Free the Princess, Crown the Queen

It is a day to feel the feelings. To allow the fear to wrack through my body. To ground myself into this moment even when it seems to hard to bear. Today, I will say “I understand everything about you” as I look the Unknown full in the face.

And it can also be the day I allow the accumulated wisdom to integrate. There is time, in this collection of hours, to find humility and wonder and an unshakable trust in myself. In spite of it all. In spite of me.

It is time to look beneath the digital haze and the “yeah, I got that” attitude. It is time to recognize where I am faking it, where I am making it, and choose to go deeper, to rest, or to let it go.

And all this must be embodied. I tell myself I’ll make time to locate every muscle in down dog and allow child’s pose to overtake me entirely too soon for my vanity’s liking.

But even if I never make it to the mat or cross off anything on the to do list, it is time to love my shallows and my depths, my darkness and my light.

At this moment, I nod to my princess wishes for fame and fortune. I bow to those mature desires for connection and truth and I say, with quiet, fledgling assurance, “yes, it’s time to crown the queen.”

This is part of my Sovereign Story. Join me on May 11 to learn about how to start to access the stories that matter to you and your audience.

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Open the Gateway to Your Sovereign Story

Yin yoga, she said, is a journey along a path. From time to time, you reach a gate. You have the choice press into it. You see if your body wishes to surrender and move through or if the gate must stay shut. The practice is stay on path and accept that this is as far as you’re going to get today.

I followed along, contemplating the divots in a mat that once saw vigorous daily use. It was distracting, trying to remember how long it had been since I took “work time” to do something as rebellious as an online yoga class. Clearly this was one of those “emotional gates” the instructor was talking about.

The resistance in my hips, in the back of my thighs, I knew these were untold stories. These were the stories I had literally been sitting on. The body was asked to hold them because my mind was just too full.

This isn’t an original idea, of course. We know that the cells, the joints, and the muscles carry the information and the feelings the brain refuses to claim. But this “gate theory” that Julie Schoen talked about, I felt this reverberate through my creaking bones as I tried to rely on them to support me through these long poses.

There are gates along the pathway to telling your Story.

And by “Story,” I mean the capital “s” Sovereign Story that you craft as you pass through the gates of all the small “s” stories. Your Sovereign Story is your declaration of why you are here, what you are meant to offer, who you know yourself to be. It is your True Story of what it means to be human.

To get to that story, you write into situations, into long held emotions, into unresolved hurts, and triumphs you think you fully understand. You invariably get stuck by thoughts of "this is too dark, too boring, too contrived, too intimate..."

You allow all that to be true. Until the next writing session, of course. The next time, you just might discover that there is light in the darkness, wisdom in the boring, humor in the contrived, and universal insight in the intimate.

Dive deeper into story with me and join The Story Triangle webinar when it goes live on May 11.

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After you invent the wheel... A StoryShift by Susan Faurot

This StoryShift from coach Susan Faurot is a story in itself:

You have just invented the wheel. Relax. You can add the whitewalls later.

Since it actually describes my own story - and the advice I most need to take after launching my new storytelling course - I am going to leave it to you to spot just how and why this story works.

Not sure? Then You, Your Stories, and Your Audience just might be the ideal class for you!

Writing Prompt: Well, what did you expect?

Our six year-old has never had “a sleepover.” Until last night, she and I had only been apart for three nights since her birth in 2009. Her first night away from family wasn’t spent on her best friend’s floor and it wasn’t part some Girl Scout event in a church hall. Nope, we sent her to the woods.

We’re blessed to have the Wild Earth organization in our town. They offer legendary summer camps as well as weekend programs all through the school year. We trust these dedicated counselors to care for our girl and initiate her into a forest wonderland that she couldn’t access with her parents clucking “be careful!”

Moira was phenomenal. The youngest kid of the group, by all reports she was up for every aspect of the adventure.

She’s home now and we are so grateful to have her back and hear her stories of the dragonfly she healed, the donuts she ate, and the unicorn she met (the program, Mystwood, has a profoundly mystical element). And yet…

Even after all that magic and bravery and sense of accomplishment, there been has all sorts of frustration and anger and sadness today. As Moira herself said, “I didn’t think I would come home and feel yucky!”

Shifting from a children’s paradise in the woods where fairies cavorted in every tree trunk to a rainy day Sunday with all the same old family rules is hard. Transitions are never without their challenges.

Ultimately, however, this discord is rooted in our expectations.

Our daughter expected the high of her experience to last. We assumed that she would return tired but happy to be back with her folks. At some level, we probably expected her to be grateful to us for sending her somewhere so amazing (yeah, that one is quite silly).

Your expectations - and particularly all the ways those stories are defied - those are often a source of conflict. And, as you probably know, conflict is pretty much essential to story.

Think about when your expectations stirred up trouble or caused you pain. Write into a situation when hope and reality were mismatched. There’s a compelling story in there, I promise...

Learn more about what makes a story compelling. Join me for The Story Triangle, a free online class I am offering on May 11.

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What hot water and Ani Difranco can teach you about story

Every once in a while, a woman with small children will have a chance to shower without anyone poking the curtain or worrying over the distant screams. She'll get to shave her legs and wash, rinse, repeat if she wants to. This is the chance to put on some of her own music so she doesn't find herself singing "Baby Beluga" (again!) as she scrubs her back.

Thanks to the endless spring twilight and a husband willing to take a shift searching for worms under all the backyard stones, I had twenty steamy minutes to myself. I practiced my ablutions (wow, how often do you get to say that in a sentence) and I listened - really listened - to the album that got me through that summer of crappy 60 hour workweeks.

Ani Difranco's Little Plastic Castle  is just as wonderful. And the title track has a lot to teach us about a well-built story. See the lyrics and my annotations below.

In a coffee shop in a city Which is every coffee shop in every city On a day which is every day I picked up the magazine Which is every magazine Read a story, then I forgot it right away

The ordinary world. (So terribly, terribly ordinary.)

And they say, "Goldfish have no memory" I guess their lives are much like mine And the little plastic castle Is a surprise every time And it's hard to say, if they're happy But they don't seem much to mind

Just enough details about our heroine/narrator to be curious. Show, don't tell. Intriguing and allowing us to fill in the blanks and entertain our own goldfish memories.

From the shape of your shaved head I recognized your silhouette As you walked out of the sun and sat down And the sight of your sleepy smile Eclipsed all the other people As they paused to sneer at the two girls from out of town

Here's the rising action. This is where setting and character exposition becomes plot.

I said, look at you this morning You are, by far, the cutest But be careful getting coffee I think these people want to shoot us Or maybe there's some kind of local competition here To see who can be the rudest

Oh, the conflict!

And the turning point. This is where Ani takes us from story to commentary - much like a good blog post that begins with personal anecdote and brings the reader into the heart of the message. In this case, how does Ani really feel about being a feminist icon in an ordinary, hypocritical world that asks so much of women like her and yet offers nothing but forgettable magazines and rude coffee drinkers.

And people talk about my image Like I come in two dimensions Like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind Like what I happen to be wearing The day that someone takes a picture Is my new statement for all of womankind

And I wish they could see us now In leather bras and rubber shorts Like some ridiculous new team uniform For some ridiculous new sport Quick someone call the girl police And, and file a report

In a coffee shop in a city Which is every coffee shop in every city On a day which is every day

Your turn. Listen - really listen - to something by your favorite bands or singer-songwriters and see what you can learn about storytelling. Long, hot shower optional, but highly recommended.