How do you tell your own life story?
Image via @lukas_corso: this is Merci Cine Cafe, in Paris What is a bookstore, but a collection of life stories? That’s why we love them so much.

How do you tell your own life story?

Hello, and welcome to the Kindred Letters - my newsletter for 475,000+ introverts and other kindred spirits who prefer quiet to loud, depth to superficiality, sensitivity to cool. 

Today, we’re talking about how to tell your own life story.

But first: this link will allow you to sign up for my other (free) Kindred Letters newsletter, WHICH HAS DIFFERENT CONTENT from what I post on LinkedIn. For example, recently I wrote about how to protect yourself emotionally from unfair accusations. Please sign up here if you'd prefer not to miss any of my letters

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"Say it. Say it. The Universe is made of stories, not atoms."

- Muriel Rukeyser, via Elliott Black


How do you tell your own life story?

I don’t mean where you grew up, went to school, got your first job, etc. I mean what’s your STORY? What narrative have you constructed from the events of your life?

And do you know that this is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself?

According to the fascinating field of "narrative psychology," the stories we tell about ourselves are the key to our well-being, the maps we use to find our way through life. If you’ve interpreted the events of your life to mean that you’re unlucky or unwise, it’s hard to look calmly at the future. Conversely, if you acknowledge that you’ve made mistakes and faced difficulties but seek redemption, or found meaning, or gained insight, you’ll feel greater agency over your life.

That time you were laid off, for example: is it further proof that you’re no good and your career’s going nowhere? Is it the best thing that ever happened, liberating you to find work that suits you better? Was it a mere experience, like any other, each with its own value? Each of these story structures leads to profoundly different mindsets.

What about your divorce? A sign that you’re unlucky in love? A difficult passage to a more hopeful relationship (including with your own self)? Something else?

The idea is decidedly NOT to delude yourself that bad things are actually good. It is, instead, to find meaning in the progression from one life event to the next. It’s to recognize that everything constantly changes. In your life, you will move from triumph to heartbreak to boredom and back again, sometimes in the space of a single day. What are you to make of so many emotions, so many events?

The narrative matters, at least as much as the events that constitute it.

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Once upon a time, an 18-year-old Frenchwoman named Sophie Serrano gave birth to a baby girl, who suffered from neonatal jaundice.

The baby spent her first days in an incubator under artificial light and was returned to her mother four days later. Unbeknownst to Sophie, it wasn’t her baby. It was another 4-day-old with jaundice. The nurse had switched the babies by accident.

Sophie named her daughter Manon. As she grew older, Manon looked nothing like her parents. She had darker skin and frizzy hair, and the neighbors started to gossip about her origins.

But Sophie never faltered. The nurse had explained that the artificial light used to treat jaundice could affect hair color. Even more, Sophie loved Manon. She knew the story of her life: her cries, her coos, her first words.

It was only when Sophie’s husband accused her of giving birth to another man’s baby that she went for paternity tests and discovered that her husband was right (sort of). The baby, then aged 10, wasn’t his, but she wasn’t Sophie’s either. She belonged to another set of parents, who’d been raising Sophie’s biological daughter in a town several miles away.

It’s a typically fascinating “switched at birth” tale. But here’s where it takes an unexpected turn.

A meeting was arranged for the two mothers and their daughters. Sophie saw that her biological daughter looked like her in a way that Manon never did and never would.

But she felt no connection to this other girl. It was Manon she’d nursed, Manon whose nightmares she’d soothed, and Manon whose stories she knew. This other daughter looked like Sophie—but what did that even mean, when she didn’t know her stories? The other mother felt the same way.

“It is not the blood that makes a family,” Ms. Serrano told The New York Times (where I read this story, some years ago). “What makes a family is what we build together, what we tell each other.”

It’s not necessarily so simple, of course. Babies bond with their birth mothers and suffer their absence even if, as in this case, they’ll never remember it, and choose to stay with their non-biological families.

At the same time, our stories are the heart of love and meaning.

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So: what’s your story? And are you telling one that enlightens you?

If you’re having trouble constructing an honest yet constructive life narrative, here’s an exercise to help you. Just ask yourself these three things:

  1. Can you think of time in your life when you felt strong and happy? If you had a difficult childhood or other challenges that prevent you from identifying this starting place, try thinking of the time when you were still cradled in the womb.
  2. What was the challenge, or series of challenges, that may have come along to threaten your strength and peace?
  3. Can you find meaning in these challenges? You don’t need a classic happy ending, in order to find meaning. And don’t worry if you’re not there yet. Perhaps part of your story is that you’re still engaged in a brave and valiant search.

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And, if you enjoyed this letter, you can sign up here for my other (free) Kindred Letters newsletter, WHICH HAS DIFFERENT CONTENT from what I post on LinkedIn! For example, recently I wrote about how to protect yourself emotionally from unfair accusations.

See you next week!

my warmest,

Susan

#Introverts #Quiet #Leadership #QuietLeadership #Bittersweet #Kindred #SocialLife

alfredo bremont

Human Resources Professional, on the art of being.

1y

however perception is related to memory interpretation and the reality as it evolves in front of your eyes as you discern and link one event with the other the timeline becomes open to your perception and what was said in the 1800 becomes part of facts of what exist in 1990, 2020 time in this respect is universal no beginning no end it is your perception consciousness that shifts from 1917/to 1947 to 2020 for instance you are the time machine facts are at your disposition to move them up and down 🤔

alfredo bremont

Human Resources Professional, on the art of being.

1y

a life story is how events & memory from childbirth are interpreted by your consciousness the cognizant link between reality what you happen to be acquaintances with and how reality unfolds as you understand how the dots are connected geometry creates a hexagon what a writer say's in the 1800 blends with what you learn at age 10 and what reality is today however all depends what information you got from your parents how they communicated that information & later how you come in contact with the links you happen to discover during your adventure in your existing timeline. As you blend time & space the answers bring the clarity of your existence and the reality you perceive as reality. 🤔

Maria Gallo

Wine Investor丨Charity Organization Creator丨MBA丨Investor

1y

A great story of babies switched at birth. Thanks, Susan.

David Samarzia

Accountant/Tax Preparer/Author

1y

I am currently working on writing my series of memoirs titled Blind Sided and being a self employed Accountant and Income Tax Preparer very early in my life made me keep records and documents that will back up my true story behind the headlines that was so twisted and tangled that without my detailed documentation I could never have figured it out and it has been a delayed discovery all these years later because of all the damages emotionally and financially it broke me down after all the years and it had a large media attention and I was the victim of child abuse and stood up to rescue a couple of dozen innocent young children from spending a retreat they called it in the Bahamas with the serial child molester that sexually abused me as a child. The story made me have to go on the defense because of how attorneys and the attorney I retained to help me was not helping me and seemed to be helping himself and yes taking a oath to be moral and ethical isn't nothing when power and control and a lot of money was the true hidden agenda and I was sexually abused as a child and then exploited by the one who I paid 50% plus expenses with interest covering the 8 years of a trial and so many appeals from the molesters attorneys that they spen

JOSE LUIS FLORES, MD

"I am here to serve others first through God's Grace" Adjunct Instructor Fresno Pacific University Emergency and Family Medicine Physician

1y

I love it! Thank You! For us Christians, we call it our testimony. A test to a testimony. A new Creation in Christ Jesus. Such was my journey as a physician becoming addicted to surrendering to God and becoming a man of God ..then a physician. I AM TRULY GRATEFUL; FOR THE CHALLENGES, LOSSES AND PAIN. As this was the transformation that began to form this beautiful life of mine in Christ, A lost license and career and I thought identification, had become a rebirth into what really mattered..a self-worth based on god's Love of redemption and not on worldly value. All Glory to God! Thank you for inspiring me! I have wanted to write an autobiography someday...as God has been directing me..and you were part of that plan. God Bless you! Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew[a] you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

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