A Week of Milestones

It’s been a big week at I Am Story Studios–with a launch, a lesson, and a 12-year leap.

For starters, this will be my last post to this WordPress blog. Instead, I will now be posting through my new website which launched this week! I am so excited about it, and urge anyone who would like to continue reading this blog to subscribe to the website instead. You can find the subscription box at the top of the Home page at IAmStory.com.  The site is everything I hoped it would be. Its focus is the intersection of three of my favorite subjects:  Story, Psychology and Art.  I am so excited to have a place to collect and share research, ideas and images about these three subjects AND to see what magic develops when they are held in close quarters.  There are book lists and sample stories, art projects and helpful hints, poetry and comic strips. It’s been great fun to pull it together (with the help of my very talented graphic designer, Sara Wallfisch of Wallfisch Designs) and I welcome everyone to join the conversation.

Next, I learned a lesson in marketing:  you have to actually talk to people about what you are doing. Who knew? I am usually terrible at promotion, so it’s a very good thing that I’m married to someone who isn’t shy about such things. Doug talked to someone who talked to someone who thought Jack’s story might interest other people. The result? Our local paper ran a really great article, complete with lots of photos, about I Am Story Studios, and Coming About, the book I wrote with my client Jack Jouett. You can read it by clicking here. It was fun to see in print. My mother will be so proud. But I’m proud of it as well, because finally, finally other people will learn about this really wonderful man. After three years of working on this project, I am certain that his life is worth knowing about. Check out the Store if you’re interested in Jack’s book.

And last but not least, I’m turning 50 years old. People who know me well know that I can be somewhat chronologically creative. I’ve been stuck at 38 for some time. (To learn why, see “A Woman of a Certain Age.”)  It isn’t denial, exactly.  I’m not afraid of aging, nor did I think there was anything wrong with being older than 38. It’s just that for 12 years now, when I tried to remember my age, my forties didn’t stick.

I have to say, though, that I’m willing to give 50 a try. It has a nice ring to it. It feels balanced and peaceful and productive. And if being 50 feels anything like my last week of being 49, when I finally got to see the hard evidence of a lot of years of hoping and building and working, then bring it on.  I’m ready.

Join me!

What Happens After the Fairy Tale

It promises to be a lovely day. This evening, my family and I will drive out to a beautiful vineyard here in Oregon for the 10th Anniversary celebration of our good friends, Dixie and Bob.  I’m excited. There will be lawn games and wine tasting and dinner and dancing. I even bought a new dress. But I’m excited for other reasons. Dixie and Bob are some of our closest friends, and I’m thrilled to be included in the day, especially since many people would consider our relationship to be improbable.

Let me explain. I used to be married to Dixie’s brother, Kelly. She became my sister-in-law and soul mate over 28 years ago, and even after my marriage to Kelly ended nearly 20 years ago, Dixie stayed on. Our friendship has continued and deepened.

Like most relationships, however, it didn’t happen without effort or commitment. Dixie and I worked to stay in each other’s lives and to spend time together. She was a major source of support and encouragement during my years as a single mother. When I married Doug and we created a blended family with four kids, Dixie welcomed everyone with kindness and enthusiasm. Our friendship continued through the end of Dixie’s own marriage, and Doug and I were both thrilled when she married Bob–about ten years ago. When Dixie’s mother–and my former mother-in-law–died last summer, Doug and I were at the hospital with Dixie and Bob, and I considered it a great privilege. They truly are two of the most important people in our lives.

I’m so grateful for this, especially recognizing that the ending of a marriage is usually the ending of a fairy tale we all grow up believing in, and most of us aren’t sure how to write the next chapter. But an unwritten story is also a great opportunity. We can write it any way we want. And Dixie and I have co-written a story that gives great meaning to my life, and makes me proud. We had help. I appreciate that Kelly was gracious enough to support the friendship not only with Dixie but the rest of her (and his) family, which took courage and confidence. I’m grateful that my husband Doug not only understood the connection I had to my ex-husband’s family, but eagerly joined me in it.

Tonight, Dixie and Bob are having a brief ceremony to honor their marriage, and they’ve asked me to read an excerpt from Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindberg. I’ve read the book several times before (at Dixie’s suggestion), but had forgotten this passage.

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits–islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

It’s a good message for a marriage, for sure, and an apt description of what I love about Dixie and Bob’s relationship. But if you think about it, it’s true for all relationships. Even improbable ones.

I’ve had a few tides that have rushed through my life in unpredictable ways. I never thought I’d be divorced, or a single mother, or a member of a blended family. I also didn’t expect that one day I would attend a party with my husband, my kids, and most of my ex-husband’s family. It’s a different twist in my story than I ever thought to expect. But I’m thrilled with the way it’s turning out.

Happy Anniversary, Dixie and Bob. Thanks for being part of my story.

Keeping A Visual Journal: One Way to Work

I am a journal-keeper. For years I have amassed a growing collection of black, 5″x8″ unlined Moleskine notebooks, the very sight of which fill me with an inexplicable sense of calm and contentment. Like most journal keepers, I turn to my small black books to scribble out my woes, my prayers, my joys and my questions. I copy out quotes that I like, or take notes on the books I am reading. I sometimes jot down the name of the plumber I need to call or a quick To Do list, but mostly it’s filled with the stuff of my thoughts.

For the past couple of years, I have also tried to keep a visual journal, or art journal. Its purpose is much the same as my beloved black books–to get my thoughts out of my head–but the emphasis is on exploring the non-verbal parts of my beliefs. It is another form of listening. As Kelly Brown says in her inspiring blog Art Journaling as a Creative Process:

Art journaling is about expression, both written and visual, of emotions and thoughts; it is a space for questions that may not have answers, a place for thoughts that may otherwise not have a home, a safe container for emotions so that they do not have to be loose in the world. Although the journal can become an extension of the self, it can also be a place to play and experiment with art materials.

Over the years, however, I have noticed that however easy it is for me to pull out my Moleskine journals and dig right in, when it comes to painting or drawing or scribbling I am–to use a term from Brown’s blog–”art-shy.” I feel reluctant to start.

I once had coffee with an old friend, an artist and art teacher, who pulled a paintbrush out of her purse, dipped it in her coffee cup, and painted a landscape on her place mat. I am envious (and, truth be told, a little bit angry) when I find myself around people who can create on whim. Sadly, I am not one of them.

It’s completely possible that gifted artists have already put in so much time and effort that they have formed a habit of creative productivity. But that doesn’t truly help me, a part-time artist, who aspires to use art as a form of play, and  to help me think. Until I can build up the habit, it’s helpful to have a few guidelines to get me going.

To that end, I decided to document one of my art journal projects and offer it as an example of one way to create an art journal page. It is certainly not the only way, or the best way. It’s just one way. Maybe it will help someone else find a way in to work.

Step One:  The Journal

My art journal is an inexpensive spiral bound notebook I picked up at an art supply store. It is 9″x12″, small enough I can throw it in my briefcase on trips, but big enough to give me space to work. I like the spiral binding because I can glue smaller pieces onto my journal pages.

Step Two: Choosing an Intention

When I am  about to work on anything, it helps to have an idea of why I’m doing it. For this project, I was thinking the question “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”  I don’t have the answer to the question when I start. I don’t even want to verbalize an answer. I’m anxious to see what the non-verbal part of me knows.

Step Three: Collecting Images

I love working in collage. Collage is quick, easy, and you don’t have to know how to draw!  For this project, I quickly created a pile of tissue paper, cut-out words, scraps of things with different textures, colors and shapes that caught my eye.

Step Four: Covering the Blank Space

My “canvas” is a 5″x7″ piece of watercolor paper, chosen because it is small enough not to intimidate me. However, very little is as terrifying to me as a blank space, and I know enough about myself to know that I need to cover up that space as quickly as possible. I selected a few of the larger images and pieces of paper and glued them down quickly with acrylic medium, just to cover most of the white. You could also use Mod Podge, or even glue. You don’t have to cover all of the white–white invites opportunity–but enough that it feels like it has some form and structure.

Step Five: Creating a Base

You could skip this next step if you’d like, but for some reason I like the idea of painting a light wash of color over the base images. It provides a background, a deeper layer, that the newer images can rest on. I watered down some fluid acrylic paint in Titanium White with an acrylic medium and painted a thin layer over the entire canvas.

Step Six: Playing with Images

This is the fun part. After the white wash was mostly dry, I worked with some of the other images I’d selected, playing with different arrangements on the canvas. I decided that canvas actually worked better vertically. I was drawn to the words I’d cut out that said “What Do I Do?” but decided I wanted to cut the words apart and rearrange them. Eventually I reached a place where I was satisfied with the arrangement. I still didn’t really understand what it all meant, but I was ready to move on.

Step Seven: Final Layer

Although I could have stopped there , I have found that applying another wash over the top of the images helps tie things together. Plus, it allows me to play with paint, which in my opinion is always a good thing. I chose to add thin layers of fluid acrylics (Burnt Sienna and Yellow Oxide) to different parts of the piece. If I didn’t particularly like what I’d painted, I wiped it off and tried again.

Step Eight: Responding to Art

I glued the piece into my art journal. Over it I wrote the date and the prompt I was using. If you do nothing else, record these few details. If you want to go further, spend some time writing your response to the art. What jumps out at you? What do the different elements say to you? Why were those colors important.

For my piece, I wrote pages and pages, and although I won’t share all of what I learned, there were a couple of interesting details that jumped out. First was that I’d included a calendar. I couldn’t figure out how to make it fit until I tore it into pieces, reassembled it and glued it down. The meaning? I need to stop forcing my work to a timeline. I need to focus on smaller pieces, and to stop being impatient for seeing how it will all turn out. The other thing I learned was the most obvious. What would I do if I knew I could not fail? I would “Do What I Do.”  This reminds me that I’m on the right path. I don’t need to change course–get my pilot’s license or go on safari or take up golf. I can keep doing what I’m doing.

That, for me, was good news. I suppose I knew a version of that before I started making art, but it was nice to have the confirmation.

Cultivating the Creative Personality

I’m fascinated by creativity–who has it, how you get it, what people do with it. From the time I was little, if forced to choose between being considered creative, athletic, or beautiful, I would choose creative every time. Well, that’s not true. There was a period in junior high school when I would have given just about anything to have a boy named David think I was pretty. But I eventually outgrew that, and creativity reigned supreme.

The funny thing about creativity (and perhaps any other trait) is that it’s hard to know when you have it. I’m not alone in this. Agnes De Mille, the contemporary dancer and choreographer, writes in her autobiography Dance to the Piper about a time when she felt she couldn’t gauge the value of her own work. De Mille had just received acclaim for her work on Oklahoma, which she felt was only fairly good, while for years critics had ignored much of what De Mille considered her best work. Disheartened, she talked with Martha Graham, another leading light in contemporary dance, and confessed that she had “a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that [she] could be.” Graham responded with what De Mille considered the best advice she ever received, and which I think has a lot to say to any of us pursuing a creative life:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium  . . . and be lost.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Stories like De Mille’s encourage me because, although it is easy to acknowledge her accomplishments and talents in hindsight, seen from the perspective of her own experience, however, there were never any guarantees. She was regularly told she had no talent, that she was too fat or too old. But still, she persisted, in the face of rejection, confusion, and little financial gain. She kept the channel open and kept showing up for her work.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently reading and thinking about creativity, and how to increase its presence in my life. Maybe I’ll be able to uncover some hints or tips to help me down the creative path. Or, at the very least, to keep me from getting too discouraged when that path gets rugged and steep. I’ve learned that although most of us don’t aspire to become Michelangelo, Mozart, or Martha Graham–the people I considered Creative with a Capitol “C”–even garden-variety creativity of the rest of us can be enhanced. The big question is: How?

The answer to this question would take more than a blog post to answer, but I did come across a few ideas. Dr. Nancy Andreasen, a psychiatrist and researcher on creativity identified several traits common to the creative personality. Creative people tend to be:

• Adventurous, rebellious and individualistic, yet at the same time sensitive to the experiences of themselves and others;
• Playful yet persistent;
• Intensely curious about everything, but single-minded in their vision.

These could be considered paradoxes, unless you consider the work by one of my favorite writers, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who found in his research that the creative personality can best be described by one word: complexity. He says, “it involves the ability to move from one extreme to the other as the occasion requires. … [C]reative persons definitely know both extremes and experience both with equal intensity and without inner conflict.” For example, they have a great deal of physical energy to pursue their craft, but are also often quiet and at rest. They tend to be smart, but take a naive approach to a problem. They have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. On and on, the examples continue.

I was sitting at my desk, engross in my reading. I had several books spread open before me, highlighting paragraphs and taking notes on my computer. I was focused. Then my husband walked into my office and asked if I wanted to drive to the Oregon coast the next day with our daughter Sarah. We could spend some time walking on the beach, buying salt water taffy, and maybe eating some clam chowder for lunch.

I was totally caught off guard. Of course there was no way I could drop everything and go to the beach for the day. I had so much important thinking to do. Plus, that meant I would miss yoga. I couldn’t just change my schedule on a whim.

Or could I? Hadn’t I just been reading about playfulness? Curiosity? Being adventurous? Maybe part of nurturing the complexity of the creative life was a willingness to be flexible. Is it possible that there are many different strategies you employ to “keep the channel open,” as Martha Graham suggests? For me that means that it is important that I know how to buckle down and spend hours working at my desk. But maybe it’s equally important at times to be able to change course quickly, to shut down my computer, roll up my jeans, and go for a walk on the beach. On a Thursday. For no apparent reason.

Which is exactly what I did.

Fractals and Fresh Eyes

I have always liked to draw. When I was growing up, nothing made me happier than a thick stack of paper and a 64-count box of Crayola crayons with the built-in sharpener on back.  Because I lived in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, it makes sense that I drew a lot of mountain scenes.  There were countless variations, of course, but they usually ended up looking something like this:

There was always a series of three mountains–I grew up looking at the Rockies, after all–complete with a topping of snow.  The shape of the tree never changed, and I drew it the same way whether I placed it beside a mountain lake or fancied it up with Christmas decorations.   It was recognizable to me and I liked it.

I continued to draw as I got older, but became increasingly frustrated that my pictures didn’t look very realistic.  When I tried to draw a scene that was actually before me, I couldn’t seem to translate what I saw to my paper.  I refined my techniques, took a few art classes, and bought better art supplies. My skills improved but still I felt there was a divide I was unable to cross.

My first clue to bridging that divide came while reading Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. Pink argues that  creative, “right-brain” skills will be more in demand in the future. One of those skills is Design, and as research for the book he took a drawing class. On the first day, while drawing a self-portrait, he drew lips that looked something like this:

While most of us would recognize this shape as lips, it doesn’t look like the actual lips on our faces.  What Pink discovered was that our brains actually read this drawing as a symbol for lips.  This particular combination of three curving lines (the top one of which kind of looks like my mountain range) is a quick, shorthand way to communicate the idea of lips. It’s a representation, not a recreation, just as the arrangement of the letters “l,” “i” “p,” and “s” when strung together give us the word symbol that represents the idea of lips.  It would probably have worked as well to write the word LIPS in place of this drawing on Pink’s self-portrait.

This makes a lot of intuitive sense to me.  As humans, we create symbols all the time. Think of all the symbols we encounter everyday: a railroad-crossing sign, a cross or Star of David, a hammer and sickle or stars and stripes. I can mention the swoosh or the golden arches and you will instantly know what I mean. Symbols create an informational and emotional shortcut and allow us to navigate busy, information-rich worlds with greater efficiency and help us to filter out or to select what gets our attention. They help express experiences in a way that is general and universal.

But what if I want to understand something specific and personal? That’s where symbols create problems; they get in the way of our ability to see what is actually in front of us. When we really want to notice the nuances and details of what our world looks like, we need to get past the symbols.

I’ve understood this for a while now when it comes to writing. This is why clichés are dangerous. These hackneyed phrases are a shortcut description to an actual experience. This is why I spend a lot of time pre-writing before I ever begin to write anything more important than a grocery list:  I need to focus on actual details: the sights, sounds, smells, textures and tastes of what I am trying to describe.

But that’s writing.  With drawing I felt a little behind.  What was the equivalent of pre-writing in art? How could I get beyond the symbolic pictures that got in the way of what I was actually seeing? How could I move past my Christmas tree drawing and see an actual ponderosa pine, or a blue spruce, or a douglas fir?

Luckily, I came across Realistic Painting Workshop, by Dan Carrel, which addresses this very issue. He believes that “visual talent” can be taught and nurtured by teaching people how to see. He came to this belief in part from his own experience.  His visual-processing centers in his brain were impaired for a time after a bout with spinal meningitis when he was four years old, and he saw an extremely pixellated view of the world, similar to a Monet impressionist painting. His world looked chaotic and abstract, and during that time he learned to pick objects out of the chaos. This eventually led to his discovery of the patterns that exist in nature, including especially “fractals.”

Carrel got me with the word fractals. I’ve long been fascinated by these recurring patterns, where a particular shape repeats in all different scales of an object.  For example, if you look closely at an oak tree, you will notice that the same basic pattern recurs in the trunk, the branches, and the twigs. Fractals occur in clouds and snowflakes, mountains and waves, ferns and trees, and are attractive on a subconscious level. I was thrilled when researchers discovered that the seemingly chaotic drips and splatters of a Jackson Pollack painting contained fractals, inviting the conclusion that his work is so appealing because it mimics what is appealing in nature.

I decided to take Carrel’s advice and look for fractals in the scenery around me.  Coincidentally, my husband Doug and I were on our way to central Oregon, and on our drive I stopped to take pictures of mountain scenes. Mountains in Oregon are actually dormant (and sometimes not so dormant) volcanoes. They stand alone and apart, and seem very different from the mountains of my childhood. Here’s a photo of Mt. Washington I took from the highway.

I downloaded the photo to a drawing program on my iPad to see if I could trace the fractals.  Yep, the mountain looked like a triangle to me and I drew the shape in dark blue. But the closer I looked, I saw smaller triangles within the mountain, and I traced those in a lighter blue.  I noticed that although there was snow on the mountain, it seemed absent on the cap but covered the flanks of the mountain.

Next I moved on to the trees.  It turned out that the trees were not really triangular, but an elongated teardrop shape Carrel calls “blades.”  I circled them in green.

I did this with several of my photographs, pushing past the automatic images I pictured when I saw a cloud or a tree or a river, and looked instead for shapes–ovals and oblongs, blades and triangles.  It was interesting, undemanding, and fun. I’d found a “pre-drawing” technique to help bridge the gap between what I see and what I expect to see, and I learned that there’s a difference between the two.

Daddy’s Girl

My father-in-law, Ken Burke, was an amazing man. I know, because anyone I’ve ever talked to about him says the same thing. Sadly, by the time I met him, he had been struggling with Alzheimer’s for many years, and passed away on August 14, 1994, just a year after I married his son. It is one of my biggest regrets that I never really had a chance to get to know him, or to spend hours talking with him.

I must rely, therefore, on the stories about him that other people are willing to share. Which is why I was thrilled when his daughter, my sister-in-law Julie Burke, decided after reading my recent Father’s Day post to write some of her memories of her dad and send them to me.  This week, she forwarded the first installment, and gave me permission to publish it here.

So . . . many thanks to Julie! In addition to filling in as a guest writer for my blog for the week and giving me a break, her willingness to write continues to fill out the portrait I have of the man who had an enormous influence on her and her siblings, including my husband, Doug.

Daddy’s Girl,

by Julie Burke

I love the word melancholy because that is how I have been feeling. Father’s Day has passed and I am left once again with memories of my father which are always with me, but stirring strongly in my head! The pictures in my mind of sitting on a blanket on the beaches in Carmel watching the waves, the barbershop quartet concerts we so enjoyed together, the baseball games at Thurman Field on Thursdays (his days off) and my get-out-of-school-free card. Along follows the talks on my rides to high school and Daddy asking me to run in for a cinnamon roll; he said it would get him through the morning. Hah Hah… Some weekends I would attempt to play in father/daughter tennis tournaments and I believe I gave it a better go than he did at swimming. All the kids will know I am referring  to the 4th of July swim race he lost for us, and which we never let him forget!

There are so many happy times with my father, and the last 10 years were spent just trying to be his friend and help him remember what he didn’t want to forget. I love my DADDY, and my life forever changed the day we lost him….

I’m grateful this week for Julie, for Ken, and for every dad whose presence continues to be felt.

Waiting for Words to Come

A few months ago, I made a promise to myself: I would write a post to this blog every Friday. For the past twelve weeks, I’ve met this goal. Sometimes I’d be inspired by a topic and finish it on Thursday. Often, it would be 5:00 on a Friday afternoon and I’d still be pulling a post together. But I did it.  I’ve kept the promise so far.

For the most part, it’s been easier than I thought.  I don’t have a strict framework for what I write about. I keep a list of post ideas on my computer when I’m struck by a quote or a book I’ve read, or intrigued by a comment I overheard in a coffee shop. When it’s time to write something I scan through it and inevitably one of the ideas will jump out at me and I’ll be off and writing.

Except for this week. This week, I’ve had nothin’. I woke up this morning, Friday, July 1st, with absolutely nothing to say.  It’s not writer’s block, exactly, which to me is accompanied by a certain amount of angst and declining self-confidence. Instead, I am reminded of a comment I saw on a friend’s Facebook status recently, when he reported something his young daughter, Sasha, had said. She apparently reported that she was “waiting for her bravery to come.” I love that! It isn’t that she doubts that she is brave, but that she is just waiting for her bravery to make its appearance.

That’s sort of how I felt this week. It isn’t that I was afraid I’d have nothing to say. In fact, one of the benefits of writing something on a regular schedule is the reassurance that comes with perseverance. I know that the words are there. I’m just waiting for them to come.

So, at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, I found myself sitting before a blank screen on my computer, waiting. If my words were going to make an appearance, it would be nice if they’d hurry.  While waiting, I opened a book I’d just purchased, called The Writer’s Idea Book, by Jack Heffron. I started flipping through the pages, and there on page 7, at the beginning of Chapter One is a discussion about where writers get their ideas. Heffron says:

Show Up.

Showing up is the main thing. Get to the desk regularly. You’ll find you have no end of ideas if you can make writing a regular habit. Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of being successful in life is just showing up. We all know this is true. . . . If you want to write, you must begin by beginning, continue to continuing, finish by finishing. This is the great secret of it all. Tell no one.

This makes sense, and fits with my own experience. If you want to accomplish anything–writing a blog post, making a dinner, building a house–it’s not going to happen if you don’t make the effort to show up for the job. You have to put in the time, which ultimately creates a protected container within which you can work.

But I think it’s even more than this. Just like writing 12 blog posts in a row created an expectation that the words will come, showing up for the work opens my heart and mind to the possibility for inspiration. One of my favorite speakers on this point is author Elizabeth Gilbert, who gave an 18-minute TED Talk on “Nurturing Creativity.” You can watch it by clicking here. Gilbert talks about the odd dilemma in which she found herself after the phenomenal success of her book Eat, Pray, Love. People approached her with hushed voices, asking how she was ever going to top that feat, and wasn’t it sad to contemplate that the best work of her life was already behind her?

Gilbert’s response was that she could only be discouraged if she felt that creativity was something that existed entirely within her, that it was something she produced by herself. Instead, she feels that if we believe, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, we can depend on creativity or good ideas to come from the inspiration–literally the “breathing in”–of the divine, the work doesn’t have to be so daunting. The ancient Romans believed that great ideas came from a helpful creative spirit called a “genius.” A genius was not, therefore, a really smart person, but a creative helper who assisted people to do amazing work they could not expect to do on their own. Gilbert says,

And what I have to, sort of, keep telling myself when I get really psyched out about that, is, don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then “Ole!” And if not, do your dance anyhow. And “Ole!” to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. ”Ole!” to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.

So, it’s 5:45 p.m. on an early Friday evening. I’m not sure of the reach of this post, or if it’s anything worth reading. But at least I can say I did my part. I showed up for my work and greeted the words that showed up for me.  Thirteen weeks in a row.

Legacy

When my husband, Doug, and I married 18 years ago, we created a blended family with small children living in two different states. While wonderful, our family required a lot of time and flexibility, so I left my counseling position at the community college and went to work part-time at my husband’s company, IBR. At the time, IBR was a small research and development company for the baking industry which employed less than ten people, including Doug, his partner, Pat Shannon, and Pat’s wife, Sara, who worked as a graphic designer.  The company didn’t really have a legal department, and since I had worked my way through college and grad school working for law firms, I at least knew the terminology and could talk to lawyers.  Which is how I came to spend seven years of my professional career working as a Legal Liaison, a title we created to describe this cobbled-together job.

Over the seven years I was there, the company grew dramatically, moving three times to bigger offices, doubling the staff, then doubling it again. Still, it retained its family feel.  Our kids practically grew up in the place and were always, always welcomed. We celebrated birthdays, weddings, baby showers, and, later on, a few funerals. When I finally decided it was time to leave the company to start what would become I Am Story Studios, the hardest part was to leave this group of people who had become extended family to me.

The legal work, while important, was never really the highlight for me.  I did it because I could, and it was necessary, but it always felt like I was improvising. I wasn’t an attorney; I only hired the attorneys. There was a lot of paper to keep track of, and I wasn’t always sure if it made a difference to anyone. When it came time to leave, however, I wanted someone to care about the work. I handed the job over to the only other person I thought could make sense of it: a woman named Angie Daley, an already busy woman and indispensable part of the IBR team. She wasn’t an attorney either, but she was smart, a quick learner, and a great communicator. If anyone could do it, she could.

In the years since I left IBR, I missed the people most of all. We’d get together for the occasional dinner, and kept in touch on Facebook. I’d see people at company picnics and the annual Christmas party. Eventually, the company sold and Doug left as well, and we looked forward to less frequent times we’d get together with these friends, this family we’d helped build.

Last week, we attended the retirement party for Pat, Doug’s long-time partner, who has decided to move on to other adventures. It felt like a graduation of sorts, and it was wonderful to see all the faces, both veterans who’d been there from the beginning, and more recent additions. I was talking with my good friend Angie about our experiences at IBR, and the word “legacy” kept coming up.  Certainly, Pat and Doug created a wonderful, tangible legacy in their work at IBR.  People used words like integrity, passion, innovation, and game-changer when describing what these men had created. Their’s was an obvious accomplishment that made a difference in the lives of so many people.

But I soon realized that legacy can happen in small and unintentional ways. I mentioned to Angie that it was the people of IBR that kept me coming in every day, because I’d never really felt that the legal work made much of a difference.

“Oh, but Barbara,” Angie said, “You don’t understand. The legal work was one of my favorite parts of my job, and what I was most proud of. Working as a legal liaison  made a difference to me. And to the company.  I was your legacy.”

I was stunned.  And surprisingly comforted. I’d never thought of it that way. I appreciate Angie for helping me re-story that part of my life. It was a good reminder that we won’t always know the impact of our efforts, and that the outcome can be different from we expect. You drop a stone in the water, and don’t always see how far the ripples extend. Sometimes we see the legacy and know it–the things we celebrate at retirement parties and graduations and funerals–and sometimes we find out almost accidentally, and can celebrate with one good friend.

How My Dad Was Right

I saw a blog post the other day and liked the title: “18 Things My Dad Was Right About.” I liked the post, too. The author, Marc, of the Marc and Angel Hack Life, recalls a school assignment when he interviewed his dad to find out what advice he’d give a younger person. Some of my favorites?  “Less advice is often the best advice,” “Not much is worth fighting about,” and “Sometimes you just have to go for it.” To read the entire post, click here.

I started to think about some of the best advice my father has ever given me, but I think he’s firmly in the “less advice is often the best advice” camp.  You often learned best from my dad by watching and listening. I remember spending hours sitting next to him in a dirt-floored barn that served as a garage, watching him strip down and rebuild a bicycle or car engine. I learned my way around a tool chest, how to tighten a drill bit or use a circular saw. At my father’s elbow, I also learned that most things could be repaired with a judicious application of baling wire and duct tape.

Yet some of the best things I learned from my dad came in the offhand comments that, if I paid attention, could teach me something worth knowing. The memory of one event has provided me with such an enduring lesson that I consider it one of my own personal parables, one of the stories I live by.  It happened when I was at home in Colorado on a summer break from college.  I decided on a whim that I would ride my bicycle from the suburb where we lived into downtown Denver, a journey of about 12 or 13 miles each way.  My dad, always up for an adventure, said he’d join me.

You must understand that, although I was a runner, I was not much of a cyclist, and the bicycles we had were ones my father had built himself from parts of other, older bicycles.  Still, I was eager for the ride. We started out one afternoon and hadn’t even ridden a mile when the chain on my bike broke. Fortunately, my dad is mechanically minded and had it fixed within ten minutes, using, I don’t know, a bottle cap and a twig to repair it. Off we went again. Within minutes the brake cable pulled loose on my bike. Once again, my father fixed the problem while I watched over his shoulder, a little more impatient with every minute that passed. We took off again, only to have something break on my bicycle within minutes.

By this time I was no longer patient and the outing was no longer fun. “Stupid bicycle,” I muttered as my father once again propped his bike against a tree and leaned over mine.  He fixed the problem–a gear issue or something–and we continued on our way.

And then–I kid you not–my bicycle broke down again. My dad patiently stopped and knelt to assess the problem. By this time, we’d been gone over an hour and had traveled about three miles. I was ready to throw my bike against a wall or under a car or something.

“This is insane,” I fumed. “We’re not getting anywhere!  We should just walk the bikes back to the house.”

And that’s when he dropped this little gem:

“How do you know that this isn’t the last problem you’ll have?”

I just stood there, stumped. He was right. I didn’t know if we’d have more problems. I wouldn’t find out unless I kept getting back on the bike.

He fixed the gear shift or the chain or the brake lever or whatever problem had most recently plagued my bike and we set off once again. We rode all the way into Denver and back home again without incident. The rest of the ride was perfect.

I mentioned this ride to my dad the other day, and he didn’t remember that we had had all of those problems, which is, of course, typical of him. What is really important, however,  is that I remember. I think back to that day often, when I’m on my last nerve because my computer isn’t working, or I’m running late and can’t find my keys. How do I know, I say to myself, that this isn’t the last problem I’ll have.

My dad’s advice, given in the form of a question, has moved me through many sticky spots, and I appreciate it, even if he doesn’t remember giving it to me.

In honor of Father’s Day, think back to the times when you learned that your father–or father figure–was right. What were the lessons he showed you? If you think of one or two, maybe you could share them with him.

Say What You Need To Say

I first heard John Mayer’s song “Say” on the radio while I was driving.  I had just dropped my daughter off at school when the song came on, and after listening to the first stanza, pulled over to the side of the road so I could concentrate on the lyrics.

Here’s a part of it…

Have no fear for giving in.

Have no fear for giving over.

You’d better know that in the end

It’s better to say too much

Than never say what you need to say again.

Even if your hands are shaking

And your faith is broken

Even as the eyes are closing

Do it with a heart wide open.

Say what you need to say.

It turns out the song was part of the sound track for the movie,  The Bucket List, in which Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson play two men facing terminal illnesses who decide to complete a “Bucket List” of things they wanted to do before they die. The song “Say” plays at the end of the movie, after the men have crossed the items off their lists. The message of both the song and the movie isn’t subtle:  Say what you need to say while you have time and opportunity to say it.

It’s a good message for anyone, and fairly easy to do. You can say what you need to say in person, on a phone call, over a cup of coffee.  But I would like to make a case for the old-fashioned tradition of sending a card. And, oh, if this isn’t ever the season.  For me, the roughly 6-week period between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is one big card-sending extravaganza.  Between honoring the people who gave you life, you also have the gauntlet of graduations, teacher appreciations and retirements.  And that doesn’t even count the birthdays.  Almost half the people I know seem to have been born in June, four of them on June 12th alone.  That’s a lot of cards to think about, write and send. It could be overwhelming, but I prefer to view it as one giant opportunity to say what you need to say.

I love the cards I receive, and I am surrounded by people who are very good at it. It’s not that I wouldn’t know or already believe that they care about me, but it is so nice to hear the reasons why they feel that way, outlined in detail.  It’s nice to have proof.  I keep the cards in a special box in my office, and I realized recently that if my house were on fire, that box would be the first thing I would grab on my way out the door. I might even re-enter a burning building to retrieve it. It is the evidence of the relationships that enrich my life.

But it’s also more. Because the people who know me best know my preferences and quirks and personality trait, the best cards are personal and relevant to me. It shows me that these people see me, understand who I am, and can reflect that back to me.

So, for fun, I thought I’d include a small sampling of some of my favorite cards. I’ll spare you the personal messages inside that would really only be meaningful or relevant to me (hence their appeal), but they are cool enough I think most people would appreciate them. Maybe one of them will inspire you to say what you need to say…

This from my son, Sam, who totally understands and accepts that I will always have the “mom” gene, even though he is 22.

I got this on Mother’s Day this year from my 19-year-old daughter Kate. It made me cry before I even opened it and read the inside, which Kate had densely covered with her own message.  The fact that Kate found this quote and thought of me meant worlds. She gets what makes me tick, and sees what others might miss.  This is one of many WONDERFUL cards by the company Positively Green Cards, and I urge you to browse the company website, as Kate and I did one evening. Their products are so amazing, and I’m sure you’ll find something that says exactly what you feel.

I love characters from children’s books. And I love pugs. So this was a particularly apt selection.

When my daughter Katherine started studying psychology in college, she called once to commiserate with me about the sad plight of the rhesus monkeys they used on attachment studies long ago. That year for Mother’s Day I got a personalized rhesus monkey card.

Did I mention I love characters from children’s books?

What I love about this card, in addition to it being so true, is that it’s from my parents,and I think it was my father who picked it out for me. Who would have thought he’d understand?

This handmade card is from my youngest daughter, Sarah, who understands how much I love Pig from Pearls Before Swine.

Truer words were never spoken…

One of the best cards I ever got from my husband. Really, what more could you ever want?

The next two cards are from a line by curly girl design. I really, really LOVE this line of cards and can’t find enough of them.  They are so creative, so beautiful, and so TRUE.  These two were given to me by two of my favorite women, both sisters-in-law, and both dear friends.

This card said everything, even before I opened it.

And finally…

If I didn’t keep this in my special card box, I would have it stuck on the wall over my desk. I love the idea that all the experiences I’ve had, all the roles I’ve filled, all the projects I’ve undertaken, all the words I’ve ever shared–it all counts. It becomes my collected works.

Just as everything you do becomes your collected works.  So go ahead, and say what you need to say.