Once Upon A Time...I Became A Story

Stories shape our lives. When I look at the boxes stored in my attic, the boxes packed to move to a new home, I know they are filled with books: childhood books, academic books, great reads. My Nancy Drew books are stacked on a shelf in my daughter’s bedroom, the pages yellowed with age, my inked name on the inside front cover fading with time. Those books bring back memories of reading with a flashlight under the covers at night and excitedly unwrapping a new installment on my birthday or Christmas. A similar stack of books sits on a different book shelf, the Harry Potter series my daughter and I read together throughout her childhood. Good stories enrich our lives, and when we ask, as Alasdair Macintyre (1981) did, “Of what story do I find myself a part?” our answers are varied and revealing of who we are.      

One of the earliest stories I remember my grandmother telling is about the time she and her two older sisters sneaked out of the house one night without their father’s permission to attend a dance. When they arrived home, he was waiting for them with a cat-n-nine tails, but my petite grandmother managed to avoid punishment by hiding under the huge dining room table where her father couldn’t reach her. What does this story say about me? Maybe that I come from a long line of strong, adventurous women who aren’t afraid to defy convention.

There are family stories I share with my husband and children that say I am a wife, a mother, a person blessed with strong family ties that won’t break. We often reminisce about singing along to the Shrek CD on a car trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains. When “I’m a Believer” played, instead of just listening to Donkey turn the chorus over to “those in the back row,” my husband called out for “those in the back seat” to carry the tune, and my daughter’s voices echoed through the car. This is a story about love, and fun, and togetherness and will always be a part of our lives, providing a glimpse of who we are as a family.

Stories become labeled and those labels start to apply to other stories. In my family, there are stories of the loophole and tuition moments. With my friends, if any one of us mentions the thumb kiss, or the parent call center, or the pirate eye patch, we all immediately laugh and celebrate the friendships behind those stories. There are the tales of conference dinner walks, charred pizza, and the five burner stove I remember with colleagues (and fellow bloggers) that reveal deeper connections than just collegiality. These stories are all part of who I am and where I find my place in this world. If you stay tuned and keep reading the Profound Living blog, you just might hear the details of some of these stories.

Hardy (1968) said that we “dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticise, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative.” Stories are not just words on a page in a book on a shelf; they are our history, our very essence. When we share our stories, we connect with others in meaningful ways. We tell them who we are. By listening to the stories of others, we come to understand the stories we are a part of. As I’ve shared a few pieces of my story with you, I wonder what your stories tell. Whether we publish a book, post a blog, pass down memories to our children, tell our tales over coffee or wine with friends, or keep our narratives quiet to be enjoyed in the moments of solitude when we think about our life, we are all a continuous and changing story.

Hardy, B. (1968). Novel: A forum on fiction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 

MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue. London, UK: Duckworth Books.