HOLLYWOOD ENDINGS
What to do when your story doesn't end like they do in the movies.
Hol·ly·wood end·ing
noun
a conventional ending in a movie, typically regarded as sentimental or simplistic and often featuring an improbably positive outcome.
I have a love-hate relationship with Hollywood endings.
I definitely get the appeal. After all the pain and turmoil of a story, we want things to wrap up well for the main character, don’t we? We want their suffering to somehow be transformed in the end. We certainly want that for ourselves in our own story. Some hope. Some healing. Some redemption. I know I’m not the only one here who feels that way.
Recently, I wrote about two films: The Fablemans and The Glass Castle. Although very different in tone, I was fascinated to witness that both of these films delivered the feel-good “Hollywood ending” of rocky relationships ending in reconciliation and forgiveness.
Again, I get it. They call it Show Business for a reason. Happy endings sell.
Here’s the thing.
That is not my story. That might not be your story either.
Not everyone gets a deathbed reconciliation, hand-holding, forgiveness, and a tender farewell. It left me feeling conflicted.
While we all might yearn for that kind of reconciliation, we all don’t get it. Life doesn’t always provide such a tidy emotional wrap-up. What about the rest of us?
What does it mean to walk through writing our stories when we know that the ending of a particular story is not one we’d have chosen? I’m here to say that even when your story doesn’t have a Hollywood ending it has great value and healing can still occur.
In 2014, when I finally committed to writing my short film, Dandelion, I knew the ending of that particular story because I had lived it- and I didn’t like it. If it had been a “Hollywood ending,” my estranged mother would have taken us inside her apartment after my sister and I showed up at her door, we would have had a painful but healing heart-to-heart, and our relationship would have been restored, or at least the tentative beginnings of it. Instead, she told us to go home, barely looked at us, got in the car with her boyfriend, and left us standing in her front yard.
When I first considered writing the film I remember thinking, “Who wants to watch that? Who wants to see another sad story that just gets sadder? “ I didn’t write my short film for years because it didn’t have a happy ending! I kept waiting because I hoped the ending I wanted would finally unfold in my real life. That ending never did.
When I did finally write the story the ending that emerged surprised me.
While it wasn’t what Hollywood would have scripted or even how I would have preferred the story of my mother to resolve itself, the ending of my film was true, beautiful, and affirming. It held both the pain of the truth of the situation and it led me to love.
We can tell our stories in such a way that we remain true to ourselves and our experiences. We can find love and healing even without that sanitized Hollywood version of the ending or dishonoring or diminishing our experience. I’m grateful to have learned through experience that you can tell the truth and still find love. And those stories can have an impact beyond what we can imagine.
If I’d given up on that story, believing it had no value to others, I might not have found my way to an ending that fills me with satisfaction, gratitude, and joy. I might not have had the experience of having person after person approach me in tears after the screenings of the film sharing, “Thank you. Thank you. You understand.” Because I told the truth, and it wasn’t tidy. And yet I didn’t stop there, I kept going until I found the love.
So perhaps the key is looking beyond one story’s ending to a new story’s beginning.
I realized that the life I was living now with my own family - my husband and two daughters - was my own family's happy beginning. The chain of abandonment and generational trauma from my past is being broken with my own little family and we are writing a new story. A story that includes the old but also transcends it.
If that’s not a great story, I don’t know what is!
Where is the truth and where is the love? These are the guiding questions I will carry into the new year. This is my quest in this season.
Because I found the courage to write that one story, I can now write any story that I need to tell. That story taught me to trust and honor my experience, to stay open, to allow myself to be surprised even when I think I know how the story ends, and to look for the love. I also taught me how much healing can come from working with one story.
I hope you will be courageous, friend. We need your stories. Maybe you need to see where your stories take you. I feel confident that you too will uncover new understandings that currently remain hidden.
Finally, I want to say that although I did not receive the reconciliation I hoped for in this life, I don’t believe healing ends when someone dies. In some ways, it opens up all kinds of new possibilities. But it won’t look like it might in the Hollywood version and there’s a road to travel first. And every step is healing.
I’m cheering you on and I’m here to walk with you.
xo Mary
PROJECT 444 - Write To Heal Your Story
Are you feeling that internal nudge to write with us this winter?
I’m holding space for a limited number of women to join me in this soulful opportunity to begin writing and healing your story with support this winter.
You don’t have to go it alone. You were never meant to.
Project 444 is your sacred container to write, heal, and share your stories –one 444-word story at a time, in our private and affirming community. Click the button below to learn more.
My signature 3-month live program using weekly email, twice monthly Zoom calls, and a private Mighty Network space to share your stories and read the stories of others in the community for support, encouragement, and accountability. The program begins on January 14. Limited spots are available to ensure the intimacy of the group. Please reach out to me if you have any questions. You can simply reply to this email.
3 THINGS WORTH SHARING THIS WEEK:
If you haven’t seen my 15-minute short film, here’s the link: DANDELION.
Fortune Magazine’s article on “Sr.’‘- a documentary by Robert Downey Jr. about his complicated relationship with his father.
Trailer for “Sr.”
As we ease into the new year, give yourself some space to not have it all figured out. I know I am giving myself that gift. I give myself all of January for reflection instead of trying to cram it all into the days between Christmas and New Year’s Day,
Until next week, friends,
xo Mary
A portion of December’s paid subscriptions goes to The Murphy Center For Hope. It is both a container and direct provider of services, partnering with dozens of agencies so that people who face homelessness are welcomed, safe, and supported in Northern Colorado.
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Thanks for this reminder that even when things don’t go the way we hoped they would life still has value and good things we can still happen.