What is my story?

Everyone has a story to tell and there is someone that needs to hear it.

Have you ever found yourself in a place of life transition, change that you didn’t ask for or want? I have and that’s what happened to me.  I suddenly found myself facing life alone in the circumstance I didn’t ask for.

I realized when faced with unwanted choices in life, there’s a choice to be made. The first thing I learned is that grief isn’t fair.  It can hit you more than once and can take prisoners.

There are lots of circumstances that cause grief.

Heartbreak, divorce, job loss, illness, accident, an empty nest, or lost dreams, the lists goes on and on; all examples of how life can punch you in the stomach.  I know, I’ve been punched a few times.

Grief has a way of spilling out, looking for answers. There’s healing in the telling of our stories and my book is my story.

The title came first.  That might not be the way to write a book, but that’s how I started mine. Hello Nobody, Standing at the Door Alone, What to Do When Everything Changes, seemed to sum up my life perfectly.

The death of a nine-year-old son who died in his sleep, the death of a husband who lost his battle with prostate cancer, a daughter moving out of state to follow her life-path and my own ordeal with breast cancer, left me battle weary and worn out.

I was left feeling it’s someone else’s turn!  Have you ever felt like that?  Enough!

I felt circumstances had left me standing at the door looking at a life I didn’t know how to live; everything had changed. The title rolled around in my head for some time, before I sat down and actually started writing.

I was visiting my daughter in Colorado Springs for a February weekend.  When I arrived, the weather was windy, sunny and pleasantly warm. The next day a blizzard blew into town and we found ourselves snowbound inside her house for three days.

That’s when I decided, “I think I’ll start my book!” And I did.  It began simply with a two paper grocery bags taped together to make one large sheet of brown paper.

In the center, I wrote two words, Hello Nobody.

I spent the day dumping out of my head everything those words represented and brought to mind. It included stories from my childhood, events, phrases, concepts, thoughts…. all written in black marker, filling up the large paper taped to the floor until my mind was blank.

Staring at the brown paper crammed with every imaginable thought, I started dividing ideas into chapter headings and sub-headings. And what emerged was the outline for my book.  Now I had a title and an outline.  I just needed to write!

The writing came quickly, actually, it poured out of me, as if the telling demanded a voice. What motivated me to write my book, was my story.  I wanted someone to know that if I can make it through, they could too. 

How about you?  Is it time for you to tell your story?  There is someone who needs to hear it, even if that one is just you.  There's healing in the telling.