Stories can change us

Sorry I’ve been away from the blog. I was traveling, but I’m back.

Many people are asking me what this blog is about anyway. Here’s how I understand the power of stories. Each of us navigates our lives with stories that we know. They provide us with rules, meanings, and choices for action. Sometimes the stories that we know however, just don’t fit our life experiences especially when things happen that we never expected. So where can we turn when we feel confused, lost, overwhelmed. I’ve found it enormously helpful to listen to the stories of others and then take what they tell me and weave the parts that fit for me into my life story, often remembering parts of my own story that I have forgotten or overlooked as important. The key to resilience is holding in your mind a coherent narrative of life with all its ups and downs.

I hope that as you read the stories on this blog you will think of stories to tell others and post them here.

Reflection on the Seekers -My Story
Finding independence in spite of myself

If someone had asked me as a young person if I were a seeker, I would have said “yes” without question. I longed to live away from my family and to explore unfamiliar people and places. When my father drew a line on a map at the border of Michigan and said that it was the furthest distance he would allow me to travel to college, I applied to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. There I met Ron, to whom I was drawn because of our differences. I was the one who convinced Ron that we should go to Lagos, Nigeria for three years, against the wishes of our families.

But my seeking of the new and unknown was based on a false assumption that I would be safe no matter where I went or what I did. During Ron’s illness I craved the familiar. After he died, I was often fearful and unwilling to go very far from home. Only after facing the reality of life and death have I reconsidered what it means for me to be a seeker. The Seeker’s stories encouraged me to track how I redefined my seeker self during those terrible years.

While my husband Ron was ill, I struggled for many months with depression, dragging myself from responsibility to responsibility. I spent many sleepless nights after giving up sleeping with Ron in his narrow hospital bed. I wandered from room to room, carrying a comforter with me, trying to decide where I should lie down. I mentioned to a friend that I imagined how peaceful it might be if, for one or two nights a week, I could sleep somewhere other than at home.

A week later, this friend arrived at my door and said that we should go out and look for a place for me to rent. I protested, but admitted that I had seen an old apartment building in town that advertised a small studio for rent. She insisted we go over to the building and take a look. With her urging I found myself in the possession of a room of my own for the first time in years.

I furnished the room sparsely with a mattress on the floor, a lamp, and good books. I went there one or two nights a week and found that I slept well for the first time since Ron came home on the ventilator. I wasn’t always listening for the sound of the ventilator’s alarm.
After a few months, I became curious about what else I might do at my studio. In the neighborhood, I found an art center that offered a class in clay sculpting using live models. Although I had never made anything in clay except for a misshapen bowl as a child at camp, I signed up. I can’t explain what happened, but I became entranced with the clay and the possibilities of bringing figures and faces to life. My passion for what I was doing made me able to create figures that were technically crude but had surprising vitality. As a child, I had been told by many teachers that I had no artistic talent. I believe that attempting sculpting saved my sanity and gave me a way to live with daily pain and suffering.

After Ron died, I searched for my independence reluctantly. Joan’s story (See Joan's story below) about her husband Allen reminded me of one afternoon, when, not knowing what else to do, I had driven to Limantour Beach on the northern California coast. It was a beach I had visited many times with my family, before and during Ron’s illness. The evening was foggy, but the sky was still streaked with the fading sun. I hesitated when I saw that the parking lot had few cars, but I pushed myself forward.

I took the path above the beach, the path along which we had pushed Ron's wheelchair when we had been compelled to keep it all going, no matter what. As I walked along the path, I remembered placing large plastic sheets, one in front of the other, so that Ron’s wheelchair could roll along the sandy path and not get stuck. It was easier now just to walk up the path, but I felt terribly alone.

When I arrived at the tree where we would stop with the wheelchair, I climbed down from the bluff and struck out onto the beach in the fading sunlight. I got caught up in the beauty of the rolling dunes and the shadows they cast on the sand. I watched the birds flying and feeding in the waves. I kept checking the receding sun, counting on it to light my way. To my surprise I found myself humming as I walked along. Only when I turned back did I realize that the light was no longer visible. I could barely see two feet in front of me, and then I was afraid.

I saw shadows moving, and I imagined I was being followed. How stupid I was to be out alone in a deserted place. I felt panic rising in my throat. If Ron were there, I would have turned to him, leaned on him, and he would have led me back to safety, but he wasn't there. How could he leave me? We had agreed to go through life together, and he had left me, little bit by little bit. I knew he made the right decision to turn off the ventilator, but I still couldn’t believe that his illness took him from me.

I kept going, placing one foot in front of the other. I felt terrified all the way to the parking lot, but when I realized I was going to make it back to the car I had some sense that maybe, just maybe, I could make it in life, although I had no idea how. I was once again becoming a Seeker.