A Pam Cordano Hack for Those Who Can't Make a Decision
As I wrote in my past post, I have an opportunity to change my life, and instead of getting excited and moving forward, I got sick. This has been a pattern in my life. I was stuck in a pattern of thinking and behavior that felt so familiar, and yet the familiarity of it all wasn’t helping. I was still stuck.
So I called Pam Cordano.
This is the difference between me now as an adopted person and me three years ago. I better understand how my brain works now, and I also have people in my life who understand relinquishment trauma and therefore understand me. It’s like after a lifetime of playing tennis with an invisible partner, I have one (more!) who can hit the ball back in a way that I get, in a way that makes sense to my game, in a way that I can hit back, with authority, with purpose, with strength.
I had to decide whether to accept an offer that, a month ago, would have seemed beyond amazing to me, or to continue with my life as it is. This was, as I wrote in my past blog post, a place I have been before: colleges, jobs, relationships—it’s all about stepping into the new, the unknown, into change, or staying with what is even if “what is” generally it feels fairly cruddy or limited or boring or wrong.
Pam had me list all the negatives of the opportunity and all the positives. We got off the phone and I set to work. Five minutes later I called her back and read her my list.
“Okay,” she said, “Read it again, more slowly.”
I read each line on my negative list “trapped” “all work” “alone”. After each one Pam had me write S. I read my positive list, a list that was twice as long as my negative. After each line she had me write a T. “I get to live out my dream” = T. “I’d get to collaborate” = T. “I get to be closer to Keats and Pam” = T. I started laughing pretty early on and inserting my own S’s and T’s because I knew what she was doing, and the more we went on, the funnier it got. The more duh it got.
Stories are the scripts our brains tell us, and we tend believe them, unquestioningly. Story tells us not to write our books even though we want to because story tells us no one cares about what we have to say. Story tells me I’m worthless even though people write to me daily saying my work helps them negotiate their lives. Story tells us we are getting uglier as we age when really we are just becoming more ourselves, more beautiful. Story tells us youth is better than age.
Truths are facts. Truths are cool because they are real, and it’s easier to build a house on a real foundation than one that is based on story. The latter is called a disaster. The truth is, I can write beautifully. The truth is my idea of beauty has been formed largely by the media, which is based on the story of airbrushing and photoshop.
The thing was, the story still felt so real. The reasons to drop out of college had felt so real. The reasons to stop running cross-country had felt so real. But they had all been based on story: I have no friends. It’s a waste of my parents’ money. I’m just going to make a fool of myself. The reasons for quitting were stories my brain had told me that were not based in reality. And yet story has been my North Star for so many decisions in my life because my brain believes story keeps me safe.
Story keeps me in the past. Story keeps me from growing, from changing, from doing super cool things. Story tells me not to go to the go-cart place because I have no idea what I’m doing and I’ll look like an idiot. Story tells me to not try to get an agent because I’m not talented enough to merit one.
As my friend Joe Loya says (sort of), Fuck story in the neck.
Pardon my French and his, too.
I’m writing this post to give you this story story truth truth tool. I love it, and I hope, if you need it, you love it, too.
xoxo