The Story Under the Story, my Class with Robyn Gobbel, Part 1

I know the writing is going to be a good challenge when I need to eat a pizza beforehand to ground myself and I feel like an aching balloon, full of tears I can’t access.

So I’ve pizzaed and am negotiating the feeling that, like a sneeze that won’t come, I am carrying tears that are telling me I’m going to the complicated place. I’m going to try to talk to people about their writing when we are not face-to-face, and I can’t possibly say all I would say in real time. Writing can be intimidating when you know you can’t say all think you need to say in order to fully get your point across to the reader!

This is when I tell myself I’m writing from my heart, and that my intentions are good, and that showing up is more interesting than staying safe and hiding. 

I would rather lie on the floor and listen to music, but I know that won’t relieve the pressure and lead to new ways of seeing myself and the world that writing this essay will. 

Essay comes from the French word essais which means attempts. In his book Essais, written in the 1600s, Montaigne strove to describe himself frankly and honestly, and through his introspection, we the reader still receive countless insight into what it means to be human through the lens of Montaigne’s self-study. A man writing about his internal life was not, therefore, an act of selfish narcissism, but rather a mirror in which others could gaze to see themselves in reflection.

I have felt compelled to write “my story” since I was a teenager. Maybe earlier. It’s possible that books such as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of Little House books planted the seed in my mind that to live means to narrate on paper what you made of your life.

To feel compelled to write your story and to feel you have permission to tell it are two very different things.  

And what, after all, defines what “your story” actually is? How do you write your story when, for example, you were adopted and have no idea where you were for the beginning of your life? What if you don’t know who created you? How can you define yourself when you don’t know your DNA? How do you write your story when there are big chunks of it that you don’t remember or that make you sick or that scare the daylights out of you or make you feel like you are drowning in the molasses of depression?  

How do you write your story when you don’t even know who would want to listen, if it matters, of if you really have a story when it comes right down to it?

This is what I want to tell you: I believe the respect we embody for our own stories is the spine of us, and that without this respect we jellyfish through life; we get sick; we don’t fully show up, and we basically live like a flashlight that is short on batteries. 

We are dim when we don’t believe our stories have worth. 

Dim is stupid. 

Knock it off.

Dim is a five-year-old who is handed a piece of paper and some crayons and who collapses in terror on the floor. What if I draw whatever I’m going to draw wrong? What if you hate me when I made a mess? What if my inherent wrongness is going to be evident for all to see?

Go ahead, scribble your heart out. Life is so short. You might as well see what you can do. Otherwise you’re like a baby chick that works its way out of its shell and then spends the rest of its life trying to put the pieces back together so it can climb back into the safety of not born. 

This life-is-short-so-you-might-as-well-just-go-for-it-and-be-you-because-you-are-the-only-one-who-can-and-the-world-will-be-less-wonderful-if-you-don’t-show-up is the philosophy that brought me to create Write or Die, a one-time class I teach that involves a handful of questions that you answer and then read to me. I listen with the goal of showing you your voice, your audience, what your story is, and how to make blocks into rocket fuel. 

I start Write or Die by asking people to imagine they just learned they only have five minutes left to live. Clearly this takes a little imagination, because it’s such a sudden and often nearly unthinkable idea. But, really, it could happen, so I invite people to imagine themselves into the space where the minute hand is ticking. I ask people to imagine that they go someplace comfortable, perhaps the couch, and that they imagine the most gentle, loving listening presence is by them, and that this listening presence wants only to hear what they have to say in these last five minutes. Sometimes I call this presence The Ear of God, but I’m not referring to any religion in particular: I’m referring to the idea that something holy is listening to you, something that is not going to say a word to you, something that is there to hear you. 

In some ways, this may be the most important exercise in Write or Die because in order to feel your story is important enough to tell you need to feel it’s important enough for someone to listen to.

 Here are some examples of what people wrote in the class with Robyn and me:

L.

I have done my best to live from my center of what I loved and what I thought was true at the time. I have given everything I knew how to or was capable of at the time.  I have tried to live from my heart of love and what I defined love as at that time in that context for that moment.  I have tried to be better.  I have tried to be someone I could admire and that you would admire as if someone were watching.  I have tried to see myself as a flawed being with room for more and more change. I have often been disappointed, and hurt myself.   I have expected the same of others and been disappointed.  I have done the most damage to myself when desperate for love and connection and afraid of rejection.

I.

uh... Life's been hard. Lots of regrets -- things I did or didn't do. Have I done enough? My brain feels muddled, anxious. I'm going to a better place. See you later, folks! I'm checking out of here. I think I did the best I could. I'm scared... not sure what of? Dying? I tried to do the best that I could. Life was hard, and I didn't really enjoy it.

T.

Is this something I caused to be here now alone, dying, will they know I love them, I tried and cried, laughed with them, my family, friends, and family…should I feel regret for not trying harder, being louder, pushing back, just being so much braver? Would that have mattered when now I am alone, almost dead, about to enter a new forever, beginning…I did feel love, presence,effort, so much trying and it leads here, now…I love you.

J.

I loved my people well. I hope that that will be enough to sustain them. Because, I loved them with a fury, the force of a hurricane, relentlessly, I loved them.
But I wasted an inordinate amount of time on my brokenness, in the self-help corner....
I thought if I loved them with every ounce of me it would fill the chasm of my own deep need for love.Gave away in spades what I could never give myself.

 M.

Fuck me. This is it. I knew it could happen at any moment, but I didn’t listen. I pushed away my knowing in exchange for comfort. Fuck comfort and being comfortable. Where did they get me? Well, I got a lot of hugs and love and understanding from my husband and friends I really trusted, but I did not let myself trust too many people or I trusted the ones I did trust too much. What is too much? Fully allowing, fully being exactly as I am without censoring. Now I only have 4 minutes left to do that! Risking comfort is worth it to experience authenticity. I think I confused comfort with smallness. Smallness was easier to tolerate, until it wasn’t. It’s hard to go from small to big in one fell swoop but I could have should have allowed myself to make the jump, to expand the container, to bust through – out of? – my own seams/edges.

My body knows when it hears the truth. I don’t know how else to say that. I listen for when people speak, and I ask myself, Is this coming from their core self? Is there anything in the way between what they are feeling and what they are saying? For all of the writers above, I would say, Thank you. I love hearing what you have to say. And then I would ask, And what else? What would you have said if no one was listening, no one but an ear that loved you?  

The purpose of this exercise is for me to listen for what might be coming between the writer and their ability to access their truest voice. I listen for self-awareness (using language they might not normally use in conversation is a good clue the writing itself is a barrier between the writer and the writer’s truth), for performance (See! I’m good! Love me! or See! I’m bad! Hate me!, etc.). 

Often, when people do this exercise and write from their deepest sense of self, they cry. Instead of writing from the head where they are trying to anticipate the listener’s response or trying to manipulate the reader into feeling a certain way, they are tapping into their feelings and not worrying about the listener’s reaction. It’s a true form of sharing: Here I am. 

Most of us lost the ability to talk like this when we were with caretakers or friends or partners who did not mirror back to us ourselves when we were trying to communicate our deepest feelings. We closed down, armored up, hid behind language we didn’t really mean. (I’m fine.)

 Speaking to a listening ear is a practice of trust. You are really listening to me. You aren’t thinking about how you are going to respond or even what you think. You are just listening to me! You are here with me! I am safe with you!  

With all this in mind, if the three writers had read me the work printed above, I would have listened very carefully to the words and the tone. Speaking your truth tends to sound deeper than your everyday voice. I would have asked each of the writers if they feel they wrote more from a telling place instead of a more open, trusting, expansive place.  

What if you didn’t have to justify or explain yourself in your last minutes? What if the last sounds you will ever utter are being listened to by an adoring ear? What are you going to say? This is in general what I do during Write or Die—I point out where you are efforting in ways that may actually getting in the way of your real self. I invite you to say what you are really, really feeling or thinking. 

 My guess is that perhaps you have never had this kind of freedom.

 My guess is that you might have no idea what you might say! 

This is where lists can come in really handy, for the way we construct sentences is generally built on habit. I’m used to putting words together in certain ways, and if I’m put into a situation I feel I can’t even talk about because I don’t have the words to describe how I’m feeling (uh, welcome to trying to write about relinquishment and adoption), I am going to feel that language fails me.

And that’s because it does.

So build a language that works for you. Don’t follow rules. 

This is also where simple sentences can come in handy: I am so tired. I am so sad my life is over. I love you so much. I am going to miss everyone. My heart is breaking. I am afraid. I am okay. Please don’t leave.

If you had five minutes left to live and you were only allowed to use about twenty words, what would you say? Sometimes boiling your thoughts down to the essential thought is an incredibly helpful tool. 

I wish I had loved better. Thank you for this life. Please hold me. Tell my daughter I love her.

That’s all for now. In my next post, I’ll talk about the second part of this class where we did another 5-minute exercise.

The more you share of yourself, the more interesting life gets.

The 6-part series of The Story Under the Story is being recorded. It’s not too late to join! https://robyngobbel.com/event/storyunderthestory.