Personally....

I've been cautious about getting too personal on my blog. It's felt as if, having worked so hard to get a sense of detachment from my intimate life issues, sharing even an teensy bit of them in a posting would jeopardize what feels like progress.

And by progress, I mean progressing, moving forward. What I've come to realize over the past few hours is that progress, to me, means letting out whatever wants to be shared. Of my various blogs, Sneezing Chickens means the most appropriate for such shares - everything is just a story, nothing more or less. Whatever I share will be mine.

The reason for being for this blog is to honor all the different energies that helped me achieve whatever sense of balance I enjoy at this moment in time. By focusing on them, it felt like I could sidestep the more potentially troublesome aspects of the personal work I've done over the past 35 years. Who can dispute that this group or that mentor, this book or that article, this audiotape or that movie helped shift my perspective to a better place? But plenty can dispute what impact a human being had on me.

What's occurred to me over the past few hours is that even that disagreement, that taking exception to something I might bring up, is a good thing. In the end, it's all just stories anyhow, so hearing someone else's story can only be good, even if it disputes my own. That's communication, and it always, ultimately serves a purpose, even if it's not one I imagined or can relate to.

Life is a complex jumble of stories masquerading as limited time experiences. Ha! They have no boundaries, no limits. I could sit in a room with Mim & Peter, Mike & Kerry and they could each tell a story that directly contradicts my own. Here's the fascinating thing - if you gave each of us a point in time to describe, one that involved us all, some of us would probably come up with similar accounts but no two stories would be exactly the same. And if you have four out of five of us all share the same experience, even that is no guarantee that the moment actually happened. We are all stories & stories are susceptible to naturally selective memory, personal voice, and even unconscious editing. NO ONE has immunity from this all-too-human experience processing software!

How can I write "wrapped in stories" if there are stories I'm cautious about sharing?