We Don’t Tell Stories As They Are…

“We tell them as we are.” I’d not heard this variation before. I’d always heard Anais Nin quoted thusly:

We don’t see the world as it is but as we are.

Anais Nin

And I’d treasured its inescapable truth as a compass through life’s trials. Until the pandemic. Rather until 10 months into a global pandemic during which I was quarantined with a four-year-old. My four-year-old. Until then I’d simply shrugged my shoulders in resignation and gotten on with each day to the best of my ability. But when this version slipped into my mailbox at the top of The Pause newsletter it stopped me in my sleep-deprived tracks. After all, I teach the unpacking of stories and forbid students’ use of Reader Response literary criticism precisely because I know how thick our personal lenses are. And yet, for all I know of the distortions of memory and the interference of the subconscious, I had not quite considered this truth as precisely as it appears in black and white above. What to do.

Better yet, how do I parent given the interference of my own experience of being parented with the present challenges of parenting without portfolio, owner’s manual, or childhood fantasies of what raising a child of my own might look and feel like? I’ve told myself countless times that I will read The Body Keeps The Score. I will read The Connected Child. I will not scream. I will not be anxious. And I’ve failed time and time again hiding behind work, medical appointments, half-hearted attempts to de-clutter and reparent. Turns out I’m made of clay and need more help than I have been able to ask for or imagine. Yet, I know that faith without works is dead. Guess the inescapable truth remains. As my SFDM Kat said, “Guess it’s time to #double-up“.