The Stories We Live By

What is your story?
What story holds the shape and trajectory of your life?
What narrative holds you together? Connects your spirit to your body, your mind to your heart, your life with the earth, to God, to others?

What stories make you, you? What tales do you tell with your time and money, your laughter and tears?

You are held together by so many different things. Where you were born, how you were raised, the why and what that fills your days, how things were at school and work and home and the playground. The stories told to you from screens and glossy covers about bodies and shame, the ones shared from pulpits about what you can gain if you do this and do that and deny that and this.

There are things we cannot change about our stories, however much we may long to. Things that have given our lives shape and colour but we do not know what to do with. Some narratives are thrown upon us, and we may feel as though we do not have a choice but drag them around in our bodies and hearts wherever we go. There are some stories we wish were ours, and we fantasise about changing the plot lines and the characters and certain aspects of ourselves to fit into a story we believe more worthy of being lived.

Stories are the ligaments of our lives. Just as ligaments connect bone to bone in the body, stories are the connective points in our lives that give it a certain shape and stability. Stories hold us together in the sense that they are the glue of everything that makes up you.

We even have stories about our stories, that one is worthy while the other is not, that if this is part of the story then it must mean this or that.

This is what I find destructive about New Year’s resolutions. They are often driven by a narrative that condemns who you are right now, and idealises an image, a story, about who you could be if, where, what, when and why.

Lean in, listen, take my hand. Your story is worthy, now. Your story is valid here, just as it is. Your story is yours, and you are good and holy and already beloved. Resist the urge to swap your story for another, to fantasise about what it should be or what it could be if only this did not happen and if you could get your life together. New Year’s resolutions corner you into a tunnel of dualism that condemns the now and heroises what is not even real.

You, your story, all of it, as it is, nothing left out, nothing embellished. It works. It is enough. It is good enough for you to build the rest of your life with.

This year, swap out resolutions for story analysis. Sometimes we find ourselves living narratives that are not serving us. Or maybe they did for a time, but life has evolved and it is time the story did too. And maybe even still, you can hear the whisper of a story deep in your bones that you cannot see any evidence of, and you begin to listen and coax it out into the open. Storytelling is your good and holy work, and you… You are the storyteller of your life, even of the parts of it you did not choose.

Fulfilling a resolution will not finally make you worthy of love. Only when you begin to believe the story of your goodness and worth here and now will you find what you have been looking for all this time.

CONSIDER THIS: “Our lives are a collection of stories. Truths about who we are, what we believe, what we came from, how we struggle and how we are strong. When we can let go of what people think, and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness, the feeling that we are enough just as we are, and that we are worthy of love and belonging.”
Brené Brown.

Liz xo