"It's time to listen to your story." Dan Allender
I love stories.
Always have.
It is possible that this was unavoidable, given that I grew up with two of the most gifted storytellers I have known: my parents.
It is also possible that I am slightly biased since my assessment of their storytelling skills was formed in my younger years when children typically idolize and worship their parents. I was no exception.
Hearing my mom’s stories of growing up on a isolated ranch, riding bareback on her horse Annie, made me fall in love with the West and ranches.
She told ghost stories about an old miner who had been robbed, betrayed and abandoned, later haunting the canyons near where my mom grew up. Her story times were so convincing, I came to near blows with some smarty pants who hadn’t heard her stories in real time but claimed these were made up. “You haven’t heard the stories! She can’t make that stuff up!”
Of course, her story times were basically theatrical performances, given that we sat around the coal burning stove in our living room, the only light coming from the glowing embers, lighting up our faces as we sat, mesmerized by her performance. So mesmerized that we always seemed to miss the part where my dad had quietly slipped into the shadows and was now crawling around in the dark behind us, waiting for just the right moment to grab one of us. They were a good team like that!
My dad was no slouch either. Another of my favorite memories was when we would invite some other family over for dinner. I loved staying at the table with the adults as he inevitably shared story after story from his childhood or the early days of my parents’ marriage.
Everything was an adventure. Even something as mundane as stopping in the road on the way to work to rescue a turtle turned into an epic tale of survival when my dad told it. (Spoiler alert: The turtle peed on my dad. It may have lost some pizzazz here, but you’d have to hear him tell it.)
On his podcast, The Place We Find Ourselves, Adam Young recently hosted Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel in an episode on January 6th entitled “Storywork: What It Is And Why It Matters.” In this episode, they share, “You have a story and that story matters,” and they discuss in depth how our stories of origin shape how we show up in our lives to this day.
As I listened to the episode, I was reminded of how much I’ve always loved stories and where that love came from. I have done the hard work of engaging my story for several years now. I was forced into such examination, largely against my will or the decades of “godly” counsel I’d received my whole life, yet driven by a desperate desire to understand my life so I could help my boys write a different story for their lives.
Except that, in all the work I’ve done, I’ve never looked for a theme.
I could relate to Cathy as she shared her experience of being a young girl who never practiced her piano, but still bravely showed up and played horribly. I had similar experiences in my piano career, one of the reasons I have stage fright to this day.
This particular part of Cathy’s story brought tears to my eyes:
“For me, when I started to engage my story, I had a lot of shame and contempt for the little girl who was so confident but really awkward. And, you know, I had so many stories where I would get out beyond my skis. You know, my confidence was more than what I could deliver.
I was young. I was kind of precocious. You know, and I told this story before, but there is this one video of me where I'm playing piano in front of this whole group of people and I'm terrible.
And I keep making the mistake over and over again, but I have this confidence in me that's like, surely they all want to hear me play this. And surely, you know, I think I'm better than I am because of again, this is all storied, right? Like where part of my confidence was true and lovely and part of it was the idea that I could do no wrong, right?
And I got set up within my family of origin to not understand who I really was or my own limitations or that it was okay to just need to learn before you get on a stage, you know? And so when I looked back at this stories, first time I engaged, I cringed. Like oh, that’s so embarrassing.
I’m so embarrassed for her. How could someone let me do that? Like how could I not read the room?”
From The Place We Find Ourselves: 167 StoryWork: What It Is and Why It Matters with Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel, Jan 6, 2025
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Her story brought tears to my eyes because I was similarly precocious and blindly brave.
I have often shared how as a tiny little scrap of person, the youngest child and only girl in my family with two older, larger brothers, who was regularly “invited” to play tackle football.
“Invited” is in quotes because I was not given the option of declining this opportunity. Ever.
In a physical game of me against two much larger boys, I was expected to hike the ball to myself on offense—which predictably involved a run game—and on defense, I was expected to cover their run game and their passing game, never standing a chance on either side of the ball.
They often offered to give me a 21-point handicap, an offer I always declined with the same speech, “If I win, I want all my points to be mine.”
I have always laughed at this story, amazed as I recall feeling that I genuinely had a chance of scoring.
But as I listened to Cathy’s story, I saw my younger self differently.
First off, for the first time, I had compassion for this version of myself. A young girl, repeatedly forced to compete against boys she had no chance of winning against. Tackled when playing one side of the ball, then either running her hardest with no chance of catching her target or dragged mercilessly as she refused to let go.
I’ve long admired her moxie, oblivious to the other ways that those experiences shaped the way I have showed up in my life.
The tears came as I realized that this was a theme in my life.
I have repeatedly shown up for challenges too big for me, under-resourced and overly confident, believing that if I just tried hard enough, I could actually have an impact.
I am still seeing that same little girl, showing up today, unable to “read the room” or realistically evaluate the risks and rewards of the challenges. Unable to opt out of harder challenges because she was raised to believe she had no options to say “no.”
I still give her credit for her moxie.
But I also mourn the consequences that comes from a lifetime of showing up for oversized challenges, unprepared and under-resourced for the often inevitable failure that followed, never believing that she could walk away.
I was so often expected to provide superhuman results while being stripped of basic human care and attention that I still struggle to this day to honestly assess when I have overextended myself. I also struggle to ask for help because I don’t fully understand my own limitations.
Now that I recognize this pattern, I am doing the work of reframing my longstanding mindset, giving myself more compassion for the ways that I bite off more than I can chew while also giving myself permission to be less, to choose smaller.
While I appreciate you, my reader, following along as I share parts of my story, I am not interested in simply sharing tidbits from an interesting life, made far more interesting by the risks I’ve taken.
Rather, I want to build a community of people who understand the importance of engaging in their life stories so that we can collectively write new stories for the generations coming after us.
So I encourage you to not just read about my experiences or even use other people’s stories as distraction from your own.
Rather, I ask that you do the hard work of engaging your story. What are the themes of you life as you look back? What are the parts you’re ashamed of? What parts have you always been proud of? What do those parts tell you about yourself?
No matter what you’ve believed about your story, I want you to know that you matter. Your story matters.
If you are doing the work, I’d love to hear from you! Because if you remember, I love stories.
You have a story and it matters, and as Dan Allender shares, “It is time to listen to your story.”