A good story draws you into its folds, the words embracing you within its pages, sometimes soothing you, other times exciting you, enticing you to read further until the end. When you reach that end, you feel that sense of loss and yet fulfillment. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone holds stories within their hearts.
My story, Moving Forward, tells the tale of someone who wakes up with no idea of who she is, recognizing that she is injured, and in danger. Her only source of hope is to keep moving forward into the unknown before her, pushing past the fear and that belief of “I can’t do this!” As my eldest will tell you, it is a metaphor for all that I have experienced since my beloved’s fall in 2017 and the resulting diagnosis of POEMS syndrome.
Plans go awry. (Not surprising if you know me.)
The story I wrote didn’t turn out as I had planned. I intended to write something a bit different, a bit more fantastical. The nine of us met weekly, and I would lead writing sessions. We’d pick a word or intention, I’d lead a mediation, and then we wrote for 20 minutes. Afterward, we discussed what we had written. It was an exercise to get comfortable with writing, to let things surface, and see where it would lead.
When I sat down to write my story, I incorporated bits and pieces from these exercises into the story. The main character apparently had her own story to tell, and so I told it. Different from my usual work, I noticed that I felt a bit uncomfortable. Part of me was hesitant to include it, until I realized, it was imperfectly perfect.
It was the story I needed to tell.
I grow when I’m outside my comfort zone. Not just a little, but the more outside I step, the more growth I experience. This story and the process of this book reflect that process.
When my beloved first got ill, I was catapulted into a role and situations that were unknown, that terrified me, that I didn’t want but had to deal with. It got to the point where I didn’t even know where my comfort zone began or ended. I had to ask for and rely on help from outside sources, overcoming the belief that asking for help was a sign of weakness. It’s actually harder than not asking for help.
Thus, the fact that this story wasn’t what I usually wrote, that it wasn’t what I had planned to write, only seemed to reflect what I had been through, only contributed to its power. It was another powerful metaphor in my life. I recognized that the story was what it was meant to be.
The Uncomfortable Unknown
“The space of the unknown” is how my beloved and I identified our lives when we didn’t know if he would survive, or if he did, how long he would live. We had no certainty. We didn’t know what would happen.
Thus, we made a choice. We would control what we could. Create our own certainty amidst the uncertainty. We decided to find the gifts, to continue moving forward, step by step, into the unknown, into the discomfort. We had to move through it, and we did.
Just as the protagonist in my story had to find their way, we had to find ours.
The Lifebook Link
If it wasn’t for Lifebook, Soul Journey wouldn’t be a book. All nine of the authors in this book share a link, and that link is Lifebook. Lifebook brought us together, enabled us to create a vision and move forward thanks to strategies and purpose. Just as the protagonist in each story must find her way, we are finding ours. We still meet weekly, connecting, inspiring, motivating, and encouraging each one of us to keep moving forward.
Throughout the process of writing this book, we have all accomplished goals and dreams that we created and envisioned in our Lifebooks, or added to them.
Soul Journey consists of nine engaging stories, nine very different voices, that ask the question, “Are you listening to your soul?” The entire process was a soul journey in itself for each of us, pushing each one of us out of our comfort zone, into the space of the unknown, providing opportunities to face uncertainty.
Want to be inspired, or are you interested in the anthology, as of this article, it is currently on sale for $.99 cents on Amazon. The paperback will be out in a few weeks for those who prefer the feel of a book.
Dive Deeper with Journal Prompts
- How do you deal with the “space of not knowing”, the unknown?
- What do you do when you don’t know?
- Are you listening to your soul? Why or why now?
When she’s not connecting with her family or playing with new projects (like her budding new business), you can find Dani hanging out as an ambassador in the Lifebook Community, and via her Instagrams @beingalighthouse and @innerlighthousemusings
And if you want to work with Dani in her capacity as a Lifebook leader, set up a Discovery Call and check out the options. If you are interested in what projects Dani is involved in, go here.
©2022 Dani Glaeser
