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Posts Tagged ‘personal transformation’

The Power of Story

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

Reality is made up of a system of stories. We tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world around us. We have stories about everything and everyone: our towns, family, coworkers and pets. But the most important stories are the ones we have about ourselves.

As babies, we start life without a story, but pretty soon, our families begin to tell stories about us. Heather always sees the glass half empty, Suzie is smart, and Maureen is the troublemaker. Whether these attributes are the truth or not doesn’t seem to matter. One day a child exhibits certain behaviors, a story is told and quite quickly, the story becomes reality.

While we have to make judgments and conjure stories to navigate reality, humans don’t seem to be very good at changing the stories once they’re written. And because of this, we end up interacting with each other’s stories, not our true selves. If you were raised in a good household, your story is probably more or less truthful and therefore working for you. But in dysfunctional households, stories can be toxic and have lifelong negative consequences.

If you were raised in a dysfunctional household, your story was not made with you in mind, it was made to benefit your crazy parents. Kids in dysfunctional households have been trained to disregard their desires and needs because their pleas either went unheard or their needs upset their parents. Their parents’ denial of their abusive/neglectful behavior trains the children that what they perceive is not the truth; the Happy Family story conflicts with the war zone reality. To survive, the children modify who they are — their stories — to fit their crazy parents’ needs, leaving any sense of themselves behind. While these new stories help them survive childhood, the same stories can cripple them as adults.

When you don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you want. When you don’t know what you want, you can’t ask for it. When you can’t get what you want, your needs aren’t met. And when your needs aren’t met, you aren’t happy. Which is why half of this nation is on antidepressants. Our stories make us miserable.

Thankfully, for me, my therapist is helping me rewrite my story. My problem now is trying to figure out who the hell I really am.

To determine this, I started with what I’ve been told about myself. The stories vary wildly. I’m either a great friend or a flake. (Flakiness is the side effect of a writing career; my true friends know enough not to pin me down.) I’m either the best daughter in the world or the worst. I’m a good wife, a good critique partner, and my neighbors like me. I did great in school and got blackballed at every bookkeeping job I had. I’m either a great writer or the worst in the world, who should be fired and never allowed to write another word. To one reader of CoastViews, I was “a short-fused head job” and “a tightly wound harridan.” When I moved away from living next door to my parents, I was “selfishly abandoning” them. When I took care of my stroke-victim sister, I was a saint. And there are a million more stories just like that. I’m either a great person or I’m Satan, thankfully leaning more towards the former.

The main story that people tell me is that I’m weird. Not only weird — people have described me as wacky, a freak, out there, Janet From Another Planet, the list goes on. I gotta say, this is one story I think I hate the most. None of these terms is nice. Weird is not positive. Weird is derogatory. Most people who call me weird seem to be worried that they might lose their social standing by associating with me. Calling me weird is their subtle attempt to distance themselves from me and therefore, not look bad. For whatever reason people call me weird, I don’t like it. Eccentric would be a better term, if we insist upon labels. But one thing I will agree: I stick out.

After reviewing others’ stories about me, it became clear they were not very accurate. Because I am the only one who knows me. And I have to accept this simple truth: all that I am was given to me. I didn’t choose to hate Indian food anymore than I chose to love toy robots. My only job is to accept who I am completely and love myself as I am. So that’s what I’m trying to do: stop telling old stories and write myself new ones rooted in truth.

My entire goal this year is to be authentic. I want the people in my circle to be there because of who I am, not despite it. However, in order to find the people who genuinely like me, I not only have to figure out my stories, I have to deconstruct the stories of others. In the past, I’ve clung to false stories about friends because I didn’t want to face the truth: normally that someone didn’t like me or was mistreating me. But now, no matter who they are, I have to allow myself to see the truth.

I think it would benefit us all — the healthy and the healing — to determine our stories and our truths. Even if we’ve been brainwashed our whole lives, that little voice in the back of our heads knows who we truly are. Continually reviewing and editing our stories to fit our current truths ensures that the stories help to move us forward and not hold us back.

But the transformation of self is a daunting task. My stories are so rooted in my emotional foundation, I feel like I need dynamite to dislodge them. But they are merely stories and as such, can be edited and changed. And I can’t wait to put my writing talents to work on my personal story. So far, all I’ve got is that I’m not weird. In my opinion, it’s a hell of a start.

© 2012 Janet Periat

The Picture on the Piano

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Recently, I realized that I am going to die. No, I didn’t contract a terminal illness; I finally got out of denial. Not only did my 52nd birthday alert me to the fact of my impending death, spending time in my parents’ retirement community drove the point home. I’ve watched as several of their neighbors have gone from sitting next to them in the dining room to having their pictures displayed on the piano in the lobby—which is how all the recently deceased are honored. Mom said, “What you don’t want is to walk by the piano and see your picture on it. Then you know you’re in trouble.” And I know someday her photo will be on that baby grand. Not far behind will be mine. Even with my preventive measures—working out and eating right, etc.—I, like all human beings, will go to that giant Disneyland in the sky. (You have your idea of Heaven, I have mine.)

This realization brought about a great disturbance in Janet’s Force. I finally realized I have very limited time left. That it was imperative to prioritize my choices so I could achieve the most important goals before my picture winds up on the piano.

Luckily, my greatest desire was super clear to me: writing the novels. My passion for the work is blinding and all-encompassing. I am obsessed with the stories in my head. My brain is like a cable TV system: tons of channels and all are full of programming. Writing them down is the feat. Even if I do nothing else—like eat or sleep or talk to people—I will not have enough time to write all the books in my head. Partly because there are so many stories, but mostly because it takes so freaking long to write a book.

Which brings me back to My Giant Realization. Not only did I come to the conclusion that I didn’t I have time to do everything on my plate, I didn’t have the time for many of the things I’d planned to do this lifetime. In fact, I had almost no time to do anything besides the books. I experienced a sort of death of dreams. I voiced all the things swirling around in the back of my mind that I thought I’d do, and one by one, gave them up. No time for learning the guitar and starting an all-girl punk band. No competitive racecar driving. No big cat rescue or zookeeper.

Actually, that was the easy part of my process. Since I hadn’t invested time in any of the activities, they weren’t very difficult to give up. The hard part was quitting current activities. Especially the Good Do-Bee volunteer work. Really pushed me up against the ideas society gave me regarding my self worth.

As a woman of a certain age (I bloody hated writing that sentence), I was not trained to care about myself. I was brainwashed into thinking that doing things for others was, in actuality, doing things for myself. I was trained to think that if I focused on my own needs, I was selfish and not a “good girl.” I was taught that good girls had no needs. Which is stupid and why many women my age are bat-crap crazy. Because our basic human right to live our own lives was taken from us.

While I still enjoy helping others and won’t give up all volunteering, I don’t want my obituary to read: “She was a self-sacrificing person who rarely did anything for herself.” I want the headline: “Famous Author Dies In Own Home After a Long and Fruitful Life.” I am the only one who can write my books. What if Jane Austen, Nora Roberts and J.K. Rowling had never written their books? No Mr. Darcy, Rourke and Eve, or Harry Potter. While I doubt my work will achieve that level of recognition, if I put all my energy into my career now, I’ll have a much better chance for success. When I was freaking out about the decision to self-publish, worried I might fail, a friend asked me, “Have you heard of Doris Masterson?” “No.” “Neither has anyone else because she never put her books on the market.” Probably because Doris was busy being a good girl.

After realizing the Good Girl Trap was part of my problem, I examined and judged each activity by asking myself two questions. Does this further my writing career and personal goals? Or am I doing this to be a good girl? Some activities, while on the outside appeared to be Good Girl motivated, actually turned out to be things I enjoyed. Like hosting the family Christmas party.

But other endeavors revealed themselves to be part of my old pattern. Like the MC gig at the Pescadero Arts and Fun Festival. When I started eighteen years ago, it really fed me. I loved being on stage and helping the kids of Pescadero. But it was a really exhausting job. People assumed I breezed up on stage, spouted a few jokes off the top of my head, and waltzed off to party. Not. Preparation and recovery took one to two weeks. In recent years, I performed because I was needed, not because I wanted to be there. So I quit. While the decision was no fun, I felt no regrets. I felt free.

After that, my decisions came easier. So far I’ve quit three major jobs—writing gigs and volunteer positions—and I’m still not done cleaning house.

I can’t tell you how happy these changes are making me. While I have no idea if I’ll reach all my career goals, there are two things of which I am certain. By the time my picture is on that piano, I’ll have many more books on the market. And more importantly, I will have lived the life I chose for myself, not the one that was chosen for me.

©2011, Janet Periat

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