THE MEMOIR NOTES #9: Stepping Into The Story and Walking the Path Within

What does walking the labyrinth have to do with writing and healing our stories?

The Memoir Notes is a series of real-time notes inside Heart’s Content documenting my process as I write a memoir. I share story drafts with my private community in each month’s intimate, bonus newsletter for paid subscribers. Join us if you want to follow along in real-time, read what I’m writing, and chat with us about it. I hope it also encourages you to write and heal your story.

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Hi, Friends:

If you’ve been here awhile, you know that at the beginning of this journey to write my story, I was a fervent proponent of the swift, post-it note, memory-jotting approach and well, still am. It’s a great way to really dive into capturing memories and writing your stories. The idea of rapidly gathering and documenting memories as they surfaced seemed like the most efficient way to remember ( and re-member) aspects of my story. It also helped to lighten my emotional load, uncover valuable memories, and gain momentum in my healing journey. Each memory I was able to capture and write felt like a weight being lifted from my shoulders.

As I continue this adventure of self-exploration and self-healing through writing, I am beginning to discover the benefits of slowing down and lingering with one story at a time.

That said, there are three primary practices that guide me in staying awake to life's teachings in this season:

• I practice meditation or centering prayer.

• I pay close attention to the nuances and experiences life brings my way.

• I reflect upon these experiences through writing to unravel their deeper meaning.

As I reflect upon my writing journey and the intersections of the curriculum of daily life, I recognize that my local spiritual community unknowingly offered me a valuable lesson and opportunity, just when I needed it most.

Some context:

About six months ago, I started attending a small, inclusive Episcopal church. The congregation there has decided to design and build a permanent labyrinth on the grounds of the church property. I have a long personal history of walking the labyrinth and jumped at the chance to be a part of helping to create a beautiful labyrinth on the grounds.

Not long afterward, I was asked to lead the Labyrinth Spiritual Formation team to teach workshops and facilitate experiences surrounding the labyrinth, guiding others in learning to use this ancient spiritual tool. I was happy and honored to be able to participate in this way. I love the process of creating and facilitating experiences for others and have long loved the moving meditation of the labyrinth, so this was a perfect fit for me. We had our first communal walk on our temporary labyrinth this past Sunday and it was a beautiful experience.

Two weeks ago, I remember telling Sunny, my therapist, that I had been invited to lead some labyrinth experiences. As we discussed it further she aptly pointed out that this labyrinth opportunity was a gift given and could be precisely what I needed for my next season of personal growth and writing.

Only moments before I was bemoaning the fact that I was having a hard time getting back into a steady rhythm of writing because I felt I needed clarity on the structure of my story to be able to move forward. I felt stuck in my writing. With so many creative ways I could potentially tell my story, I felt stymied without having a framework to wrap my memories around. I still had many stories to write and without a structure, was I actually making progress? Yes, I could write them chronologically, but that didn’t feel like the way the larger story wanted to be written. I didn’t know which way to turn or which creative path to follow to move forward.

Enter the Labyrinth opportunity.

What Sunny said next made me pause, in that good way when you know your therapist has just dropped a truth bomb.

“What’s harder for you, Mary? Doing many things or doing just one thing ?” I paused for a nano-second, merely to be polite, because obviously, it’s much harder for me to trust that only doing one thing would ever be enough. (Can I get a witness? )

Sunny wondered if instead of focusing on needing to know the overall structure and jumping around from one approach to another, what might be the benefits of slowing this process down and circling deeper into the stories I had already written?

As anyone who has walked the labyrinth knows, it is a walking meditation. Contemplation on its feet. You don’t juggle multiple tasks, you don’t jump from one lane to another. You trust the path you are walking to lead you to the center. You don’t have to worry and fret and plan and devise how to get to the center, the path simply takes you there. Once in the center, you pause and reflect, you listen and receive. You then follow the path back out and carry forward the insights and restoration you have gained.

What would it be like to approach each one of my stories in this way? What would it mean to circle back through stories already written to trust and invite a different perspective beyond my first person account?

What would it mean to labyrinth my stories?

Although I could intuitively sense the wisdom in this approach, it was unsurprising that my resistance soon surfaced. How will I make any progress in the creation of this memoir if I keep revisiting the same stories? Why would I spend so much time going back over stories I had already captured on paper when there were so many other stories I still needed to write? (All the seasoned writers just did a collective eye roll.) And yet, as others have said before me, we often need to slow down to speed up. I preach the contemplative path and I still sometimes struggle to remember and live it.

Repetition is not redundancy

I'm reminded of what my teacher, Jim Finley, often says about revisiting the 12 Steps of Recovery repeatedly: "Repetition is not redundancy." Do we read sacred texts or poetry only once? Would I tell someone that having walked the labyrinth that it was done, complete, no need to return? Of course not! Why would I think writing a difficult story once was mostly enough? Each time we spiral back to center and out again we return with new gifts. And Heraclitus's famous quote reminds us that we never step into the same river twice.

I haven’t begun this labyrinthing a story process yet ( and yes, I kind of made that noun into a verb) but this idea has given me renewed hope. What new gems might I uncover buried at the center of a particular story to bring back with me on the return journey? Perhaps by revisiting what I have already written, and in this way, I might begin to see new prisms of light shining out from my individual stories that will illuminate the path and structure that my larger story wants to take.

This labyrinth opportunity serves as a reminder that life itself hands us the lessons we need, and all we have to do is trust and follow the path. Sometimes easier said than done, but by staying present on the path, one step following another, we find that the Way has always been there, waiting for us to simply walk it.

With you on the winding way,

xo Mary

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3 THINGS WORTH SHARING:

1. Lawrence The Band. This past week’s joyful musical discovery. Don’t just listen, watch the exuberance. Jazz meets Musical Theatre meets Indie Pop meets Gospel? I love watching people who absolutely love what they do. When life gets hard, DON’T LOSE SIGHT.

2. This quote. I think she speaks for many of us here.

3. Free download of a Finger Labyrinth below. Want to find a labyrinth to walk in your area? Check this: Labyrinth Society Worldwide Labyrinth Locator.

   

Psst. Hey! Thanks for being here! I appreciate you.

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