Revision Your Story
by Rev. Dr. Steven Spidell
Each life is a story - also a collection of stories that are linked together around a central character: you. Stories are how we remember our past and how we tell others who we are. Stories are where we find and make meaning and purpose of our experiences. Stories carry the values we truly believe in. Stories are the tapestries we weave of our personal journeys through time. Our stories are quite literally who we are. As one author observed, people do not have stories, people are stories. Without a story, the soul is mute.
Many people discover that whatever life they had before they were told that they had cancer, or another life-threatening condition, that life "ended" with the diagnosis. We have seen how the very process of being a patient robs many people of the personal side, the storied-side of our their lives. The idea that something is so wrong with us that our life is truly at risk also is experienced as a direct threat to who we are.
To experience healing as we and the doctors work for a cure, each of us must find a way to hold on to our lives, to keep our stories alive. What our illness means to us is that personal side of the story.
Just as we use medical treatments to fight for a cure, so we must find a way to integrate the new reality of our illness into the story of our lives. This seems even harder to do than receiving chemotherapy, or radiation, or daily dialysis, or whatever the doctors order. Under the assault of medical care, who we were and who we are seem to slip from our grasp. The past feels so far away now. The future - well, who knows? And the present, we just feel lost. Because we do have a new reality in our lives, we must rewrite our story. Nothing we do is more important than re-creating our own personal story as we incorporate our new experiences.
Persons with a life-threatening illness have the opportunity, no, the absolute need, to recover not only their health but also their stories. Medicine helps with the cure. Stories help us to heal. For in reclaiming, remaking, in re-creating our stories we experience nothing less than a transformation to a new level of being. Stories have the power to do that. The process to accomplish this has been called revisioning.
Revisioning means to become aware of, perhaps for the first time at a conscious level, the fundamental storied nature of our lives. We look at the plot, the characters, the actions, the feelings in order to gain a more intentional and wholistic perspective on who we have really been. In doing this, we are often afforded the opportunity to look at again, re-vision, that story and to see where new themes, new characters, new plot twists can be, and perhaps, should be written into the script. In addition, we may also imagine how some of the old script needs to be changed. Therapists have discovered that when people imagine new endings to old experiences, something powerful is released within the psyche, something is freed up from old patterns to face the world with new, fresher, more healthy options. While the past certainly cannot be changed, we still have a tremendous opportunity to change what a lot of it means to us when viewed from a different, more mature perspective. Both meanings of revisioning are significant. First to "see again" the story of our lives from a fresh perspective. Second, to "rewrite" that story in ways that are truer to who we really are and more fulfilling of our deeper selves. Thus revisioning is full of possibilities. To revision is to experience our stories with a deeper sense of wholeness and unity than ever before.
Revisioning our story thus can accomplish several tasks. First, we take control back. For a time, it seems as though our illness, or the doctors, or the fates, have taken over. By revisioning our story we take our lives back. We reclaim our story. We affirm that no one has power over us that we do not choose to give.
Second, in revisioning our story we come to clarity what our illness actually is meaning for to us. Human beings need our lives to mean something. Our stories reveal how we make meaning and what that meaning really is. Our thoughts, our feelings, our actions - everything and everyone we encounter - goes into the making of our story. In revisioning our own story we become ourselves in a new way.
Third, having a story, being a story, reminds us that we are infinitely more than any single circumstance in our lives, even our illness no matter how serious. What our story becomes after the diagnosis guides us on the path of healing. When our "pre-illness" lives drift away, revisioning our story allows us to put the pieces of our lives back together into an even more coherent whole. Our life is our stories which can be woven together to create that beautiful tapestry, indeed a whole new life.
There are several ways that we can be intentional about revisioning the story that we thought we had lost. And we do need to be intentional about it. All too easily we can lose touch with ourselves again. The more we can pay attention to our story the richer and fuller our lives will become. For our story is really our life; our life is truly our story. Truly it is what we make of it. Consider these suggestions on what goes into revisioning your life, your self, your story.
1. Start in the middle. Life has gotten very confusing very fast. Sometimes we don't know if we are coming or going - sometimes we don't even care. To revision your story start in the middle. In other words, start wherever you happen to be right now. The past, the present, and the future are concepts that are extremely relative. Sometimes, time itself is actually irrelevant. So it doesn't matter where you start. You can catch up with yourself along the way.
At first things feel overwhelming. Thoughts, feelings, memories, wishes fly by constantly with no seeming order or coherence. That's OK. Remember, you are on a journey to discover a new meaning for your own story. It will take a while to get there. But you can only begin the journey from where you are right now. Start in the middle of everything. That is where most of us are all the time anyway.
2. Go with the flow. As we pay attention to our inner experience and increase our awareness of our story, there is a multitude of ideas, images, feelings, and memories. Sometimes we hesitate to stay with our story because we fear painful feelings. A little lesson about feelings. As important as awareness and appropriate expression of feelings are, feelings are come and feelings go. They are not the be-all and end-all of life. Try then not to be too intimidated by what you might happen to feel at any particular time. Let your feelings come, and let them go. Feelings over-influence us only when we won't allow ourselves to have them at all. So just let your feelings flow through you as they come.
The same idea of going with the flow applies to the living of each day. Some days are definitely better than others. When we spend too much time imagining what tomorrow will bring we miss the opportunities of today. Going with the flow means to take each day, sometimes each hour, as it comes. The advice is still worthwhile remembering, "One day at a time."
Revisioning and reclaiming your story is a process that will work itself out in its own way and its own time. Trying to rush it will not help. Trust that your story needs to be told and wants to be told. All it requires is your attention and your willingness to listen.
3. Remember who you were. As hard as it might be to conceive now, you really did have a life before you became so seriously ill. Your past - the good, the bad, and the in-between - is still very much your own. Nothing can take it away from you. Take time to remember important events, significant people, fulfilling moments of accomplishment and love. You might be surprised by how much you have experienced and seemingly forgotten. By bringing it back to your awareness you re-enliven yourself. To remember those moments is to take their meaning back into yourself, to reclaim something that seemed lost. It's all still there as part of your story.
As one part of your remembering, think back to a time when you faced serious trouble. How did you hand it then? What did you learn from that experience? What would you do differently now? As the saying goes, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." You can put what you learned into practice. Your "mistakes" will be especially helpful. For from them we learn to correct our choices and do into the future will be in our better interests. You might be surprised - but maybe not - by how many people continue to make the same mistake in personal relationships, on the job, in life decisions and always end up in the same mess. By becoming aware of our past choices, we are in the position of hindsight to see what worked and what didn't.
As you remember your past, also re-vision it, re-imagine it. Imagine what might have gone differently even back then if you had chosen another response. If you can picture other options, other twists in your story, you are actually creating fresh alternatives for yourself here and now. Revisioning is not simply bringing back the old. It is reforming the old in the service of the present. You are wiser now. Use your experience and knowledge.
This exercise is not a matter of "If only...." It is, rather, to allow your own creative powers to release new thoughts and approaches for the living of the present, not the undoing or redoing of the past. Remembering who you were means freeing up yourself to be even more of yourself now. In this way your story will have even more possibilities here and now.
4. What really matters? Even back when life may not have seemed so very serious, you valued certain principles and ideas. Some things that seemed so important before may not mean much at all to you today. Other values that you overlooked might count very highly now. Larry, who had leukemia, describes a remarkable change in how he and his sons relate to each other. "Now we tell each other that we love each other. Before we would never say that. Now we tell each other that we love each other all the time." The value of their connection, once taken for granted, has now become a high priority to be shared and affirmed constantly as Dad struggles with cancer. In a strange way, being seriously ill often gives a person permission to do things differently, perhaps truly to one self. In the process of revisioning your story, become aware of what really matters to you. What you care deeply about will shape how you respond to and interact with the other people in your life. You might find yourself being bored by subjects, and sometimes even by people that you once found fascinating. Now other topics, other persons draw what is best from you. Do you treat people the same? What is that style? If it is different, how so? Be intentional about becoming aware of what truly matters to you. Then one can perceive how those values run all through the story of who you are. Living out of your deepest values now adds its own dimension of depth as you revision your story.
5. It's your own story now. You brought everything about you, everything you ever felt, thought, experienced, or did into the moment you heard you had a serious illness. A large part of feeling overwhelmed is because a person fears that she is not really up to facing such a challenge. Our worst fantasies rush over us leaving us weak and unsure of ourselves.
You now have an incredible opportunity to write the story of how you respond to your illness on your own terms. It is often the case that much of our story was written for us by others. They told us who we are, how we ought to act, how we out to feel. Some of that was helpful. A lot of it was not. You have the freedom now, perhaps as never before in your life, to write your own story based on who you are coming to be, who you can become. It is truly an amazing paradox that a person who would never take risks when hale and hearty, will try new things which death or a disabling illness or injury is staring them in the eye.
Judy had a "spinal stroke" when a blood clot lodged on her spinal cord during an angiogram. She was paralyzed. The doctors said she might never walk again. Her previous life-script had always been a very conservative approach to everything, including finances. Lying in the hospital considering the changes confronting her, she said to Mike, her husband, "You know, if I get well enough I'd like to buy a travel trailer and visit our kids (who live from Virginia to California) and see more of this country. Like they say, "Life is uncertain. Eat the dessert first." Within three days she was able to move her big toe. She was walking with help within a week. Judy and Mike spent $15,000 on a fifth-wheel trailer and a truck to pull it.
Revisioning your story now affords you the opportunity to become more aware of when you are speaking the lines someone else wrote for you, playing the part someone else is directing. In other words, you are living someone else's story. To be fair, most of us do this most of the time. One of the deeper purposes of psychotherapy is exactly to re-script, to revision one's life story. Being seriously ill can accomplish as much as years of therapy. But to success, one must be willing to take your story back and write it for yourself. Just as the doctor's unwittingly took away your story with the diagnosis and treatment, so your family wrote their version of your story. Now might be your best chance to break free of all of those whose claim on you has tied you down and kept you from fulfilling your truest self.
This is your story. It is yours to make the most of now. To revision your story means that you no longer have to live out the story others scripted for you and you acted out. That was their idea of you. Now if your chance, maybe your best chance, to take ownership of your own story and live it the best way you can. If not now, when? Besides, what're they going to do to you?*
*This step is truly a daunting one. The very thing that kept us playing out someone else's script is the very thing that makes it hard to break away from now. We believed that we kept other's loving us by being who they wanted us to be. We desperately need that love and support now that we are ill more than ever before, we think. But the truth remains, if we are ever to experience healing, whether sick or not, we must learn to live our own story. The truth does makes us free. But no one ever said it didn't take a lot of courage to face the truth.
6. Develop new story lines. As you become more aware of the scripts which others wrote for you, you will naturally begin developing new story lines which are authentically your own. A person's true self wants to emerge and develop. Under normal conditions, all it needs is the opportunity. The seed is planted, if you will; all it needs to grow is a little sunshine and water.
Another common way for these "new" stories to emerge is to remember that there were ideas and interests you had in your pre-illness life that you never seemed to be able to find the time for. Now could be the perfect time to all those interests to develop and be added to your new story. Revisioning your story gives you the chance, also, to renew old interests or even to discover talents and gifts that could never come to expression before.
As important as new ideas and interests to encourage and to try is the opportunity to bring a new attitude to the old and familiar. It has become trite, but still true, that appreciation for even the smallest things, sights, smells, and tastes is greatly enhanced when they are not taken for granted. When every hour, every minute counts, we make the most of them. It is only someone who imagines he has all the time in the world who squanders precious moments.
With a heightened awareness of living every moment to the fullest, new stories are created to deeper and enrich the broader scope of life.
7. Become a collector. Since you are not the first to make this trip, learn from the experience of others. Collect the stories of others - their insights, their memories, their wisdom, their poetry and songs. Store them up. Treasure them. When you find something from someone else's story that touches you deeply let it become a part of you. By incorporating the stories of others you enlarge the revisioning of your own story.
How often have you heard or read something that sent your spirit soaring, that opened your eyes to a totally new perspective, that warmed your heart and filled you with love? This reveals the incredible power of the story. Since a story is multidimensional with respect to time, past, present, and future are overcome, and with respect to depth, from individual to mythic, to be grasped by a story is to be penetrated by a power greater than we can imagine, indeed a power so great that only stories can relate its majesty. Stories are healing exactly because they are so multidimensional and because the general and the particular can be brought into direct contact and interaction. Stories "from the past" enrich us now because the past becomes the now. Our present exists at all only because it is already aimed into the future. The power of stories is that this is quality which stories have to lift us beyond ourselves to bring us home to ourselves. T. S. Eliot put this in his immortal verse,
We shall never cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.That is indeed a journey that only a story can tell. For in the telling the journey is created. The only life worth living is one that can only be told in stories. Collect the stories of others. In them you will find yourself, you will become yourself in ways you can best only imagine. But in imagining them you add them to your own story.
8. Join the club. Having a life-threatening illness can be an extremely isolating experience. Sitting in a clinic waiting room filled with people can be one of the loneliest experiences we can have. While it is a journey that no one else can take for you, you do not have to go it alone. Revisioning your story means to discover new capacities for intimacy in your relationships. In a way, you will be adding new "characters" to your story. Many of these new people are those who are walking the same path as you. Just as you can learn from their stories, you can be nourished and strengthened by their companionship along the way. Your story will be different, but where there are experiences in common you will be helped along your way.
Besides looking for new people to add to your story, you can also revision relating to others in different ways than before. Now could be your opportunity to experiment with new styles of being with and relating to others. Laura described herself as a very shy, uncertain woman. Yet in making choices about her cancer treatment she found not just the courage but the ability to ask her doctor's hard questions, to raise possibilities, to seek out other alternatives in her treatment. She constantly amazed herself when she heard how assertively she dealt with the "professionals." She never knew she had it in her, but obviously she did. Now she reaches out to others and invites them into her life. The less isolated we are, the more we can stand up for ourselves.
The preciousness of life calls for us to be in community with others in ways that are mutually fulfilling. In the company of others we experience a depth of living that can be known only when life is shared. Joining the club means to become a part of people who have stories to share, stories that need to be heard. We begin to deepen our own experience when we can value others enough to listen to their story. In hearing their story, we affirm our shared reality; we affirm that we are not alone; that we do not have to be by ourselves unless that is our choice.
9. Get the big picture. Your own story is the most important story to you. But it can become even greater when you are able to see how it fits into a narrative larger than yourself. The religions of humanity give their unique perspectives on that bigger picture. You may discover that you belong in that larger view, part of a larger family, a wider history, and a deeper faith that brings its own sense of meaning and purpose to life.
Indeed, a grander overarching framework is precisely what the great religions of the world have always been about. The individual can seem pretty small and irrelevant in the broader scheme of things. Yet, when even the smallest person is part of a history that reaches back to the dawn of time, when even the least significant one is part of the wind and the sky, when the least of people represents values that transcend personal well-being, then each life takes on a significance far beyond itself. That life is grounded in a force, a power, a will, a purpose more than itself. And because of that the person herself is larger than she would be ordinarily. This is actually having a story within a larger story. Then my story reflects that larger one; that larger one speaks to my own. For example, when a Jew today says "A wandering Aramaean was my father," the reference is to a family that lived thousands of years ago, but the power of Abraham's presence is as much alive today as it was centuries ago.
Revision your story as it can relate to and be informed by that bigger picture. Let it sweep you up and claim you as heir to that rich legacy. You may discover that you do indeed belong to something or someone greater than yourself. Your own story may indeed reflect a vision as wide and as deep as eternity. Then your own healing story tells others not only about you but also to whom you belong.
10. Learn to be still. Your life has become very complicated. There is the often hectic pace of treatment and the stress it brings. And there is all of the internal work you are engaged in to deal with your illness, your recovery, and your healing. If you are intentional about revisioning your story, your eyes are always open to new perspectives and new experiences. Your mind feels like a sponge soaking in anything and everything you can to grow and to deepen every aspect of your life.
Because of this alertness to everything, to make the most of everything, it is important to develop the ability to be still. Whether you use a form of meditation or prayer, you need to be able to sit quietly, clear your mind of every thought, and enjoy the quietness of that contemplation. Sometimes our thoughts and feelings can run away with us. We can become frenzied in all that we are involved in. Learning to be still quietens the noise for a moment and lets the spirit, as it were, breathe.
Being still also opens us up to another moment of healing. When we are doing all of the thinking, all of the working, all of the feeling, we miss the opportunity for something greater than ourselves to speak to us in that still small voice. Being quiet allows us to become more aware of and open to that Life that flows in and through us.
11. Tell your story. Telling your story to others who share the journey with you is a richly rewarding and powerfully affirming experience. Stories are meant to be told - and heard. The old philosophical question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?" applies to stories. No matter how great any experience can be, it cannot matter to anyone else until it has been told. Stories need to be shared in order to be full-bodied.
You have an incredibly wonderful story to tell. It is not always pretty. Sometimes it does not even make sense. But don't worry about that. It is about you and what you have come to know about yourself and about your life. Because you belong to all of creation, so what you know matters to all, if they will but listen.
Look for situations in which you feel secure to tell your story. Stories need to be heard by others who are caring and accepting. Of course, not everyone will be able to listen openly and lovingly to you. Then don't waste your time or your energy on them. The time just isn't right for them to hear your story. So many others are there ready and able to listen. Trust your story, trust your self to them.
Few things in life are more transforming and healing then to tell someone who you really are. Then you experience what it is like to be known and understood. They will be blessed to hear your story. Something in them might very well be healed as well. And your whole healing will continue and be sustained just because you tell your story.
Share you story with others. Both you and your listener will be enriched. To revision your story means to widen the circle of those who know you.
12. There is always more to come. Revisioning your story makes possible an openness to being restored, refreshed, and healed. Each moment that comes to you carries with it the potential for new life, for a new twist on your story. Every now and then something will come along that could actually change your story completely. Stay alert for the unexpected. Revisioning your life story heightens your awareness of everything around you.
Remember, "It ain't over 'til it's over." And it ain't over even then. There is always more to come. Never think that you have come to the final chapter. As someone said, "What looks like the end to the caterpillar is only the beginning for the butterfly."
As you become more and more the author of your own story, you will experience some things you never had expected. In the revisioning and sharing of your story we actually experiencing healing and transformation. That is the true power of the healing story.
When authentic stories are told and heard, both the teller and the listener are touched by a greater power. All true-life stories are born in and come out of that life force which is instilled in us all. From that power we come. In that power we live. To that power we return. Stories have the power to transform, to heal. For when the story, your story, is told and heard, the true power of life emerges to renew and to restore. When you give yourself to revisioning your story, healing will be yours as well.
Did you feel that your life was over when you heard the diagnosis? In some ways it was. But when one story ends another is just beginning. Maybe even a better one. The possibilities before you are as rich as your imagination. The potential lies waiting for you to bring it to life. But that is up to you. After all, it is your story.