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Today, Fable and the Verbivore talk honestly about writing and sharing our personal stories.

Whether it’s a journal entry, blog post, or an episode of this podcast, facing our life stories and sharing vulnerable parts of ourselves can be unnerving, anxiety and fear-inducing, and sometimes painful. But we’ve found that the practice of writing or voicing our own narratives, however vulnerable it makes us feel, can also help us grow and connect with others.

In our conversation, we unpack our thoughts and feelings about digging in with our life stories - both the rewarding and the difficult. Touching on the practices we’ve found helpful to connect authentically with ourselves and our raw experiences, and how it can help us to start to reframe our stories so that we can mentally accept and move beyond them.

We also talk about the power that sharing personal stories has to connect us with experiences and universal truths that are a part of the human experience, both strengthening our ability to empathize with and relate to those that are different than us and to see the many ways we’re similar - as well as remind us we’re not alone.

Towards the end of our discussion, we look at several authors whose own personal stories have connected with our hearts and minds, given us a new lens to see the world, added to our vocabulary to express our experience, and encouraged us to continue the hard work of facing our own wounds.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore talks about using free writing as part of her journaling practice - both on a regular basis and also as a coping strategy when she’s emotionally or physically triggered by something. Here are a couple articles that talk about how this practice could look:

• Freewriting | The Writing Process - MIT GSL Class

• Journal Writing Tips: The Benefits of Freewriting

• What Does It Mean to Be “Triggered?”

Fable mentions that one year she participated in the The100DayProject by writing a vignette about something she experienced in the day, writing it as she would a story. This is an initiative where every year, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of creating. If you’re interested in participating in 2022, it starts on February 13, 2022.

Books & Movies Mentioned:

• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

• Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott

• Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

• The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

• Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)