awakenings

A few weeks ago, I sent a rather desperate email to Jeanette. I hoped that reaching out to her would give me a solution, or at least some semblance of peace – the kind that comes from knowing I am not alone. She replied far more quickly than I anticipated, and asked if I would be willing to share my story.

So here I am. I will give you the basics: I am a British woman living a largely middle-class lifestyle with my toddler son and boyfriend of four years. I live in a sleepy church village in the arse-end of nowhere. I am also deeply, hopelessly attracted to women.

I will not lie: I have no answers. I have nothing to offer you but the sound of my truth – and even that is barely above a whisper. But if you listen hard, perhaps in my words you will find the echo of your own story: where it began, where it is now, wherever it ended. And perhaps in the telling of it, I will not only give you hope, but find it for myself.

Somewhere along the path to motherhood and 1950s housewifery, I got lost. I do not know who I am, or how I got here, or what I want. All I know is that the secret I have carried with me since I was six years old – the one that aches indescribably for release – is becoming close to unbearable. I need to find myself before I can figure out where to go from here.

This seems as good a place as any to start.

A story is not real unless it is told.

Life gives rise to stories.  Stories demand words.  Words only answer to truth.

When truth is not given voice it folds itself into a ball and nestles into that small dark space that untold stories call home. It never has a chance to become real.

This writing space sits dormant, waiting for words and truths and stories that have not come.  The pages are empty of new content, yet filled to overflowing with stories that remain untold.

For some time I imagined it was only my stories that begged telling here.  This was my sacred space; haven for my fears and my crashing despair and every last shred of hope that remained in the aftermath.   That tumultuous time has passed, and so I thought had the time passed to tell the story that began this blog.

How hopelessly silly of me.  Our stories never end; not this one, not your own.  They just live inside us, waiting to be made real by the telling.

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“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”  ~ Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

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Even four years later the emails come.

Was it worth it?
How did you know?
I’m not strong enough for this.
I am breaking my family.
Please, please tell me it will all be okay.

This story continues to be found by those who seek it.  Women seeking a place where their pain is understood, their struggle validated, their story made real.  Somehow, despite being ignored, these words rise again and again, and I am reminded once more that our stories are never really our own.

I feel tremendous responsibility to the women who seek out my story, who write to gift me with pieces of their own. I am humbled and in awe of their power and strength.  I want to keep telling my story as a way of giving voice to all of their unspoken truths.

But I hesitate.  In linking words to name and face I chose to expose my most intimate story and the most vulnerable spaces in my heart.  I struggled to honor my story in truth, without betraying the trust and respect of those who were also exposed by my decision to step out from the shadows of anonymity.

And instead of figuring out a way to navigate this tricky situation, I took my story inward, where it remains.

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Awakenings began as a space for my story, but the time has come to usher in a new phase.   I begin this week by welcoming a new writer – opening this space up to new words, fresh truth, a story waiting to be told and made real.

Words will flow here once more.  They will not all be my words, but they will contain bits and pieces of my story, and your story and all of our stories.  Our truths are intimately personal and entirely universal.  Grief understands grief.  Love welcomes love.  Heartache embraces heartache and invites it to lay down its burdens for just a moment.

This is what draws us to the words of others, which leads us to seek transformation in the courage and beauty of lives shared and truths revealed.  And in welcoming these truths into our hearts WE are made real and our stories find life – even if we are not yet able to tell them ourselves.

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I opened my email this summer to find a letter from Bee, and read this line:

“I will tell you my story not because I think you need to read it, but because I think I need to write it.”

And so I invited her to write it here, to bring her truth to light and let it be made real.  She will introduce herself, and tell her story – just as I began to do almost four years ago.

And in reading, we will all move a little closer to our own truths, closer to finding our own voices, closer to making our stories real.

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“The truth is, in order to heal we need to tell our stories and have them witnessed…The story itself becomes a vessel that holds us up, that sustains, that allows us to order our jumbled experiences into meaning”. ~ Sue Monk Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter)