SHAPING OUR EXPERIENCES

In this week's newsletter: How A Christmas Song Shapes A Memory, Telling Difficult Stories, 3 Films: Mame, The Fablemans, and The Glass Castle, Ron's World, and more...

“When you experience something, its shape is like a fingerprint that reflects its unique meaning, and how you remember or conceptualize that experience can be turned into another shape - Jeremy Manning

Photo by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash

Greetings, Friends:

This year, in addition to launching Project 444 and immersing myself in my Living School studies, I’ve been squeezing in reading memoirs and watching coming-of-age films to explore how I might lean into shaping my own memoir.

I’ve learned that my healing story is a love story. So is yours.

And like all good love stories, it’s a complicated combination of darkness and light, hope and heartbreak, loss and love. But mostly love.

This week I reconnected with a film from my childhood and watched two other films that I wanted to mention. All three made me think more deeply about which stories we choose to tell, and how we choose to tell them. In other words, how do we give shape to our experiences?

Music, movies, and memories:

Music and movies tell stories. Stories awaken our memories.

I’ve had a song in my head playing on repeat whenever my mind goes quiet The song in question? Need A Little Christmas, from the 1974 film Mame with Lucille Ball. Granted, it’s not the most-played Christmas tune out there, but it finds its way into most radio playlists this time of year. It brings a mix of emotions for me and I decided to explore what it was about that song that continues to pull my attention.

Some background: If you don’t know the story, Auntie Mame is a larger-than-life character who tries to live life to the fullest and in her case, lavishly, and at this particular point in the film has just found out that she’s lost everything in the Stock Market Crash. Although grieving, she breaks into song ( It’s a musical after all) to rally her despondent young nephew and household staff. Here are some of the lyrics:

Haul out the holly
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again
Fill up the stocking
I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now…

For I've grown a little leaner, grown a little colder
Grown a little sadder, grown a little older
And I need a little angel sitting on my shoulder
Need a little Christmas now!

A Memory: I was 13 when this version of the musical was released and right before our family received orders from the Coast Guard. We were being transferred from California to Puerto Rico. This was an especially difficult transition for us. My parents had just reunited two years earlier after a rocky separation. I was crushed that I would have to leave the security of a school and teachers I absolutely loved before the end of my 8th-grade year, and my mom was facing a lot of unknowns herself as she packed up her family to move to an island with no friends and no cultural context. She was only 30 years old with 3 children and a husband whose work kept him away for weeks at a time. I can only imagine the anxiety and uncertainty she must have felt. Living on an island in the middle of the Caribbean, it would be impossible to pack the kids in the car and take off when things got tough. She was a runner. Not the athletic kind.

I remember my mother’s helplessness that first night in San Juan when we stopped to pick up food for dinner. We were new to PR and a bit lost amidst the street food of empanadillas and pastelillos de Carne, so we stopped at a local convenience store to get food for sandwiches. We were tired and hungry from our travels and it was getting dark. Mom bought a quick dinner of bread, bologna, and chips to take home for our first night in the new house. When we got home, the bologna was rimmed in green. Mom burst into tears.

Not long afterward, I have a magical memory of a Saturday afternoon cleaning the new-to-us house when Need A Little Christmas came on the radio. Unexpectedly, Mom broke into her best drum major strut leading me and my two little sisters in a family parade. Broomsticks, bottles of Pledge, and dust rags rhythmically kept time as we marched in our family band- singing, laughing, and prancing through the house. It’s one of my favorite memories of our time in Puerto Rico. And, for me, an example of the layers of compassion that can unfold through the doorway of one story.

Often our holiday memories are a mix of nostalgia, ache, wonder, and love. We hold it all.

Decades later, this is one of the songs that most reminds me of my mother during the holidays - her grief and her gusto, mixed with sheer grit and determination to lift our spirits, and her own, when facing the unknown.

Don’t most of our stories contain some blend of grief and gusto and grit? Can’t the same be said of the people we love, as well? As I write my stories, as you write yours, let’s do our best not to deny the fullness of the characters in our own lives and personal stories. My mother was not a cardboard character. She was not just one thing. I want to remember who she was - the wounded and the wonderful- while also remembering that she carried her own stories long before I arrived on the scene.

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TWO APPROACHES TO TELLING OUR DIFFICULT STORIES:

THE FABLEMANS by Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner

Last week, I drove to Fort Collins to see The Fablemans. I watched not only the story unfolding but tI also paid attention to the way Spielberg - the master storyteller that he is - chose to share his coming-of-age story. While he did share the difficulties of his early life, the tone of the film never got dark. We know how capable he is of handling difficult themes and topics, but instead, he chose to focus primarily on the love in his family, even amidst all their flaws and his own. I was curious about his choice to bring a light touch to serious topics and wondered why he didn’t go into some of the darker places in his childhood. Still, I was affected by it. This film was saturated with light. We watch the evolution of his need for storytelling, then his growing love of it, and then his understanding of the power stories yield. (Mmm… this sounds familiar.) It was also a reminder that you just can’t tell it all, and choosing which memories to include and which to leave out must support the overall theme or message of the story.

THE GLASS CASTLE BY JEANETTE WALLS (Screenplay by Cretton, Lanham, and Noxon)

After watching The Fablemans that afternoon, I decided while driving home from the theater that it was finally time to watch the 2017 film, The Glass Castle, that night. My friend Caitlin asked me recently if I’d read the book, and I told her that I’d tried to read it when it first came out in 2005 at the urging of my best friend, who said, “ YOU have GOT to read this book. I think you will really relate to it.”

At the time, I read the first chapter and immediately tossed it back onto the shelf. Nope. Not ready. And yep, I did relate to it. It was far too activating for me at that time. But now, almost 18 years later, I am more resilient. (This gal has done a lot of work). Like the jingle for the Virginia Slims cigarette ad used to say, “You’ve come a long way, baby.

So, I thought, you know…why not go ahead and rip the bandaid, right? I was already in that emotional space of childhood memories from The Fablemans so why not keep going and finally watch this story that I’d once avoided and mostly forgotten about until recently?

So I watched it. I watched it in the same way that I viewed The Fablemans, with one part of myself engaged in the story and another part semi-removed, watching the choices that the storyteller made in telling it.

Jeanette Walls definitely does not dodge the darker places in her story. Within a few minutes of the film, the protagonist is standing on a chair at age three, boiling hotdogs for her lunch -and her mother’s lunch too, I might add - and her apron catches fire. Sadly, so does she. No denying the darkness of parental neglect and generational trauma in this film.

I did not grow up in abject poverty nor with alcoholic parents, however, the unpredictability of a parent who suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness and who made magic one moment and mayhem the next was all too familiar to me.

My story is not hers, but as with all great storytelling, we find ourselves in other each other’s stories somehow. In many ways, her decision to take us with her to those darker moments in her life, helped me feel seen. I sense that my story will lean more in the direction of Jeanette Walls, vulnerably sharing the difficulties while seeking light where it can be found.

“We are made for the sake of each other, but we each have our own tasks.”

- Marcus Aurelius

As I begin to wrap up 2022 and move into 2023, all I know for sure right now is that my task is to keep writing and seeking understanding; and that I can trust the story to lead the way and tell me what shape it wants to take and what it has to teach me.

As I go, I hope to discover where my little story fits into the larger story of all of us. And the largest story of all, Love.

Our healing story is a love story, after all.

And while certain endings may not have been what I wanted or hoped for, the final chapters are still unwritten.

And today is GOOD.

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art by: daytohaveaday on Instagram

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TWO OPPORTUNITIES TO JOIN ME IN JANUARY:

Ready to write with us this winter? Project 444 makes a beautiful gift for yourself or someone you love. I’m holding space for a limited number of women to join me in this sacred opportunity to begin writing your story, You don’t have to go it alone. Get the support you need while writing your stories, every step of the way.

January 14 – April 14, 2023. Registration is now open.

Early bird pricing is only good through December: Use this gift guide link for a discount code!

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THE CENTERING PRAYER SUMMIT 2023

For more information about this 2-day summit and to register, GO HERE Join me in learning from these wisdom teachers LIVE. My friends Keith and Jana do an amazing job of bringing in some of the best living teachers in the contemplative tradition. Early Bird just $99 until December 31st!

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RON’S WORLD: Your dose of dad humor.

I hand Ron my short grocery list.

He reads the first item on the list aloud : (2) Ritz crackers.

Ron: ” So you want two crackers? You want me to open a box in the store and take out two crackers?

Me: (without missing a beat because I live with him and this is my life): Yes. Absolutely. Please open a box carefully, take out 2 crackers and then quickly reseal the container so that no one sees what you're doing. “

Ron: Got it!

It might not be high humor but nothing’s better than getting to laugh every day with someone you love!

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES. Few ingredients, keeps in the fridge well, and you always have a little something yummy ready to give to someone who shows up at your house unexpectedly.

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And this pretty much says it all…

@BrentTerhune

See you next week, friends!

xo Mary

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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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