Is it Happening to You? Then it’s Important

A few years ago, I went to hear author and now presidential candidate Marianne Williamson speak. She was describing a conference she held on race relations in Los Angeles. She said that tension was rising in the room when a white man stood up and angrily addressed an African-American woman.

“We’ve heard about all of this injustice again and again!” he yelled. “This is not helping anything. Why can’t we move on?”

The woman looked at him and said, “Because you’ve never heard it from ME!”

The man was silent. He had asked ‘why’ and he had gotten the answer. That’s the power of story. Everyone has one. And everyone deserves to be heard.

I had to remind myself of this as I wrote my memoir. So often I wanted to quit, thinking who wants to read another cliche divorce story? But the world had yet to experience my personal version of divorce. That had to be enough to keep me going.

I was thinking about Marianne Williamson’s story again this week, but in a different context. My mother, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, got lost just a hundred yards from home and it became suddenly, alarmingly obvious that she can no longer live alone.

My family and I had to scramble to find her a care facility. A process that I thought would take months had to be accomplished in two days.

As this unfolded, I kept thinking: how does anyone do this? How does anyone manage this storm of emotions and responsibilities without falling apart? I know plenty of people who have been through this experience with aging parents but the truth was that I never thought it would happen to me.

And that’s what made me remember the woman Marianne told us about, the one whose words rang so loud and true. This is happening to ME. It’s now my story.

Right or wrong, it’s now more important.

Good or bad, I’m now connected to all the others who have walked this path.

That connection is what we seek when we tell our stories. It’s why we write. Yet there is so much resistance and fear when it comes to writing. Instead of being like the woman who stood up and insisted that her voice was important, most writers I know judge themselves as unworthy. They procrastinate on their book projects, waiting to become experts in one thing or another. They have to take another class or make the right connections or wait for family members to give them permission before they can write.

Don’t be one of those people.

Yes, we may have heard it all, but we’ve never heard it from you. And when you share your experiences you help someone who might be lost.

Author Anne Lamott said, “Every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it.”

And Ram Dass, who wrote a dozen books and passed away last month at age 88, reminded us WHY:

Because, in the end, we’re all just walking each other home.