Wisdom of Women's Stories

Growing up I had a grandmother who was complicated.  I loved her, and I know she loved me, but she had a way of making you question whether she liked you are wanted to be around you. I remember her complaining about things often, whether it was the way I set the table, or our use of too many lights in the house, or how much seasoning was on the food. She loved solitaire, and she LOVED to talk about everyone she knew at the senior center and her cousins, and she would talk a lot.  She didn’t seem particularly interested in anything I, or my brother, or my parents were up to.  I have a hunch that she talked about us a lot to other people, although I’m not entirely sure where she got the information since she never listened to anything about us.  It was a challenge to be with her sometimes.

For all the talking she did, I actually knew very little about her.  I don’t really know where she was from, who she grew up with or why those cousins were so important to her.  Then, about a year to two after I graduated from college, she passed away.  After my grandpa died a few years earlier she turned inward, disengaged from life, rarely ate, and so it was not a surprise when I received the call that she had passed.  I didn’t live near her, so it had been a while since I had last seen her very tiny frame, but I remember in our last encounter thinking she looked small and a bit lost in the world.  The night I found out she had died I remember sitting on the balcony of my apartment.  I wept for her that night.  I remember, and can still feel the deep sadness, not for losing someone I was very close to, but for the depth of stories that I believe she held that she never dared to share.  I’m certain she had stories of love and loss and heartbreak and tragedy, but I’ll never know them.  I know she had those stories because we all do.  There was something so final, a piece of hope that died with her, that there could be some knowing or some understanding of who she was and the life that had shaped her into that person.  I’ve thought about this over and over and over.

We think sharing our stories will break us, and might even break anyone who hears them- but it is the telling and the receiving of stories that will heal us.  It will heal us all.  I wonder what it would have been like for her to share her stories and have someone hear them, receive them, love her in spite of or because of them.  I don’t get to know.

Perhaps this is part of why story work is so important to me.  The moments that I get to sit and receive or facilitate the sharing of someone’s story are deeply profound and moving.  It’s quite possibly the closest I have ever felt to God.

I hear a lot of stories in my work with people recovering from substance abuse. Most of their stories are hard, and many of my clients have told their stories over and over again.  But once in a while I sit with someone who shares their story, then looks up at me and says “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that before.” It is a humbling place to be the one who holds that moment for them.  You can feel a softening in the air in those moments, as if the edge of something has been smoothed and is now easier to hold.  The sharing of stories is a balm for the soul not only of the teller, but for the listener as well.

I’m in the very early stages of a new collaborative project that I hope will provide a space for women to share stories in retreat settings.  It’s in it’s infancy, so too early to really share any details of substance.  I just know in my soul that this world needs healing, and there is healing in our stories.  If I can play a small part in ushering some of those stories out of our bodies and into the world we will all be better for it.