September 23, 2025 • 44 mins
When you’re in the middle of your story and it appears that no resolution is on the horizon, it’s easy to assume that you must be doing something wrong.
Maybe if you were stronger, wiser, or more "positive" you would be able to find a solution and bring your story to resolution.
But what if the point of the story is not to resolve the story?
What if the unresolved, chaotic, painful middle of a story is exactly where you belong?
In today’s episode I’ll talk about our very human impulse to relieve the pain and pressure of our stories, to find resolution, and I’ll also explore what happens when we allow the middle of the story to be exactly what it is: confusing, unsettling, upsetting and painful.
Are you in the middle of a story?
What would it be like to soften into the middle and let it change you?
Book mentioned: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write. All the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and coverard it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, Write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon and
on today's episode, I want to unpack a topic that
I think is really applicable for all of us right now.
I want to talk about this idea of settling into
the middle of a story, and the middle of a
(00:45):
story the way that I think about it is the
part of the story where the tension rises. The tension
is high through the entire middle of the story, but
gets higher and higher and higher as the hero moves
through the story. So the further you get into the story,
the higher the tension gets. But really the middle of
the story spans from immediately after the beginning. This call
(01:10):
to adventure, this exciting moment of awakening or something that
happens at the beginning of a story. Joseph Campbell calls
it the call to adventure or an inciting incident, something
that happens that just wakes the hero up and changes
the way that they see the world. So that's the
moment that begins the story. And then immediately we're in
the middle of the story, and we stay in that
middle of the story all the way until the moment
(01:33):
that Blake Snyder calls the all is Lost moment. So
really most of the story is the middle. The end
brings some resolution, the beginning brings potentially some excitement or
possibly some fear. So the beginning can be a little
tricky too. But the middle is this long, winding, unfolding
journey of tension, discomfort, obstacles, moment after a moment of
(01:59):
the hero not being able to solve the problem that
they're trying to solve, not being able to achieve the
outcome that they're trying to achieve, not being able to
resolve the story in the way that they want it
to resolve. And this is the majority of the story.
This is ninety percent of what makes up a story
is this middle. And so I wanted to talk about
(02:20):
the middles of stories and how uncomfortable they can be
and how important they are, because I know, beyond a
shadow of doubt that you are in the middle of
a story in your life right now. Maybe in certain
parts of your life you're at the end. You're feeling
a resolution coming to a problem or to an issue
or to attention that has existed in your life for
(02:41):
a very long time, and you're feeling on top of
the world about that. It's like, yes, oh, finally things
are starting to make sense, things are clicking, things are working.
For me, that moment of resolution is such a relief.
It's like the tension coming out of the pressure cooker.
Right you lift the lid of the pressure cooker and
it's like hiss. Yes, like relief of tension, and that
(03:04):
moment can feel so delicious. And maybe in other parts
of your life you're at the beginning of the story,
which yes, can have some fear involved in it because
you're stepping into something totally unknown. But in my experience,
almost always at the beginning of a story, you have
a sense of wonder and possibility and excitement. Maybe you're
feeling invited into something that is really scary for you,
(03:25):
or new or different, something you haven't tried before. Maybe
something happened to you and it broke the way you
used to see the world, and so now you're seeing
the world through this new lens or in this new light.
That's the beginning of a story. That's the inciting incident,
that's the call to adventure. And yeah, it can have
some fear mixed in with it, but usually it's fear
mixed with anticipation, excitement, enjoyment, pleasure, hopefulness. At the beginning
(03:51):
of a story, a hero thinks about what they want
to achieve, or thinks about the problem they want to solve,
and they feel pretty confident that they're going to be
able to ache achieve it. They just don't know yet
what they're about to step into. And in the middle
of the story, the minute we get past that inciting incident,
you're in the middle. And in the middle of the story,
the hero begins to try everything they know to try
(04:14):
to achieve their hopeful outcome, and time and time and
time again, they come up short. They fail. They feel stupid,
they feel embarrassed, they feel inadequate, they feel unworthy, and
that tension, that feeling of not enoughness of what if
(04:35):
I can't figure this out, what if I can't solve
this problem, what if I can never achieve what I
set out to achieve follows them, and the tension builds
and builds and builds and builds all throughout the story
until the resolution comes. In fact, the point of highest
tension is that moment that Blake Sneyder titled all those
Last moment, which comes moments before the resolution. And so
(04:58):
wherever you are in a story, if you're not at
the beginning, you're not in the precipice of something new
and exciting, and you're not in the resolution, you're in
the middle, and that middle can be extremely uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable.
One of the reasons that I wanted to bring this
up is I think as a culture, as a global community,
right now, we are in the middle of a story.
(05:21):
And I think it could be argued that most of
human history has been the middle, this middle, ninety percent
middle of a story. There maybe have been pioneering moments
of stepping into new territory, brand new. You know, we've
had a paradigm shift. We're starting something new, and it's
exciting and it's anticipatory and we feel like, you know,
change is coming. And there may also have been moments
(05:44):
of resolution that you could point to and say, Okay,
this is a moment in human history where we resolved
a problem that we've been dealing with for a long time,
and we made serious progress with it. We came up
with a solution that no one had thought of before,
and we implemented it and people were relieved because of it. Like,
I think the first thing that comes to mind is
like the women's suffrage movement, right, Like, this is a
moment in history that you can point to and say, like,
(06:05):
we enacted laws that allowed women to finally be able
to use their voice in politics and to be able
to put their hand up and say this is what
I think, or this is what I believe, this is
who I'm going to vote for, this is why I'm
going to put my support behind. That's a moment in
human history. I'm not saying it solved every problem as
it relates to women's issues, or that it solved every
problem as it relates to politics, but it is the
(06:27):
resolution of a long drawn out story of tension and
frustration and obstacles and loss and all those things. It's
a moment of resolution. So we have those moments in
human history of you're on the precipice of an exciting
new beginning, and you have moments of resolution. And yet
most of human history is I think as I look back,
(06:48):
most of human history is this messy, messy middle. So
what the heck do we do with the messy middle
of a story? We're experiencing this messy middle globally. I
think right now, if you live in the USA, US,
you're experiencing it at a bit of a fever pitch.
Is the way that I feel it and sense it.
And maybe if you're younger or older than me, or
(07:09):
you come from a different generation, maybe you experience it differently.
But for me, I'm in my early forties, I'm feeling
like I've not experienced a time in history like this before.
I'm watching events unfold that feel extremely tense to me.
The obstacles feel in some ways insurmountable, in most ways insurmountable.
And this is indicative of the middle of a story.
(07:33):
A hero in the middle of a story does feel
like this thing that I want to achieve, this problem
that I've set out to solve, this world that I've
stepped into is so intensely unfamiliar to me that I
couldn't possibly have what it takes to complete the task
that I've been invited to. And when I look at
(07:54):
what's unfolding around us on the political stage in the US,
on the world stage, you know, there's wars being waged
all across the world. Just what's unfolded in the last
couple of weeks, with Charlie Kirk's death and with more
school shootings and so many things that are happening. I
just think to myself, Okay, this is what it feels
(08:14):
like to be in the middle of a story. A
hero goes, I have no idea how to fix this.
In fact, to the point where this feels too far gone,
I don't know what anybody could possibly do that could
change the outcome of this situation. That is middle of
a story. Energy. That is exactly what it feels like
to be in the middle of a story. So yeah, collectively,
we are in the middle of this story right now.
And I can almost guarantee that personally, somewhere in your
(08:36):
life you're also in the middle of a story. Again,
Maybe somewhere in your life you're at the precipice at
the beginning, maybe somewhere you're at a resolution, But also
somewhere in your life you're in the part of the
story where you don't know how to bring resolution to
your current set of circumstances. You don't know what to do,
you don't feel adequate, you don't feel equipped, you don't
(08:56):
feel like you have the right tools to bring resolution
to whatever it is that's plaguing you. In fact, probably
you've tried everything that you know how to do. Maybe
you have a health issue, and you've gotten down every
rabbit hole, you've done all your research, you've gotten to
every doctor. No one can figure out what's going on.
It's chronic, it's frustrating, it's plaguing you, it's affecting your life.
(09:17):
You cannot bring resolution to this problem. And maybe you're
at that all's last moment, at the all is lost moment,
the point of highest tension. Usually the hero is just like,
forget it. I don't even I'm out of energy. I
don't have any more energy to give to this problem.
I don't know how to solve it. I've tried everything
I know how to do. So they throw their hands up,
and sometimes that energy of giving up can actually usher
(09:39):
in a resolution. But maybe you've done the throw your
hands up thing several times and still haven't experienced resolution,
and you're just kind of like WTF, Like what is
going on? How could a person possibly live like this?
I can't live inside of this tension forever. The tension
can feel oppressive, it can feel so frustrating, it can
feel devastating, can feel hopeless. And so this is what
(10:02):
I want to talk about today, is how do we
exist in the middle of the story without completely losing hope?
Or maybe we do completely lose hope. How do we
put one foot in front of the other. How do
we keep moving forward? How do we keep showing up
to our stories when we're in the hopelessness of the
middle of the story. I wasn't sure if I was
(10:23):
going to share this, but I don't really think there's
any way for me to talk about what I want
to say today without sharing what's going on in my life,
which is that in many areas of my life, we
are at a precipice, a new beginning, an exciting new
thing that's happening. We're stepping into new territory. I've talked
about this briefly, but my husband and I have started
this homeschool co op for my kids. I'm teaching in
(10:44):
the homeschool co op two days a week on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. These are three to six year olds. I
have zero experience teaching three to six year olds. I'm
just kind of like flying by the seat of my pants,
figuring out as I go. I do have a master's
degree in education, so I feel equipped in that way.
And I also have two kids who fall into that
age category. Charlie's almost four now, it just turned five,
(11:06):
So I have that experience that somewhat equips me, or
at least entices me and invites me into this experience
and makes me feel excited about what could be possible
if we build this thing that we haven't ever built before.
We're at the precipice, we're at a new beginning, and
there are moments where I feel inadequate or it feels
scary or whatever, but it's mostly right now the beginning
(11:28):
of the story, it's mostly just exciting think of what
could be possible if we take this kind of chance
on something like this. I even have areas of my
life where the story is coming to resolution. In fact,
I have areas of my life where the story is
coming to a somewhat tragic resolution and yet it's still
a resolution. It's still a relief of the pressure business
(11:49):
deal that I've talked a bunch about the risk that
my husband and I took several years ago that came
to the opposite conclusion of what we wanted it to
come to. Last May, that tragic resolution has been playing
itself out over the course of the last year. In
our lives are a little bit more than a year,
and there are many aspects of that story that still
(12:09):
feel really like a bummer to me. It's still sad.
There are lots of losses that we're reckoning with, and
yet it's still a resolution. The resolution wasn't the resolution
that we wanted, but it is a resolution, and so
to be on that resolved side of the story, I
feel much less tension in the story than I did
about the story a year ago or even two years ago.
(12:32):
When we were in the middle of that story, the
tension was so high, the stress was so big. I
was itching and begging for any way to relieve some
of the pressure that I felt being inside of the
middle of that story. And now that I'm on the
resolution side, I'm like, gosh, this is a really big bummer.
We lost all this money. We lost our dream, we lost,
you know, some relationships, or at least the way that
(12:53):
relationships used to be in that context. We lost some community,
we lost a lot, and yet there's result, there's answers,
the loops are closed, the tension is not as high,
and there are areas of our life where things have
resolved positively too. So what I'm saying is, in the
scope of everything that's going on in our life, we
have stories that are at the beginning, stories that are
(13:14):
at the end, and then we have this story where
we are in the middle. We are smack dab in
the middle of the story in our lives that asks
the question will we or won't we be able to
grow our family. This has been an ongoing conversation between
(13:37):
Matt and I for years now, pretty much since I
don't know, maybe a year after Charlie was born. So
he was born in December of twenty twenty one. So
let's just put us into twenty twenty three and say
it's been an ongoing discussion about whether or not we
were going to be able to grow our family. It
has never been a question of whether I wanted to
grow our family. I have always wanted to have four kids.
(13:58):
When Matt and I met, we thought it was it
was like such a wild coincidence that we both wanted
four kids. And I have never been under the illusion
that I was entitled to having four kids or that
I would get to have four kids. In fact, I
started having kids much later in life and was shocked
and surprised and pleasantly surprised to see that I was
able to get pregnant with Nella and Charlie so easily
(14:19):
and quickly, with relatively few complications and completely you know,
uncomplicated vaginal births and two healthy kids and all of
those things. After Charlie was born, we took a break
for a little bit because Charlie and Nella were born
so close to one another that we just wanted a
minute to catch our breath before we added another baby
into the mix. And while that was happening, we were
(14:43):
working on this new business development. It was taking a
lot of our time and energy, it was taking almost
all of our financial resources, and so we made the
decision to just kind of hit pause and wait and
see what happened. Well, of course, you know the story. Now,
things didn't go the way we wanted them to. Go,
they didn't go the way we expected them to go,
and so when everything fell apart in twenty twenty four,
(15:04):
Matt and I both felt like, as much as we
would love to add another child to our family, it
didn't feel like the right time because we just weren't
financially stable or secure enough to make that kind of decision,
And so we kept hitting pause on this, kept hitting
pause on this, kept hitting pause on this, and then
decided to open the door to that again. Later in
(15:26):
twenty twenty four, we got pregnant, we had a miscarriage.
We've gotten pregnant a second time, had a second miscarriage.
Are hoping to be able to add this child to
our family, but we just simply don't know. And after
the second miscarriage is when I started thinking about the
open endedness of this. I was telling Matt how tricky
(15:46):
it feels to be in the middle part of this story,
especially as a woman. I think women experienced this differently
than men. If you're the one who is carrying the pregnancy,
the one who's getting pregnant and carrying the child, the
experience is so visceral, it's so embodied, because you know,
for Matt, if he we take a positive pregnancy test
(16:07):
and it's like, yes, okay, we're having a baby. You
have nine months to plan, nine months before anything that
dramatic really changes for you. But as the person who's
carrying the child, the question of will we be able
to won't we be able to? And then also the
process of going through a miscarriage. The physical process of
losing a pregnancy is such a dramatic physical experience that
(16:31):
your entire life in some ways is on hold while
you wonder whether or not this thing will unfold for you.
And I'm not saying that this experience is totally unique
to pregnancy. I think actually, whenever you're in the middle
of the story, this tension is so high that it
feels like, oh, I would do anything to be able
to relieve the tension of this story. And I'm just
(16:52):
giving examples of how in the particular story that we're
in the middle of, how the tension is high there,
But same is true for you. Whatever story you're smackedab
in the middle of, the tension is probably very high.
You're asking the question, will I be able to achieve
this thing? Won't I will I get this thing? Won't
I won't I get it. Will I solve this health
problem won't I? Will I get the job or won't I?
Will I have the baby or won't I? Will I
(17:13):
start the business or won't I? And the answer to
that question changes dramatically your life path, And so you're
in the middle wondering like which way is this thing
gonna go? And feeling maybe helpless, like you don't have
a lot of agency or control over how it goes.
You can only do what you can do. And so
(17:34):
I have found myself in the middle of this story
feeling helpless, feeling confused, feeling really lost. One of the
most confusing elements to me is what I was describing
to my friend the other day as this inexplicable urge
to have another baby. And I'm like, what is this, Like,
is this some weird biological button that was like programmed
(17:55):
into us with the evolutionary purpose of getting people to
pro crew Because that doesn't totally make sense to me,
because not every person has that. I mean, plenty of
people describe having one baby, or two babies, or maybe
no babies and then saying like, Okay, that's it. Our
family's complete. I feel complete. I don't need to have
another child? So why would someone have this inexplicable urge
(18:17):
to have another baby? And put this over your set
of circumstances, Why would someone have an inexplicable urge to
move to another country, or an inexplicable urge to get married,
or an inexplicable urge to whatever fill in the blank
thing if that thing wasn't available to them. So to
be in the middle of the story where you're wondering,
(18:38):
will I be able to achieve this thing that I want?
Am I ever going to be able to attain it?
Is this problem a problem that can be solved? Is
it something that can be fixed or resolved? Or am
I living in this tension and perpetuity? Is this tension
going to be here forever? And as I have been
going through this process and asking myself these questions, I
(19:02):
went into my closet one day looking for a pair
of shoes because the weather has turned slightly here in Nashville,
So I was looking for a pair of boots. Reached
up onto a top shelf of my closet, pulled down
not a pair of shoes, but a book that I
had shoved up there at some point. I don't know
when called when Things Fall Apart by a Pima children
And this book has come into my story at the
(19:24):
absolute perfect time. Here's something else I want to talk about.
This book has come into my story as a guide
for me to help me understand how to move through
tension with a little bit more grace, a little bit
more compassionate, a little bit more softness. And I want
to share some of the insights from the book with
you in case they're helpful to you wherever you are
(19:44):
in the middle of this story. But I think one
of the reasons why tension can feel so unbearable in
the middle of the story is especially if you're in
the part of your story before you've met your guide,
before you have any one to reflect back to you
what's going on, and the only way that you can
see your story is through your own patterning, your own programming,
(20:09):
your own lens, your old lens that hasn't been upgraded
yet because you haven't had an opportunity to upgrade it yet.
This experience that you're having is working to upgrade your
lens and to help you see things differently. And that's
what even seeing our lives through the lens of storytelling
that's what it does. That's the purpose that it serves,
is to help you to stand at a thirty thousand
foot view of your story and see it a little differently.
(20:31):
But when you're in the middle, middle of your story
and the tension is high and you haven't met your
guide yet, it can feel extremely disorienting. It's not only
tension is high, but you're just like, I don't freaking
know what any of this means, or why any of
this is happening, or what any of it is about.
And I feel like I'm just suffering for the sake
of suffering, and I'm just in pain for the sake
of being in pain. And if someone could take away
(20:51):
from me this desire that I have to fill in
the blank, to get married, to have a baby, to
start a business, whatever, or if someone could give me
that thing, then the tension would be resolved. But no,
neither of those things are possible right now in the
middle of the story, And so because of that, I'm
just sitting here waiting for some relief, waiting for like
(21:12):
a measure of release of this pressure. So I reach
up onto a top shelf I pulled down this book.
It's called When Things Fall Apart by Pimas Sholder and
the subtitle is heart Advice for Difficult Times. And what's
funny is this book was sent to me by a
client and a friend of mine last year, right after
my dad passed. It was a very thoughtful gift and
(21:34):
care package from this person who sent it after I
lost my dad and after we had the miscarriage last year.
Several of the books that this person sent I read,
and some of the poetry has been you know, I've
held it extremely close to me and it has been
a guide to me through the process of grief of
losing my dad. This book, for whatever reason, I didn't
(21:56):
connect with in that moment, and so somehow it made
it sway up onto my shelf and then kind of
fell down onto my head at the perfect time. I
want to read you a couple of quotes from this book.
I almost never do this, but she is coming into
the middle of my story as such an amazing guide
for me, and I'm wondering if this might act as
(22:18):
a guide for you as well, in the middle of
your story. So I want to read some of what
she talks about and then talk about my takeaways and
how I'm applying this and how I'm integrating it into
the middle of this specific story in my life. She says,
when things fall apart and we're on the verge of
we know not what, the test for each of us
is to stay on that brink and to not concretize.
(22:42):
The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting
to a place that's really swell. In other words, it's
not about resolving the story. In fact, that way of
looking at things is what keeps us miserable. If we
make the story this is me sorry, end of her quote.
If we make this story about resolving this story, it
will make us miserable. I'm going to read that again.
(23:04):
When things fall apart and we're on the verge of
we know not what, the test for each of us
is to stay on that brink and not concretize the
spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to
a place that's really swell. In fact, that way of
looking at things is what keeps us miserable. I couldn't
help but think about when I read this quote, how
I had said to Matt. Living in this unknown is
(23:25):
too stressful for me. I can't do this. We have
to set a deadline. We have to basically say, if
we don't get pregnant by this date, or we don't
have a baby by this date, we're closing the door.
You'll get of a sectomy and we'll move on. We'll
just be happy with our two kids. We're just gonna
move on with our lives. We're just going to close
the door on this part of our lives. We have
two kids, beautiful, healthy, happy kids, one boy, one girl,
who can pee and poop on their own. They can
(23:45):
put on their own shoes, they can put on their
own jackets, they can zip their own zippers. Like we
can just close the door on this and move on.
And essentially what she's saying is that the tendency to
concretize like that, to assume that you have the choice
to close the door on your own story, the story
that you've been invited into by something bigger than you,
(24:06):
that you don't understand. Your tendency to do that is
out of your own fear of being too small, of
being inadequate, of not having what it takes to stay
in the story. And the test for each of us
is to stay on the brink. Can you stay in
the middle of the story when things get really tense,
when you don't know the answers, when you feel lost,
(24:29):
when you feel confused, when you're out of your mind
with grief and frustration. Can you stay in the story
when it feels like that? And when I start to
think about it that way, I realize I have a
lot more work to do as far as staying in
the story. No, it feels really tricky for me to
(24:52):
stay in the story, to stay on the brink, as
she puts it, in this story, the not knowing will
we or won't we do this thing that so dramatically
changes the way that I experience my life, will we
or won't we? And to stay in that middle part
of the story brings up so much for me, so
(25:15):
much sadness, so much grief, a feeling of total confusion,
and even despair. And I want to read for you
what she says as you think about despair or hopelessness,
because I tend to think about it from my worldview
or my upbringing as an area you never want to
go to, like if you can just stay helpful, you
(25:36):
know you can do anything. So just never go to
despair as long as you never go to despair. But
what if our resistance and avoidance of despair is no
different than our impulse to conqutize something. It's like, because
I don't want to feel despair, I have to quickly
make sense of my situation, resolve the story. Say by
(25:56):
X date, we're closing the door, we're getting of a
secton me, We're moving on with our lives. That impulse
is the same impulse, or it's the impulse that is
preventing me from going to despair. But what if to
stay in the story, I have to allow myself to
feel the despair that is here in the story for me,
She says, to stay with that shakiness, to stay with
(26:18):
a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling
of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge. That is the
path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the
knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not
to panic. This is the spiritual path. Getting the knack
of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves is
(26:41):
the path of the warrior. And what I take from
this is that the path of the warrior, meaning the
path of the hero. The path of the type of
person who can quote unquote resolve the story is to
stay with the story in the middle of the story,
in the height of tension, in the midst of spare
in hopelessness, to allow the story to deliver everything that
(27:05):
it's trying to deliver to you without too quickly trying
to race to resolution. There is such a huge temptation
to race to resolution. But can you stay with the
story in the middle, She says, life is a good
teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition,
if only we could realize it. Nothing ever sums itself
up in the way we would like to dream about.
(27:26):
The off center in between state is an ideal situation,
a situation in which we don't get caught and we
can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It is
a very tender, non aggressive, open ended state of affairs.
The off center in between state is an ideal situation.
In other words, the middle of the story is where
(27:49):
all the good stuff happens. And I think our tendency
is to way too quickly race to resolution, to way
too quickly race to sols, to way too quickly abandoned
ship on the story because the tension is just simply
too high, instead of staying with it, staying in the
(28:11):
middle of the tension, allowing the story to teach us
what it is here to teach us, and staying on
the brink. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and
finally getting to a place that's really swell. It's not
about solving the story, resolving the story, finishing the story,
getting to a resolution. She says, in fact, that way
(28:32):
of looking at things is what is keeping us miserable.
Maybe a big part of our suffering is that we think,
erroneously that we should be able to come up with
solutions that solve and resolve the thing much quicker than
it's getting resolved. So I'm asking the question, will we
be able to add another baby to our family? Will we?
Won't we? Will? We won't we? And I'm wanting a
(28:53):
resolution to that story, not even because having another baby
gives me something that I don't already have, because I think,
deep down I know that it won't. I won't change
the way I feel about myself, it won't really change
the way I am as a mother. I mean, either
way you go, there are pros and cons. Either way
(29:14):
you go, it's good and it's not good. And this
is another thing she talks about in the book, and
I could just read honestly every quote from the book,
but she talks about avoiding the tendency we have to
label things as good or not good. But the point
I was trying to make is that either way we go,
it will be fine. So it's not really about achieving
that hopeful outcome. It's more about can I stay with
(29:38):
the story, with the not knowing, with the discomfort, with
the tension, with the pain of being in the middle.
That is where everything that I'm looking for will come from,
is to simply be able to stay in the middle
of the story without the resolution. When we think something
(30:04):
is going to bring us pleasure, we don't really know
what's going to happen. This is her. When we think
something's going to give us misery, we don't know. Letting
there be room for not knowing is the most important
thing of all. We try to do what we think
is going to help, but we don't know. We never
know if we're going to fall flat or sit up tall.
When there's a big disappointment, we don't know if that's
(30:25):
the end of the story. It may just be the
beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We
don't know anything. We call something bad, we call it good,
but really we just don't know. So this was the
first gift of my guide which came to me in
the form of this book Pima Chadron, which was published
back in the nineties. By the way, I had to
check the publishing date because some of the stuff that
(30:46):
she was talking about seemed so applicable to our current
global situation that I was shocked to see that this
was published in nineteen ninety seven for the first time,
and then republished the twentieth anniversary edition in twenty sixteen.
So these truths permeate through different time periods and are
(31:06):
just as true now as they were the day that
they were published. And the first takeaway, or the first
gift of this guide coming into my life is this
idea of staying on the brink. Can you stay in
the middle of the story even when things get really tense.
Can you avoid the tendency to conqutize, the tendency to
jump to a resolution as quickly as possible, To exercise
(31:29):
your sense of agency and control as a way to
get out of the tension. It's like I have agency
and control to do things like, you know, remove any
barriers to getting pregnant, maybe even testing for ovulation, or
going to the doctor and asking about my health or
my husband's health or whatever, to make choices using my
agency toward getting where I want to go. And yet
(31:52):
using my agency to say something like we're having a
cut off date, you know, like we're closing the door
on it at this date is just a little silly,
especially when you think about the fact that I'm just
doing that because I'm so uncomfortable with sitting in the unknown,
And I wonder what the equivalent is for you with
this first takeaway, what would it look like for you
to get comfortable with the tension of the middle of
(32:15):
your story, to get comfortable sitting on the brink. So
the first answer to the question about what it takes
to stay in the middle of our stories is just
the courage that it takes to stay on the brink.
Like she talks about, what would it take for you
to stay on the brink and not concretize, not jump
(32:35):
to the end of the story, not makeup stories about
how this is going to end, or what if it
ends this way, or what if it ends that way?
Or make it end like I was trying to do
with putting an end date on getting pregnant. It's like,
what you're trying to do when you do that is
just give yourself some relief from the tension, which is
so human and understandable, and we can have compassion for it.
(32:55):
And also maybe instead of putting our energy toward relieving
the tension, we can lean into the tension and put
our energy toward becoming the kind of person who has
the capacity to sit on the brink. She says. Along
those lines, Pema Chadron says, to think that we can
finally get it all together is unrealistic. So this, to
(33:15):
me is kind of my second takeaway about what it
means to stay in the middle of a story. So
if she's my guide and this book came to me
as a guide, the first paradigm shift that she offers
to me is instead of trying to end your story,
maybe you try to become the kind of person who
can lean in and stay on the brink. And the
(33:36):
second paradigm shift that she offers me is stop trying
to think that you're the kind of person who can
get it all together. I don't know if this is
like a me personality thing or if this is universal
human condition, But I cannot tell you the amount of
energy I spend in my life trying to be a
person who has it all together, who's all cut up
on emails and text messages, whose house is clean, whose
(33:58):
laundry is organized, whose junk drawer looks, you know, like
like the life Edit came to organize it. You know,
I spend so much energy in my life trying to
look like a person who has it all together, who
shows up to places on time, who is all up
to date in all my appointments, Who has the car
oil changed, you know, all these things that are like,
(34:21):
you know, important, Yes, go get your oil changed. I'm
not saying don't do that, but to do it in
order to have an identity as being the kind of
person who has it all together. Good luck with that,
is what she's saying. Good luck with being the kind
of person. Thinking that you'll ever get to the place
where you can feel like the kind of person who
has it all together. To seek for some lasting security
(34:43):
is futile, she says. So what you're looking for in
being the person who has it all together is to
try to feel secure, and that's futile. To undo our
very ancient and very stuck habitual patterns of mind requires
that we begin to turn around some of our most
bas assumptions. Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to
(35:04):
seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone out there
is to blame for our pain. One has to get
totally fed up with these ways of thinking. One has
to give up hope that this way of thinking will
ever bring us satisfaction. Suffering begins to dissolve when we
can question the belief or the hope that there is
anywhere to hide. I'm going to keep reading from her
(35:24):
because this is a section on hopelessness that really flipped
my world upside down. Hopelessness, she says, means that we
no longer have the spirit for holding our trip together.
We may still want to hold our trip together. We
long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet,
But we've tried a thousand ways to hide and a
thousand ways to tie up all those loose ends, and
(35:46):
the ground just keeps moving under us. Trying to get
lasting security teaches us a lot, because if we never
try to do it, we never notice that it can't
be done. And that quote stuck out to me. I
have an underline and start in my book. Trying to
get security teaches us a lot because if we never
do it, we never notice that it can't be done. This,
(36:06):
to me, is bringing some resolution to my story without
really solving what I was trying to solve, because it
shows me that what I'm trying to do by getting
an answer is trying to come to a place of
feeling secure. And if the answer to that question is
You're never going to feel secure, keep trying to feel secure.
But that sense of security that you think is going
(36:28):
to come from the business venture working, or from having
another baby, or from solving your health problem or from
finally getting your life together. That sense of security that
you think you can find out there is never coming
to you. So you can give up on it right
now and just get comfortable leaning into this tension, the
tension of living in the middle of a story. This
episode is getting very long, but I have two more
(36:49):
things that I want to share before we rap up.
Number one is one of the reasons why this concept
of letting go of that sense of security has felt
so points it to me is because after our second miscarriage,
I had some symptoms that were really concerning to me
that sent me to the er and eventually to the hospital.
I spent a night in the hospital. Everything is fine,
(37:11):
I'm one hundred percent fine, but some mixture of the
hormone change, the blood loss, the I don't know, like
the grief, just the mental anguish of the position that
I was in brought me to this place where I
was one hundred percent convinced that I was going to die.
(37:31):
And when the doctors were asking me about my symptoms,
I mean I was having vertigo. The room was like
spinning up, like flipping upside down is how it felt.
And it genuinely just felt like the ground was falling
out from underneath of me. And I'm explaining these symptoms
to the doctors and there were there was also like
numbness in my right arm, my right foot. I was
having jaw pain, neck pain. I thought I was having
(37:51):
a heart attack. I was hooked up to the EKG.
Everything looked normal. All my vitals were normal, so they
couldn't figure out anything that was going on with me
that was causing these physical symptoms. But I was having
the symptoms, and I remember there was one moment where
I was holding Matt's hand. They were offering me pain medication,
and I was refusing the pain medication because I was
so scared that if they gave it to me, I
was going to slip into a sleeping state, and that
(38:13):
that would be the last time I ever saw Matt
and the kids. Now, looking back, I mean, it seems
kind of insane, but that's actually genuinely what I was
experiencing at the time, And reading this section in this
book gives me a broader perspective on this situation that
so much of what I was experiencing. I mean, there's
physical explanations for it, hormones, grief, so many different things,
(38:36):
but also what I was experiencing was in many ways
very spiritual. This says, non theism is relaxing with the
ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for
anything to protect ourselves. Relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty
of the present moment, without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.
(38:56):
That moment of feeling like this is it. I'm There's
nothing I can do to stop it is almost a
reminder of how helpless and hopeless as human beings we
really are. That my I mean, I take some hope
in believing. I don't believe that this physical world is
the end for us, and so I think we're eternal beings.
(39:19):
I think, you know, there's so much more that happens
after we go from our physical bodies. But think about
the helplessness of being in a physical body and having
little to no control over when that experience ends. That's
an extremely unsettling middle of the story kind of feeling.
She says. We are all addicted to hope, hope that
(39:42):
the doubt and mystery will go away. This addiction has
a painful effect on society. A society based on lots
of people addicted to getting ground under their feet is
not a very compassionate place, which leads me to the
last thing that I want to say. So this idea
that we're addicted to getting the grind under our feet,
and I'm literally sitting in the hospital before I found
(40:04):
this book, explaining to the doctors that it feels like
the ground is collapsing under my feet. I feel like
I am disappearing, like like I'm going to collapse into
the ground, and then I'm telling Matt, I feel like
I'm going to die. I feel like I'm going to die.
There is a metaphor at play there in my experience
that obviously I need to get the physical things checked out.
I have no interest in leaving this lifetime at this time.
(40:27):
I have young kids, so much more to live for.
I love my life, and this is one of the
big takeaways from my experiences, just how much I love
my life and I am invested in my life and
want to be here for it, even the difficult parts
of it. So that's one big takeaway from this experience.
But another takeaway for me is this idea that our
(40:48):
experience is a groundless one and trying to get the
ground under our feet, in other words, trying to pretend
like we have control over our existence and we get
to decide when we come and when we go, and
if we stay and how long we stay and what
our experience looks like. Is such an insane idea that
why don't we all just get comfortable with the idea
(41:09):
that you're in the middle of a story. It's tense
in the middle of the story, you don't know how
to resolve the story. You never really are going to know.
But the resolution to the story comes when you lean
into the tension that's in the middle of the story,
that it inevitably offers you, that it inevitably asks of you.
Can you become the kind of person who can sit
on the brink? Can you become the kind of person
(41:32):
who can receive what the middle of your story is
here to offer you? And I think it's a lot
trickier than we think it is. And this quote, this
last quote that I read about a world where lots
of people are addicted to getting the ground under their
feet is not a very compassionate place. I think that
describes so perfectly this current landscape that we're living in
(41:54):
as far as the political environment of the US, what's
happening on the global stage. Not a very compassionate place
to live in. A world where people are certain they
know the answer, They're certain their answer is the right answer,
they know the resolution to the problem there, certain they
know how to fix it, and everyone's going to fight
to their death to get their way to fix it.
(42:14):
You have to admit, no matter which side of the
aisle you sit on, or how you see things that
are playing out now, or you know what your individual
unique perspectives or opinions are, which matter. But no matter
what those are, you have to admit that the current
state of affairs, where we're fighting each other unto the
death to convince one another of our way of thinking
(42:37):
just simply isn't working. It's not a very compassionate place.
It's not a very soft place to land. So my
question for you to end this episode would be, can
you become a soft place to land in the middle
of your story? Maybe the middle of your story, the
tension of the story, the pressure cooker that you're in
is creating for you, is creating within you a soft
(42:58):
place to land. Maybe it's molding you into a person
who can be a soft place to land, who can
have more space, more compassion, more grace for yourself, for others,
for the world, for those around you, more acceptance, more grace,
more joy, all of it. Maybe it's tenderizing you and
(43:20):
it hurts like hell, and it's so uncomfortable, and it's
so unknown and it's so confusing. But maybe this is
where all the goodness is. Just a thought. You can
take that in and see how it applies to your
story and leave the rest. Thank you. For listening, Thank
you for being here. If you like what you hear,
please rate the podcast, give me five stars, give me
(43:42):
a positive rating. If you don't like the podcast, well
I'd be shocked that you made it this far in.
But yeah, you go about your merry way and I
will get hopefully see you next time. Write your story
podcast
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write. All the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and coverard it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, Write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon and
on today's episode, I want to unpack a topic that
I think is really applicable for all of us right now.
I want to talk about this idea of settling into
the middle of a story, and the middle of a
(00:45):
story the way that I think about it is the
part of the story where the tension rises. The tension
is high through the entire middle of the story, but
gets higher and higher and higher as the hero moves
through the story. So the further you get into the story,
the higher the tension gets. But really the middle of
the story spans from immediately after the beginning. This call
(01:10):
to adventure, this exciting moment of awakening or something that
happens at the beginning of a story. Joseph Campbell calls
it the call to adventure or an inciting incident, something
that happens that just wakes the hero up and changes
the way that they see the world. So that's the
moment that begins the story. And then immediately we're in
the middle of the story, and we stay in that
middle of the story all the way until the moment
(01:33):
that Blake Snyder calls the all is Lost moment. So
really most of the story is the middle. The end
brings some resolution, the beginning brings potentially some excitement or
possibly some fear. So the beginning can be a little
tricky too. But the middle is this long, winding, unfolding
journey of tension, discomfort, obstacles, moment after a moment of
(01:59):
the hero not being able to solve the problem that
they're trying to solve, not being able to achieve the
outcome that they're trying to achieve, not being able to
resolve the story in the way that they want it
to resolve. And this is the majority of the story.
This is ninety percent of what makes up a story
is this middle. And so I wanted to talk about
(02:20):
the middles of stories and how uncomfortable they can be
and how important they are, because I know, beyond a
shadow of doubt that you are in the middle of
a story in your life right now. Maybe in certain
parts of your life you're at the end. You're feeling
a resolution coming to a problem or to an issue
or to attention that has existed in your life for
(02:41):
a very long time, and you're feeling on top of
the world about that. It's like, yes, oh, finally things
are starting to make sense, things are clicking, things are working.
For me, that moment of resolution is such a relief.
It's like the tension coming out of the pressure cooker.
Right you lift the lid of the pressure cooker and
it's like hiss. Yes, like relief of tension, and that
(03:04):
moment can feel so delicious. And maybe in other parts
of your life you're at the beginning of the story,
which yes, can have some fear involved in it because
you're stepping into something totally unknown. But in my experience,
almost always at the beginning of a story, you have
a sense of wonder and possibility and excitement. Maybe you're
feeling invited into something that is really scary for you,
(03:25):
or new or different, something you haven't tried before. Maybe
something happened to you and it broke the way you
used to see the world, and so now you're seeing
the world through this new lens or in this new light.
That's the beginning of a story. That's the inciting incident,
that's the call to adventure. And yeah, it can have
some fear mixed in with it, but usually it's fear
mixed with anticipation, excitement, enjoyment, pleasure, hopefulness. At the beginning
(03:51):
of a story, a hero thinks about what they want
to achieve, or thinks about the problem they want to solve,
and they feel pretty confident that they're going to be
able to ache achieve it. They just don't know yet
what they're about to step into. And in the middle
of the story, the minute we get past that inciting incident,
you're in the middle. And in the middle of the story,
the hero begins to try everything they know to try
(04:14):
to achieve their hopeful outcome, and time and time and
time again, they come up short. They fail. They feel stupid,
they feel embarrassed, they feel inadequate, they feel unworthy, and
that tension, that feeling of not enoughness of what if
(04:35):
I can't figure this out, what if I can't solve
this problem, what if I can never achieve what I
set out to achieve follows them, and the tension builds
and builds and builds and builds all throughout the story
until the resolution comes. In fact, the point of highest
tension is that moment that Blake Sneyder titled all those
Last moment, which comes moments before the resolution. And so
(04:58):
wherever you are in a story, if you're not at
the beginning, you're not in the precipice of something new
and exciting, and you're not in the resolution, you're in
the middle, and that middle can be extremely uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable.
One of the reasons that I wanted to bring this
up is I think as a culture, as a global community,
right now, we are in the middle of a story.
(05:21):
And I think it could be argued that most of
human history has been the middle, this middle, ninety percent
middle of a story. There maybe have been pioneering moments
of stepping into new territory, brand new. You know, we've
had a paradigm shift. We're starting something new, and it's
exciting and it's anticipatory and we feel like, you know,
change is coming. And there may also have been moments
(05:44):
of resolution that you could point to and say, Okay,
this is a moment in human history where we resolved
a problem that we've been dealing with for a long time,
and we made serious progress with it. We came up
with a solution that no one had thought of before,
and we implemented it and people were relieved because of it. Like,
I think the first thing that comes to mind is
like the women's suffrage movement, right, Like, this is a
moment in history that you can point to and say, like,
(06:05):
we enacted laws that allowed women to finally be able
to use their voice in politics and to be able
to put their hand up and say this is what
I think, or this is what I believe, this is
who I'm going to vote for, this is why I'm
going to put my support behind. That's a moment in
human history. I'm not saying it solved every problem as
it relates to women's issues, or that it solved every
problem as it relates to politics, but it is the
(06:27):
resolution of a long drawn out story of tension and
frustration and obstacles and loss and all those things. It's
a moment of resolution. So we have those moments in
human history of you're on the precipice of an exciting
new beginning, and you have moments of resolution. And yet
most of human history is I think as I look back,
(06:48):
most of human history is this messy, messy middle. So
what the heck do we do with the messy middle
of a story? We're experiencing this messy middle globally. I
think right now, if you live in the USA, US,
you're experiencing it at a bit of a fever pitch.
Is the way that I feel it and sense it.
And maybe if you're younger or older than me, or
(07:09):
you come from a different generation, maybe you experience it differently.
But for me, I'm in my early forties, I'm feeling
like I've not experienced a time in history like this before.
I'm watching events unfold that feel extremely tense to me.
The obstacles feel in some ways insurmountable, in most ways insurmountable.
And this is indicative of the middle of a story.
(07:33):
A hero in the middle of a story does feel
like this thing that I want to achieve, this problem
that I've set out to solve, this world that I've
stepped into is so intensely unfamiliar to me that I
couldn't possibly have what it takes to complete the task
that I've been invited to. And when I look at
(07:54):
what's unfolding around us on the political stage in the US,
on the world stage, you know, there's wars being waged
all across the world. Just what's unfolded in the last
couple of weeks, with Charlie Kirk's death and with more
school shootings and so many things that are happening. I
just think to myself, Okay, this is what it feels
(08:14):
like to be in the middle of a story. A
hero goes, I have no idea how to fix this.
In fact, to the point where this feels too far gone,
I don't know what anybody could possibly do that could
change the outcome of this situation. That is middle of
a story. Energy. That is exactly what it feels like
to be in the middle of a story. So yeah, collectively,
we are in the middle of this story right now.
And I can almost guarantee that personally, somewhere in your
(08:36):
life you're also in the middle of a story. Again,
Maybe somewhere in your life you're at the precipice at
the beginning, maybe somewhere you're at a resolution, But also
somewhere in your life you're in the part of the
story where you don't know how to bring resolution to
your current set of circumstances. You don't know what to do,
you don't feel adequate, you don't feel equipped, you don't
(08:56):
feel like you have the right tools to bring resolution
to whatever it is that's plaguing you. In fact, probably
you've tried everything that you know how to do. Maybe
you have a health issue, and you've gotten down every
rabbit hole, you've done all your research, you've gotten to
every doctor. No one can figure out what's going on.
It's chronic, it's frustrating, it's plaguing you, it's affecting your life.
(09:17):
You cannot bring resolution to this problem. And maybe you're
at that all's last moment, at the all is lost moment,
the point of highest tension. Usually the hero is just like,
forget it. I don't even I'm out of energy. I
don't have any more energy to give to this problem.
I don't know how to solve it. I've tried everything
I know how to do. So they throw their hands up,
and sometimes that energy of giving up can actually usher
(09:39):
in a resolution. But maybe you've done the throw your
hands up thing several times and still haven't experienced resolution,
and you're just kind of like WTF, Like what is
going on? How could a person possibly live like this?
I can't live inside of this tension forever. The tension
can feel oppressive, it can feel so frustrating, it can
feel devastating, can feel hopeless. And so this is what
(10:02):
I want to talk about today, is how do we
exist in the middle of the story without completely losing hope?
Or maybe we do completely lose hope. How do we
put one foot in front of the other. How do
we keep moving forward? How do we keep showing up
to our stories when we're in the hopelessness of the
middle of the story. I wasn't sure if I was
(10:23):
going to share this, but I don't really think there's
any way for me to talk about what I want
to say today without sharing what's going on in my life,
which is that in many areas of my life, we
are at a precipice, a new beginning, an exciting new
thing that's happening. We're stepping into new territory. I've talked
about this briefly, but my husband and I have started
this homeschool co op for my kids. I'm teaching in
(10:44):
the homeschool co op two days a week on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. These are three to six year olds. I
have zero experience teaching three to six year olds. I'm
just kind of like flying by the seat of my pants,
figuring out as I go. I do have a master's
degree in education, so I feel equipped in that way.
And I also have two kids who fall into that
age category. Charlie's almost four now, it just turned five,
(11:06):
So I have that experience that somewhat equips me, or
at least entices me and invites me into this experience
and makes me feel excited about what could be possible
if we build this thing that we haven't ever built before.
We're at the precipice, we're at a new beginning, and
there are moments where I feel inadequate or it feels
scary or whatever, but it's mostly right now the beginning
(11:28):
of the story, it's mostly just exciting think of what
could be possible if we take this kind of chance
on something like this. I even have areas of my
life where the story is coming to resolution. In fact,
I have areas of my life where the story is
coming to a somewhat tragic resolution and yet it's still
a resolution. It's still a relief of the pressure business
(11:49):
deal that I've talked a bunch about the risk that
my husband and I took several years ago that came
to the opposite conclusion of what we wanted it to
come to. Last May, that tragic resolution has been playing
itself out over the course of the last year. In
our lives are a little bit more than a year,
and there are many aspects of that story that still
(12:09):
feel really like a bummer to me. It's still sad.
There are lots of losses that we're reckoning with, and
yet it's still a resolution. The resolution wasn't the resolution
that we wanted, but it is a resolution, and so
to be on that resolved side of the story, I
feel much less tension in the story than I did
about the story a year ago or even two years ago.
(12:32):
When we were in the middle of that story, the
tension was so high, the stress was so big. I
was itching and begging for any way to relieve some
of the pressure that I felt being inside of the
middle of that story. And now that I'm on the
resolution side, I'm like, gosh, this is a really big bummer.
We lost all this money. We lost our dream, we lost,
you know, some relationships, or at least the way that
(12:53):
relationships used to be in that context. We lost some community,
we lost a lot, and yet there's result, there's answers,
the loops are closed, the tension is not as high,
and there are areas of our life where things have
resolved positively too. So what I'm saying is, in the
scope of everything that's going on in our life, we
have stories that are at the beginning, stories that are
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at the end, and then we have this story where
we are in the middle. We are smack dab in
the middle of the story in our lives that asks
the question will we or won't we be able to
grow our family. This has been an ongoing conversation between
(13:37):
Matt and I for years now, pretty much since I
don't know, maybe a year after Charlie was born. So
he was born in December of twenty twenty one. So
let's just put us into twenty twenty three and say
it's been an ongoing discussion about whether or not we
were going to be able to grow our family. It
has never been a question of whether I wanted to
grow our family. I have always wanted to have four kids.
(13:58):
When Matt and I met, we thought it was it
was like such a wild coincidence that we both wanted
four kids. And I have never been under the illusion
that I was entitled to having four kids or that
I would get to have four kids. In fact, I
started having kids much later in life and was shocked
and surprised and pleasantly surprised to see that I was
able to get pregnant with Nella and Charlie so easily
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and quickly, with relatively few complications and completely you know,
uncomplicated vaginal births and two healthy kids and all of
those things. After Charlie was born, we took a break
for a little bit because Charlie and Nella were born
so close to one another that we just wanted a
minute to catch our breath before we added another baby
into the mix. And while that was happening, we were
(14:43):
working on this new business development. It was taking a
lot of our time and energy, it was taking almost
all of our financial resources, and so we made the
decision to just kind of hit pause and wait and
see what happened. Well, of course, you know the story. Now,
things didn't go the way we wanted them to. Go,
they didn't go the way we expected them to go,
and so when everything fell apart in twenty twenty four,
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Matt and I both felt like, as much as we
would love to add another child to our family, it
didn't feel like the right time because we just weren't
financially stable or secure enough to make that kind of decision,
And so we kept hitting pause on this, kept hitting
pause on this, kept hitting pause on this, and then
decided to open the door to that again. Later in
(15:26):
twenty twenty four, we got pregnant, we had a miscarriage.
We've gotten pregnant a second time, had a second miscarriage.
Are hoping to be able to add this child to
our family, but we just simply don't know. And after
the second miscarriage is when I started thinking about the
open endedness of this. I was telling Matt how tricky
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it feels to be in the middle part of this story,
especially as a woman. I think women experienced this differently
than men. If you're the one who is carrying the pregnancy,
the one who's getting pregnant and carrying the child, the
experience is so visceral, it's so embodied, because you know,
for Matt, if he we take a positive pregnancy test
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and it's like, yes, okay, we're having a baby. You
have nine months to plan, nine months before anything that
dramatic really changes for you. But as the person who's
carrying the child, the question of will we be able
to won't we be able to? And then also the
process of going through a miscarriage. The physical process of
losing a pregnancy is such a dramatic physical experience that
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your entire life in some ways is on hold while
you wonder whether or not this thing will unfold for you.
And I'm not saying that this experience is totally unique
to pregnancy. I think actually, whenever you're in the middle
of the story, this tension is so high that it
feels like, oh, I would do anything to be able
to relieve the tension of this story. And I'm just
(16:52):
giving examples of how in the particular story that we're
in the middle of, how the tension is high there,
But same is true for you. Whatever story you're smackedab
in the middle of, the tension is probably very high.
You're asking the question, will I be able to achieve
this thing? Won't I will I get this thing? Won't
I won't I get it. Will I solve this health
problem won't I? Will I get the job or won't I?
Will I have the baby or won't I? Will I
(17:13):
start the business or won't I? And the answer to
that question changes dramatically your life path, And so you're
in the middle wondering like which way is this thing
gonna go? And feeling maybe helpless, like you don't have
a lot of agency or control over how it goes.
You can only do what you can do. And so
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I have found myself in the middle of this story
feeling helpless, feeling confused, feeling really lost. One of the
most confusing elements to me is what I was describing
to my friend the other day as this inexplicable urge
to have another baby. And I'm like, what is this, Like,
is this some weird biological button that was like programmed
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into us with the evolutionary purpose of getting people to
pro crew Because that doesn't totally make sense to me,
because not every person has that. I mean, plenty of
people describe having one baby, or two babies, or maybe
no babies and then saying like, Okay, that's it. Our
family's complete. I feel complete. I don't need to have
another child? So why would someone have this inexplicable urge
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to have another baby? And put this over your set
of circumstances, Why would someone have an inexplicable urge to
move to another country, or an inexplicable urge to get married,
or an inexplicable urge to whatever fill in the blank
thing if that thing wasn't available to them. So to
be in the middle of the story where you're wondering,
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will I be able to achieve this thing that I want?
Am I ever going to be able to attain it?
Is this problem a problem that can be solved? Is
it something that can be fixed or resolved? Or am
I living in this tension and perpetuity? Is this tension
going to be here forever? And as I have been
going through this process and asking myself these questions, I
(19:02):
went into my closet one day looking for a pair
of shoes because the weather has turned slightly here in Nashville,
So I was looking for a pair of boots. Reached
up onto a top shelf of my closet, pulled down
not a pair of shoes, but a book that I
had shoved up there at some point. I don't know
when called when Things Fall Apart by a Pima children
And this book has come into my story at the
(19:24):
absolute perfect time. Here's something else I want to talk about.
This book has come into my story as a guide
for me to help me understand how to move through
tension with a little bit more grace, a little bit
more compassionate, a little bit more softness. And I want
to share some of the insights from the book with
you in case they're helpful to you wherever you are
(19:44):
in the middle of this story. But I think one
of the reasons why tension can feel so unbearable in
the middle of the story is especially if you're in
the part of your story before you've met your guide,
before you have any one to reflect back to you
what's going on, and the only way that you can
see your story is through your own patterning, your own programming,
(20:09):
your own lens, your old lens that hasn't been upgraded
yet because you haven't had an opportunity to upgrade it yet.
This experience that you're having is working to upgrade your
lens and to help you see things differently. And that's
what even seeing our lives through the lens of storytelling
that's what it does. That's the purpose that it serves,
is to help you to stand at a thirty thousand
foot view of your story and see it a little differently.
(20:31):
But when you're in the middle, middle of your story
and the tension is high and you haven't met your
guide yet, it can feel extremely disorienting. It's not only
tension is high, but you're just like, I don't freaking
know what any of this means, or why any of
this is happening, or what any of it is about.
And I feel like I'm just suffering for the sake
of suffering, and I'm just in pain for the sake
of being in pain. And if someone could take away
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from me this desire that I have to fill in
the blank, to get married, to have a baby, to
start a business, whatever, or if someone could give me
that thing, then the tension would be resolved. But no,
neither of those things are possible right now in the
middle of the story, And so because of that, I'm
just sitting here waiting for some relief, waiting for like
(21:12):
a measure of release of this pressure. So I reach
up onto a top shelf I pulled down this book.
It's called When Things Fall Apart by Pimas Sholder and
the subtitle is heart Advice for Difficult Times. And what's
funny is this book was sent to me by a
client and a friend of mine last year, right after
my dad passed. It was a very thoughtful gift and
(21:34):
care package from this person who sent it after I
lost my dad and after we had the miscarriage last year.
Several of the books that this person sent I read,
and some of the poetry has been you know, I've
held it extremely close to me and it has been
a guide to me through the process of grief of
losing my dad. This book, for whatever reason, I didn't
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connect with in that moment, and so somehow it made
it sway up onto my shelf and then kind of
fell down onto my head at the perfect time. I
want to read you a couple of quotes from this book.
I almost never do this, but she is coming into
the middle of my story as such an amazing guide
for me, and I'm wondering if this might act as
(22:18):
a guide for you as well, in the middle of
your story. So I want to read some of what
she talks about and then talk about my takeaways and
how I'm applying this and how I'm integrating it into
the middle of this specific story in my life. She says,
when things fall apart and we're on the verge of
we know not what, the test for each of us
is to stay on that brink and to not concretize.
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The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting
to a place that's really swell. In other words, it's
not about resolving the story. In fact, that way of
looking at things is what keeps us miserable. If we
make the story this is me sorry, end of her quote.
If we make this story about resolving this story, it
will make us miserable. I'm going to read that again.
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When things fall apart and we're on the verge of
we know not what, the test for each of us
is to stay on that brink and not concretize the
spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to
a place that's really swell. In fact, that way of
looking at things is what keeps us miserable. I couldn't
help but think about when I read this quote, how
I had said to Matt. Living in this unknown is
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too stressful for me. I can't do this. We have
to set a deadline. We have to basically say, if
we don't get pregnant by this date, or we don't
have a baby by this date, we're closing the door.
You'll get of a sectomy and we'll move on. We'll
just be happy with our two kids. We're just gonna
move on with our lives. We're just going to close
the door on this part of our lives. We have
two kids, beautiful, healthy, happy kids, one boy, one girl,
who can pee and poop on their own. They can
(23:45):
put on their own shoes, they can put on their
own jackets, they can zip their own zippers. Like we
can just close the door on this and move on.
And essentially what she's saying is that the tendency to
concretize like that, to assume that you have the choice
to close the door on your own story, the story
that you've been invited into by something bigger than you,
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that you don't understand. Your tendency to do that is
out of your own fear of being too small, of
being inadequate, of not having what it takes to stay
in the story. And the test for each of us
is to stay on the brink. Can you stay in
the middle of the story when things get really tense,
when you don't know the answers, when you feel lost,
(24:29):
when you feel confused, when you're out of your mind
with grief and frustration. Can you stay in the story
when it feels like that? And when I start to
think about it that way, I realize I have a
lot more work to do as far as staying in
the story. No, it feels really tricky for me to
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stay in the story, to stay on the brink, as
she puts it, in this story, the not knowing will
we or won't we do this thing that so dramatically
changes the way that I experience my life, will we
or won't we? And to stay in that middle part
of the story brings up so much for me, so
(25:15):
much sadness, so much grief, a feeling of total confusion,
and even despair. And I want to read for you
what she says as you think about despair or hopelessness,
because I tend to think about it from my worldview
or my upbringing as an area you never want to
go to, like if you can just stay helpful, you
(25:36):
know you can do anything. So just never go to
despair as long as you never go to despair. But
what if our resistance and avoidance of despair is no
different than our impulse to conqutize something. It's like, because
I don't want to feel despair, I have to quickly
make sense of my situation, resolve the story. Say by
(25:56):
X date, we're closing the door, we're getting of a
secton me, We're moving on with our lives. That impulse
is the same impulse, or it's the impulse that is
preventing me from going to despair. But what if to
stay in the story, I have to allow myself to
feel the despair that is here in the story for me,
She says, to stay with that shakiness, to stay with
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a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling
of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge. That is the
path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the
knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not
to panic. This is the spiritual path. Getting the knack
of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves is
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the path of the warrior. And what I take from
this is that the path of the warrior, meaning the
path of the hero. The path of the type of
person who can quote unquote resolve the story is to
stay with the story in the middle of the story,
in the height of tension, in the midst of spare
in hopelessness, to allow the story to deliver everything that
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it's trying to deliver to you without too quickly trying
to race to resolution. There is such a huge temptation
to race to resolution. But can you stay with the
story in the middle, She says, life is a good
teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition,
if only we could realize it. Nothing ever sums itself
up in the way we would like to dream about.
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The off center in between state is an ideal situation,
a situation in which we don't get caught and we
can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It is
a very tender, non aggressive, open ended state of affairs.
The off center in between state is an ideal situation.
In other words, the middle of the story is where
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all the good stuff happens. And I think our tendency
is to way too quickly race to resolution, to way
too quickly race to sols, to way too quickly abandoned
ship on the story because the tension is just simply
too high, instead of staying with it, staying in the
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middle of the tension, allowing the story to teach us
what it is here to teach us, and staying on
the brink. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and
finally getting to a place that's really swell. It's not
about solving the story, resolving the story, finishing the story,
getting to a resolution. She says, in fact, that way
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of looking at things is what is keeping us miserable.
Maybe a big part of our suffering is that we think,
erroneously that we should be able to come up with
solutions that solve and resolve the thing much quicker than
it's getting resolved. So I'm asking the question, will we
be able to add another baby to our family? Will we?
Won't we? Will? We won't we? And I'm wanting a
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resolution to that story, not even because having another baby
gives me something that I don't already have, because I think,
deep down I know that it won't. I won't change
the way I feel about myself, it won't really change
the way I am as a mother. I mean, either
way you go, there are pros and cons. Either way
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you go, it's good and it's not good. And this
is another thing she talks about in the book, and
I could just read honestly every quote from the book,
but she talks about avoiding the tendency we have to
label things as good or not good. But the point
I was trying to make is that either way we go,
it will be fine. So it's not really about achieving
that hopeful outcome. It's more about can I stay with
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the story, with the not knowing, with the discomfort, with
the tension, with the pain of being in the middle.
That is where everything that I'm looking for will come from,
is to simply be able to stay in the middle
of the story without the resolution. When we think something
(30:04):
is going to bring us pleasure, we don't really know
what's going to happen. This is her. When we think
something's going to give us misery, we don't know. Letting
there be room for not knowing is the most important
thing of all. We try to do what we think
is going to help, but we don't know. We never
know if we're going to fall flat or sit up tall.
When there's a big disappointment, we don't know if that's
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the end of the story. It may just be the
beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We
don't know anything. We call something bad, we call it good,
but really we just don't know. So this was the
first gift of my guide which came to me in
the form of this book Pima Chadron, which was published
back in the nineties. By the way, I had to
check the publishing date because some of the stuff that
(30:46):
she was talking about seemed so applicable to our current
global situation that I was shocked to see that this
was published in nineteen ninety seven for the first time,
and then republished the twentieth anniversary edition in twenty sixteen.
So these truths permeate through different time periods and are
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just as true now as they were the day that
they were published. And the first takeaway, or the first
gift of this guide coming into my life is this
idea of staying on the brink. Can you stay in
the middle of the story even when things get really tense.
Can you avoid the tendency to conqutize, the tendency to
jump to a resolution as quickly as possible, To exercise
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your sense of agency and control as a way to
get out of the tension. It's like I have agency
and control to do things like, you know, remove any
barriers to getting pregnant, maybe even testing for ovulation, or
going to the doctor and asking about my health or
my husband's health or whatever, to make choices using my
agency toward getting where I want to go. And yet
(31:52):
using my agency to say something like we're having a
cut off date, you know, like we're closing the door
on it at this date is just a little silly,
especially when you think about the fact that I'm just
doing that because I'm so uncomfortable with sitting in the unknown,
And I wonder what the equivalent is for you with
this first takeaway, what would it look like for you
to get comfortable with the tension of the middle of
(32:15):
your story, to get comfortable sitting on the brink. So
the first answer to the question about what it takes
to stay in the middle of our stories is just
the courage that it takes to stay on the brink.
Like she talks about, what would it take for you
to stay on the brink and not concretize, not jump
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to the end of the story, not makeup stories about
how this is going to end, or what if it
ends this way, or what if it ends that way?
Or make it end like I was trying to do
with putting an end date on getting pregnant. It's like,
what you're trying to do when you do that is
just give yourself some relief from the tension, which is
so human and understandable, and we can have compassion for it.
(32:55):
And also maybe instead of putting our energy toward relieving
the tension, we can lean into the tension and put
our energy toward becoming the kind of person who has
the capacity to sit on the brink. She says. Along
those lines, Pema Chadron says, to think that we can
finally get it all together is unrealistic. So this, to
(33:15):
me is kind of my second takeaway about what it
means to stay in the middle of a story. So
if she's my guide and this book came to me
as a guide, the first paradigm shift that she offers
to me is instead of trying to end your story,
maybe you try to become the kind of person who
can lean in and stay on the brink. And the
(33:36):
second paradigm shift that she offers me is stop trying
to think that you're the kind of person who can
get it all together. I don't know if this is
like a me personality thing or if this is universal
human condition, But I cannot tell you the amount of
energy I spend in my life trying to be a
person who has it all together, who's all cut up
on emails and text messages, whose house is clean, whose
(33:58):
laundry is organized, whose junk drawer looks, you know, like
like the life Edit came to organize it. You know,
I spend so much energy in my life trying to
look like a person who has it all together, who
shows up to places on time, who is all up
to date in all my appointments, Who has the car
oil changed, you know, all these things that are like,
(34:21):
you know, important, Yes, go get your oil changed. I'm
not saying don't do that, but to do it in
order to have an identity as being the kind of
person who has it all together. Good luck with that,
is what she's saying. Good luck with being the kind
of person. Thinking that you'll ever get to the place
where you can feel like the kind of person who
has it all together. To seek for some lasting security
(34:43):
is futile, she says. So what you're looking for in
being the person who has it all together is to
try to feel secure, and that's futile. To undo our
very ancient and very stuck habitual patterns of mind requires
that we begin to turn around some of our most
bas assumptions. Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to
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seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone out there
is to blame for our pain. One has to get
totally fed up with these ways of thinking. One has
to give up hope that this way of thinking will
ever bring us satisfaction. Suffering begins to dissolve when we
can question the belief or the hope that there is
anywhere to hide. I'm going to keep reading from her
(35:24):
because this is a section on hopelessness that really flipped
my world upside down. Hopelessness, she says, means that we
no longer have the spirit for holding our trip together.
We may still want to hold our trip together. We
long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet,
But we've tried a thousand ways to hide and a
thousand ways to tie up all those loose ends, and
(35:46):
the ground just keeps moving under us. Trying to get
lasting security teaches us a lot, because if we never
try to do it, we never notice that it can't
be done. And that quote stuck out to me. I
have an underline and start in my book. Trying to
get security teaches us a lot because if we never
do it, we never notice that it can't be done. This,
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to me, is bringing some resolution to my story without
really solving what I was trying to solve, because it
shows me that what I'm trying to do by getting
an answer is trying to come to a place of
feeling secure. And if the answer to that question is
You're never going to feel secure, keep trying to feel secure.
But that sense of security that you think is going
(36:28):
to come from the business venture working, or from having
another baby, or from solving your health problem or from
finally getting your life together. That sense of security that
you think you can find out there is never coming
to you. So you can give up on it right
now and just get comfortable leaning into this tension, the
tension of living in the middle of a story. This
episode is getting very long, but I have two more
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things that I want to share before we rap up.
Number one is one of the reasons why this concept
of letting go of that sense of security has felt
so points it to me is because after our second miscarriage,
I had some symptoms that were really concerning to me
that sent me to the er and eventually to the hospital.
I spent a night in the hospital. Everything is fine,
(37:11):
I'm one hundred percent fine, but some mixture of the
hormone change, the blood loss, the I don't know, like
the grief, just the mental anguish of the position that
I was in brought me to this place where I
was one hundred percent convinced that I was going to die.
(37:31):
And when the doctors were asking me about my symptoms,
I mean I was having vertigo. The room was like
spinning up, like flipping upside down is how it felt.
And it genuinely just felt like the ground was falling
out from underneath of me. And I'm explaining these symptoms
to the doctors and there were there was also like
numbness in my right arm, my right foot. I was
having jaw pain, neck pain. I thought I was having
(37:51):
a heart attack. I was hooked up to the EKG.
Everything looked normal. All my vitals were normal, so they
couldn't figure out anything that was going on with me
that was causing these physical symptoms. But I was having
the symptoms, and I remember there was one moment where
I was holding Matt's hand. They were offering me pain medication,
and I was refusing the pain medication because I was
so scared that if they gave it to me, I
was going to slip into a sleeping state, and that
(38:13):
that would be the last time I ever saw Matt
and the kids. Now, looking back, I mean, it seems
kind of insane, but that's actually genuinely what I was
experiencing at the time, And reading this section in this
book gives me a broader perspective on this situation that
so much of what I was experiencing. I mean, there's
physical explanations for it, hormones, grief, so many different things,
(38:36):
but also what I was experiencing was in many ways
very spiritual. This says, non theism is relaxing with the
ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for
anything to protect ourselves. Relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty
of the present moment, without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.
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That moment of feeling like this is it. I'm There's
nothing I can do to stop it is almost a
reminder of how helpless and hopeless as human beings we
really are. That my I mean, I take some hope
in believing. I don't believe that this physical world is
the end for us, and so I think we're eternal beings.
(39:19):
I think, you know, there's so much more that happens
after we go from our physical bodies. But think about
the helplessness of being in a physical body and having
little to no control over when that experience ends. That's
an extremely unsettling middle of the story kind of feeling.
She says. We are all addicted to hope, hope that
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the doubt and mystery will go away. This addiction has
a painful effect on society. A society based on lots
of people addicted to getting ground under their feet is
not a very compassionate place, which leads me to the
last thing that I want to say. So this idea
that we're addicted to getting the grind under our feet,
and I'm literally sitting in the hospital before I found
(40:04):
this book, explaining to the doctors that it feels like
the ground is collapsing under my feet. I feel like
I am disappearing, like like I'm going to collapse into
the ground, and then I'm telling Matt, I feel like
I'm going to die. I feel like I'm going to die.
There is a metaphor at play there in my experience
that obviously I need to get the physical things checked out.
I have no interest in leaving this lifetime at this time.
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I have young kids, so much more to live for.
I love my life, and this is one of the
big takeaways from my experiences, just how much I love
my life and I am invested in my life and
want to be here for it, even the difficult parts
of it. So that's one big takeaway from this experience.
But another takeaway for me is this idea that our
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experience is a groundless one and trying to get the
ground under our feet, in other words, trying to pretend
like we have control over our existence and we get
to decide when we come and when we go, and
if we stay and how long we stay and what
our experience looks like. Is such an insane idea that
why don't we all just get comfortable with the idea
(41:09):
that you're in the middle of a story. It's tense
in the middle of the story, you don't know how
to resolve the story. You never really are going to know.
But the resolution to the story comes when you lean
into the tension that's in the middle of the story,
that it inevitably offers you, that it inevitably asks of you.
Can you become the kind of person who can sit
on the brink? Can you become the kind of person
(41:32):
who can receive what the middle of your story is
here to offer you? And I think it's a lot
trickier than we think it is. And this quote, this
last quote that I read about a world where lots
of people are addicted to getting the ground under their
feet is not a very compassionate place. I think that
describes so perfectly this current landscape that we're living in
(41:54):
as far as the political environment of the US, what's
happening on the global stage. Not a very compassionate place
to live in. A world where people are certain they
know the answer, They're certain their answer is the right answer,
they know the resolution to the problem there, certain they
know how to fix it, and everyone's going to fight
to their death to get their way to fix it.
(42:14):
You have to admit, no matter which side of the
aisle you sit on, or how you see things that
are playing out now, or you know what your individual
unique perspectives or opinions are, which matter. But no matter
what those are, you have to admit that the current
state of affairs, where we're fighting each other unto the
death to convince one another of our way of thinking
(42:37):
just simply isn't working. It's not a very compassionate place.
It's not a very soft place to land. So my
question for you to end this episode would be, can
you become a soft place to land in the middle
of your story? Maybe the middle of your story, the
tension of the story, the pressure cooker that you're in
is creating for you, is creating within you a soft
(42:58):
place to land. Maybe it's molding you into a person
who can be a soft place to land, who can
have more space, more compassion, more grace for yourself, for others,
for the world, for those around you, more acceptance, more grace,
more joy, all of it. Maybe it's tenderizing you and
(43:20):
it hurts like hell, and it's so uncomfortable, and it's
so unknown and it's so confusing. But maybe this is
where all the goodness is. Just a thought. You can
take that in and see how it applies to your
story and leave the rest. Thank you. For listening, Thank
you for being here. If you like what you hear,
please rate the podcast, give me five stars, give me
(43:42):
a positive rating. If you don't like the podcast, well
I'd be shocked that you made it this far in.
But yeah, you go about your merry way and I
will get hopefully see you next time. Write your story
podcast
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