Writing is personal and tender and scary, and if you’re writing about your own life, you can multiply the fear by 10. There are a million stories you can choose to write, yet I’d recommend not skipping the ones about the struggles in your life. I call them Shark Stories or Mis-Adventures.
So why would you want to write about your problems, embarrassments, poor choices, bad days, rotten luck and mis-adventures? Because it’s a part of your journey, and if you’re a woman, you can think of these stories as your Shark Shero Stories (for me Shark Hero Stories).
You gain three things from telling your Shark Shero Stories:
1. By telling about your challenges, you pull the curtain back on your humanity. It might feel safer to write as if life were 100% happy each minute, yet when you drill down to the core of your mis-adventures—sharing what happened and how you felt about it—you touch a sweet spot called authenticity.
2. When you tell “What went wrong,” the most natural next question is, “So how did you get out of it?” Writing about your life is like seeing a movie for the second time. That’s where the magic happens. You know what’s coming, and can reflect from the safety of the present moment. You get to see and report on the time your mettle (and luck) met the road. You are still here. You emerged from this incident in tact, and if you can name just one good result of your experience, you’ve won.
3. A wall hanging in my home says: “Bad Choices Make Great Stories.” You have the potential to learn from your mistakes, and those experiences shape your character. You’re a lot like the baby chick that needs to peck its way out of its own shell in order to become strong enough to live. Struggle also gives us the capacity to have compassion for others. Not until I experienced divorce myself did I realize, at least in part, the devastation of that journey. Make sure you finish the story. Move beyond the struggle to tell what lessons you picked up—the wisdom you gained.
The unexpected benefit to me personally since I’ve been leading these writing classes, and doing the exercises myself is that I’ve grown exponentially in my self-honesty. It’s hard to find words to express how liberating that is.
So this is WHY you’d benefit from writing your Shark Shero Stories, and I’m excited to announce that if you want to know HOW, or if you’re looking for a writing space to write, I’m offering a Zoom class through the Womens-Exchange.org. called “How to Write about the Mis-Adventures of Your Life.”
I’d love to have you join us on April 26th at 11am Arizona Time, which is 1pm Central Time. For all the information and to register click on this link:
(note: You’ll need to scroll down through the schedule to find the date, title and my picture)