June 16, 2010

Once upon a time

Once upon a time

A strange group of words to put together. I wonder why they did?

Why only once upon a time and not twice or thrice?

We all have a story inside us. It started to form when we were born and it unfolds day by day.
The trick is to capture that awareness and write it down.

Does it make it any more or less precious by doing so?

I don't know and I suspect that no one does. But what I do know is that for me writing down threads of it help.
It helps me to make sense of the good and the bad.

It makes me see how they all fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
They are all equally important in my life.

A long time ago a councillor suggested I wrote down everything I could remember of my life from my earliest recollections to the present time. He said it would help me make sense of what I'd done, who I was and why. It wouldn't necessarily give me answers but there would be clues.

It was a very bad period of my life and I think the act of writing kept me sane. It gave me a focus.
I wrote as things came to me, I didn't force it.
There are never any easy answers but I didn't, and don't, expect that.

What it did for me was very valuable. It showed me who I was and some of why.

I'm going back over a quarter of a century, maybe more.
Long before I got into "Morning pages"

It was a way to get the mess out of my head and in to the open, so i didn't carry it around with me.
It didn't solve everything but it gave me strength to cope.

Then I read The Artists Way and heard about morning pages and I started to journal once more.
This time it was a way to empty my head of dross and to allow my inner child artist self to have a voice. A loud voice.

It worked then and still does.

I don't have the urge to write every day but the story waits inside until I'm ready to give it a voice.

My story will keep unfolding until I leave this mortal plain.

What about your story?

Do you listen to it?

Do you write down the words it says?

You might be surprised where the story leads.
After all:-
"Once upon a time"

But remember
"They all lived happily ever after" is only a fairy tale.

1 comment:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

I always think that, when the fairy tale conventions were first invented, the adult tale tellers would pause at the end, wink knowingly to each other and then say, slowly and with obvious satirical intent, "and they all lived happily ever after." Unfortunately, kids don't understand satire.

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