Walker - Whats Your Story?: A Journal for Everyday Evolution

Contents

Of course, youre general, but youre also specific. A citizen and a person. And the person you are is like nobody else on the planet. Nobody has the exact memory that you have. What is now known is not all that you are capable of knowing.

You are your own stories, and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth. What it feels like to be human without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you, without rotating, rehearsing, and reinventing the hatreds you learned in the sandbox. The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who you are and what you mean.

But then, I am a teller of stories and therefore an optimist, a believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the minds disgust with fraud and its appetite for truth, a believer in the ferocity of beauty.

So, from my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.

TONI MORRISON

CONTENTS

READY

Not everything that is faced can be changed.

But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

JAMES BALDWIN

Do you ever wish you could talk to someone who asked the right questions about every part of your life and being every single time? Not the easy questions, but the hard ones that draw out your truth. The ones that push you beyond who you are right now, and challenge your ideas about who you can be. These are the sacred questions: the ones that expose how you came to be who you are, and reveal what you must do to become someone else someone less fearful and more honest, less confused and more, well, free.

Yeah. Us, too. Which is why we spent a decade developing Whats Your Story?, a process that reveals the old, repetitive stories that shape our lives and transforms the next leg of the journey. This self-inquiry method integrates insights from our combined forty years of personal and political activism, memoir writing, and psychospiritual and psychosomatic practice in Buddhist, Hindu, and Western healing traditions. Whats Your Story? is for writers, creatives, scientists, psychologists, lawyers, activists, and anyone who longs to bring a new story to life.

In other words, Whats Your Story? is for you.

You, because you are ready to rewrite the stories of your life that resist all your attempts to change them. The stories that, despite your best efforts, keep you smaller than you want to be. That pattern you keep repeating with romantic partner after romantic partner? You want it to end. The lack of connection you feel in every one of your friendships? You can no longer bear it. The sinking sensation you get in your stomach every time you talk to your family? Its making you sick and you want no, need to be well. Those thirty-five minutes you spend in bed each night comparing who you thought youd be by now to who you actually are? Quite frankly, youd rather get some sleep. And wed rather see you well rested.

We wrote this book because weve been where you are or somewhere a lot like it, and weve worked with hundreds of people who have been there, too. Most of us think its normal to go through life telling the same sad, tired stories about ourselves over and over again until we die.

We dont.

Lets get personal.

When we first met, Lily was grieving her mothers death and a profound heartbreak. In the wake of these losses, a new sense of self emerged from the confines of her day-to-day life as a yoga and philosophy teacher. She recognized a deep internal struggle between the desire to free herself of an identity defined by family, teachers, and friends, and her aching need to belong. She walked into Rebeccas Art of Memoir workshop ready to write an old story, and walked out ready to write a new one. In the process, Lily awakened to her own voice and a fulfilling career inspired by her true passions as a bestselling author, photographer, and creative agent of change in the food and wellness industries. Through writing and rewriting her story, she released old ideas and welcomed the rich possibilities of an unconditioned mind.

On the other hand, Rebecca had transitioned from a life of feminist activism into a decade-long period of intense Buddhist study. She was living on Maui and balancing a flourishing writing and speaking career with the challenges and delights of raising a curious, energetic, and totally engaging four-year-old. After writing two memoirs and choosing a life that looked very different from her familys expectations, Rebecca was experiencing a profound sense of authenticity, accomplishment, and mastery over her own life and mind. With a heightened awareness of the power of writing to loosen the grip of old stories and make space for the creation of new lives, she convened a seven-day master class, The Art of Memoir, to support people drawn to a more authentic way of living. When Lily walked into the writing room, Rebecca recognized a readiness in her, a quickening that spoke of a shared purpose. And thats when we embarked on a journey that changed both of our stories forever.

Over the next two years, Lily began to assist Rebecca in the workshops. Together we supported participants in excavating and reflecting on the past and exploring new directions for the future. In a community willing to hold the old story while encouraging the birth of the new, something remarkable happened: each person woke up to the awareness that they, too, were entitled to a happy though not necessarily pain-free or idyllic ending, and could actually write one for themselves.

Imagining new outcomes and finding freedom from the past seemed not only possible but inevitable. Even as we talked about cancer, child abuse, sexual slavery, the Holocaust, institutionalized racism, parental neglect, poverty, heartbreak, and so much else, we found ourselves fully present and enjoying the process. On the last day of class exhausted, exhilarated, and transformed many asked for ongoing tools to embark on a practice of regularly speaking and writing their truth. And for a way to share that practice with others.

From that point of need, Whats Your Story? began as a weekly newsletter, and morphed into an in-person course. We developed a series of questions for people who have held themselves and their stories silent for too long. Each question is an access point to healing and growth. Collectively, the questions take the reader through a sequential process of self-inquiry and if the reader is willing to change personal transformation.

Those questions became a method, and that method became this book. You are now part of a global community rewriting your story, and in so doing, changing our collective future. While we cant change the hardships weve endured, or ignore the avalanche of forces beyond our control, we can decide what narrative we assign them. We can, at least in the sanctity of our own minds, write our own stories and reclaim our own power.