On storytelling and vulnerability

Over the past few months, I participated in a live storytelling project with eight other women, and it was a massive learning experience on so many levels.

If you’ve been here very long, you know that I am super passionate about storytelling, especially when it comes to women.

In our society that teaches women to focus all of their time and energy and stories on their kids, husband, etc., it’s so important for women to tell their own stories. Because it’s through storytelling that we break down the isolating walls that can make us feel so uniquely fucked and uniquely unable to cope.

So when I was invited to take part in a live storytelling project a few months ago, I jumped at the chance … sort of.

I was hesitant at first, mostly because I worried about what it means for someone to make money off of other women telling their most vulnerable stories on a stage, but also because many of the women I had watched in previous years were less than inspiring. It was like WASP central, with mostly wealthy white women bemoaning the sad little disappointments they’d faced with such a brave face, the sweethearts.

But when I met with the director, she convinced me of her mission and I decided to take part.

By far the best part of this experience was the opportunity to really get to know some other women (some of whom are WASPy) and learn how much we, as women, really do have in common, despite our other differences.

I made some incredible friends in this experience, friends I hope to have for a lifetime. I witnessed women caring for one another, in tangible ways. One friend donated some hot fuchsia pants so I had something fun and new to wear on stage, while others donated emergency funds when my landlady threatened to evict me a few weeks into the project.

I witnessed women holding one another as they wept, women offering one another empathy and warmth and understanding. It helped that almost half of the cast are social workers, maybe.

The day of the show, women were running around getting ready and helping one another look and feel our best. Women were showering one another with sincere compliments and well-wishes and encouragement.

Posing before the show with my new friend Diamond, who is a total baddie.

I have never been a team-player, former gifted kid that I am. I was always the annoying student who insisted on doing my own project to avoid dealing with slackers.

Being on a team means you have to trust your teammates, and it also means if the team loses, you lose.

This experience taught me that being on a team also means that when the team wins, you win. When one member of the team is hurting, you hurt. When one member shines, you feel the warmth, too.

As far as the storytelling bit, I also learned so much.

For one thing, I learned how very difficult it is for me to step out of journalist mode and back into storytelling mode.

I wrote several completely different drafts of the story I wanted to tell because a.) I couldn’t settle on which of my 1 million amazing life stories to share and b.) the director kept coming back and saying my story felt more like an article or a blog post and less like a story.

The only two rules we had were

1. No saying the F-bomb or the D-bomb or like… those other super bad words. But other PG-13 naughty words were okay.

2. No trying to bestow a lesson on the audience, TED talk style. Just tell your story.

That first rule was actually easier for me than I thought it would be, because I’m a fucking sailor-mouth. But the second rule was hard.

What do you mean I should just tell a story from my life without trying to encourage the audience to take some gem away with them?

What do you mean I should trust the audience to come to their own conclusions?

I ended up sharing the story I wanted to tell the moment I agreed to participate: the story of how I met my love, Patrick, and how his love for me is showing me how very little I have ever truly loved myself.

Sure, I’ve had incredible respect for myself, but love? Never.

Love says, “I will hold you and appreciate you even when you can’t be all that I need you to be.” It says, “You don’t have to be perfect to deserve my love.”

As a lifelong perfectionist with an intense inner critic that has a razor-sharp tongue, it’s been a very long journey of trying to extend grace and compassion to myself — one I didn’t truly begin until my mom died.

It was incredibly scary for me to tell the story I told, which is why I wrote those other drafts before I finally let myself write that one — one about my recovery after Egypt, one about my passion for justice and truth and how perfect the journalism job fits for me, and one about what I learned after my mom died.

Telling the story of my love with Patrick was terrifying because it felt like I was begging the universe to fuck things up. Like I was just begging someone in the audience to curse us with 3ayn (evil eye) due to envy.

Worst of all, I worried I was gonna look back two or five or ten years from now and feel so damned embarrassed once he broke my heart or I discovered he was a serial killer or something.

What I learned from getting on that stage in my new fuchsia pants was how good it feels to finally have a good story to tell after a life of so much suffering.

I learned that all we have is now, really, and that there is never a reason to feel ashamed about rejoicing in something which gave you joy at the moment.

I learned that the value of an experience or relationship lies not in how long it lasted, but in how deeply it changed you. And loving Patrick and being loved by him is changing me for the better in profound ways.

Stay tuned for video of my speech in coming weeks!