with the tortured entrepreneur. The business martyr is every bit as worn out and uninspiring as the "tortured artist."

[tweetthis] "Business martyr" is just as cliched and unhelpful as "tortured artist" #lovetheprocess[/tweetthis]

It’s time to recognize that this process is the reward - that gathering and honing of what I know and shaping it into something that is worthy and helpful and TRUE. When people take the course and start writing their own strong stories that better lives… that is just going to make an already powerful, beautiful act of creation into something that much sweeter.

Deep gratitude to Elizabeth Gilbert and to the podcaster who hosted her, the  wicked brilliant Rob Bell (no, he is not a man who says “wicked,” but if he was from Massachusetts rather than Michigan he would say it all the time and would be freaking adorable).

Listen to this one for the brilliance about the cake and the icing and this whole riff about the “transrational” that I am super excited to explore.

And try this one if you want to jump into Big Magic and get the context for the quote above.

Curious about what's in the new course? Get a sweet little taste in the content rich webinar, The Story Triangle, that goes live May 11!

Reserve your seat

Use the Story Triangle to Tell Stories that Work

In some forgotten magazine, I once read a lament about how little fiction is written about the world of work. When historians look back upon this time they might think we live in an age of passionate romance, of hideous crimes, of sweeping wars, and occasional zombie plagues and vampire infestations. They won't be able to look to that cultural signifier we call the novel to understand how many bloody hours we devote to emails and preparing reports and fiddling with "easy"  tools like the LeadPages system.

That said, these people from the future might be able to go to server farms to comb through our Gmail accounts to understand our daily preoccupations, but what will they really understand of our everyday lives by looking at all those alerts and notifications we skillfully dismiss and ignore?

I'm hustling through the completion of a major project. Ironically, though it's all about storytelling, I find that I'm having trouble living my own story through the haze of "busy." That's what happens when you hunch over a laptop perfecting copy and worrying over image selection and praying that all the intangible tech pieces will place nicely with one another.

Even though all this minutiae isn't in itself the stuff that legends are made of, the stories that I am empowering others to craft do have infinite potential. They can mean something to the storytellers and the audiences they're made for.

The everyday tasks of running an online business don’t lend themselves to become great stories. In my case, however, I hope that my own stretch of "mundane" work will empower you to tell stories that matter.

Join me for the next free Story Triangle class that is coming up on May 24. Who knows? The storytelling tools you learn to deepen your connection with clients might enable you tell the great story of what it means to run a business in the 21st century! Reserve your seat

Writing Prompt: Write Your Way Home

What does "home" conjure for you? Simply free writing on a page beneath that word written in broad capital letters is a potent writing exercise in itself. Today, I drove through a piece of my hometown, eyes welling up at my closest childhood friend's driveway, at the stretch of sidewalk where I fell off my bike and nearly got run over, at the restaurant where I slogged through the worst summer job ever.

Gleefully, I told my daughter about the forest where I met the fairies for the first time in my adult life (they were happy to have me back). I did not point out my high school boyfriend's house or mention the church we thought we'd get married in some day.

I don't have a bed in this town anymore. My dad has moved four towns further out on the peninsula that held me from my first breath. Luckily, Cape Cod has great wide arms to welcome me "home," no matter what beach I land on. This piece of historic Route 6A in Barnstable will always lead the way home even if I have no fixed address along the way.

Now that I have survived the five-hour trip across Massachusetts and dipped down into our "real" home in New York's Hudson Valley, I can almost leave the tears behind. I can almost find the creative spark that hides amongst the yearning and the memories.

Gratefully, I can turn to one of the great mothers of American literature for three views through the prism of home. All true, all compelling, all addressing a different aspect of the complicated subject of home:

• "You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right."
• "The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."
• "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself."

Your turn... write into that simply stated "home" or use one of the quotes as inspiration. Consider submitting your story to the #365StrongStories project.

Some words that matter more than words

The afternoon is heavy with the perfect kind of April damp that invites you to play outside for a while and then rush inside for popcorn and a movie in front of a blazing fire. The kids are tucked onto the couch with their grandparents and we're watching Inside Out. I wish I didn't have to have the laptop out, but I'm doing good work and everyone is safe and warm and feeling all the feelings. I have the room to hold space for this moment, the project at hand, and this...

Earlier today while I was on a quest for blog posts that combine story and the authors insights, I stopped over at Momastery.

There are blog posts that shine brilliantly as they tear up every script. They transcend mere bloggery and just... speak. To the heart and to the soul and to all the things that matter.

Read this one.

It breaks every form because it's written according to the laws of love and sorrow, connection and death. It's about the things we're most afraid of and the places we are most brave. It is about everything that quiet, non-eventful Saturdays seek to keep at bay because, as much as we want don't want to let the dark stuff in, "the hard" still part of our greater reality.