[2023-09-05] Life is the story you tell yourself

A friend sent me a link to writer Bruce Feiler's TED Talk The secret to mastering life's biggest transitions. I was struck by this assertion:

I want you to stop for a second and listen to the story going on in your head. It's there, somewhere, in the background. It's the story you tell others when you first meet them, the story you tell yourself every day. It's the story of who you are, where you came from, where you're going. It's the story of your life. What we've learned from a generation of brain research is that story isn't just part of us. It is us in a fundamental way. Life is the story you tell yourself.

Life is the story you tell yourself. That resonated with me. If I saw a book with this title at the library, I would pick it up. For me, this signifies that life is not just what happens to me but how I view what happens to me.

Feiler recounts that, until his 40s, he lived a linear life: go to college, become a writer, get married, have children. And then he faced a series of crises: he got cancer, he almost went bankrupt and his dad attempted suicide six times in three months after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Feiler felt fear and shame, but he also learned that he wasn't alone. Indeed, he set out to gather life stories from hundreds of people in all 50 states in the US—people who had lost homes, lost limbs, changed careers, changed genders, got sober, got out of bad marriages. He called his endeavour The Life Story Project.

Feiler learned that life is not linear, that it involves many transitions. From his interviews, he identified 52 types of events that disrupt our lives:

Some of them are small, like breaking your ankle or a fender bender. Some of them are large, like losing your job or moving. The average person goes through three dozen disruptors in the course of their lives. That's one every 12 to 18 months. Most of these we get through with relative ease, but one in 10 becomes what I call a lifequake, a massive burst of change that leads to a period of upheaval, transition and renewal. The average person goes through three to five of these events in the course of their lives, their average length, five years.

Feiler says that we expect our life to be linear and are upset when it's not. He views disruptor events on two poles: voluntary and involuntary, and personal and collective. Transitions can stem from such events as losing a loved one (involuntary personal), buying a house (voluntary personal), going through a pandemic (involuntary collective) or starting a company with a group of partners (voluntary collective). Whether positive or negative, change can require us to let go of the past, muddle through a transition, and ultimately emerge with a new identity.

Five tips for mastering life transitions

Feiler contends that "Life transitions are a skill we can and must master." He offers five tips, based on his research, for navigating life's disruptions:
  1. Begin with your transition superpower. Feiler says that life transitions have three phases and that we each gravitate to the phase we are best at. He describes the three phases as "the long goodbye, when you mourn the past that's not coming back; the messy middle, when you shed certain habits and create new ones; and the new beginning, where you unveil your new self." He says there's no wrong place to start (the phases aren't linear) and advises people to start where they feel comfortable, build confidence and move on from there.
  2. Accept your emotions. Feiler says the three most common emotions his interviewees struggled with were fear, sadness and shame. "How am I going to get through this?" "How am I going to pay my bills?" "I miss my loved one." "I miss being able to walk." "I'm ashamed I have to ask for help." "I'm ashamed of what I did when I drank too much." Some people write what they're feeling, others push through, and others establish rituals, says Feiler, adding that rituals can be especially helpful during the long goodbye as they signal to ourselves and others that we are going through a difficult time and are ready for what comes next.
  3. Try something new. Feiler shares the example of Sergeant Zach Herrick who needed 31 surgeries to his face after having it blown off while serving in Afghanistan. He thought of suicide. Then he took up cooking, at his mom's suggestion, as well as poetry writing and painting. As Feiler says, "the simple act of imagining that loaf of bread or a painting or a poem allows us to imagine we can create a new self."
  4. Seek wisdom from others. "Perhaps the most painful part of a life transition is that you feel isolated and alone," says Feiler. He argues that the rise in loneliness is due in part to the rise in the number of life transitions we face. When identifying someone from whom to seek wisdom, Feiler says some of us like comforters ("I love you, Suzy, you'll get through it."; some of us like nudgers ("I love you, John, but maybe you should try this, maybe you should do that.") and other like slappers ("I love you, Anna, but get over yourself, it's time to do this.")
  5. Rewrite your life story. Transitions are an opportunity to derive meaning from our experience—"to revisit, rewrite and retell our life story, adding a new chapter for what we learned." Feiler advises: "no matter how bleak your story gets, you cannot give up on the happy ending."

My transitions

I've faced a lot of transitions in the past three years: diagnosis with ovarian cancer, medical leave from work, launch of a daily blog, treatment for ovarian cancer (surgery, chemotherapy, maintenance medication), discovery through genetic testing of an inherited mutation in my BRCA2 gene, diagnosis with perianal skin cancer, retirement, treatment for perianal skin cancer (surgery, radiation), prophylactic bilateral mastectomy given my high risk of breast cancer because of that faulty BRCA2 gene, emergency surgery to remove an infected implant. Strung together like this, it does seem like a lot. Fortunately, each transition occurred in a series—ironic, perhaps, in contrast to Feiler's assertion that life isn't linear—which allowed me to breathe through each change.

In each case, I spent only a few days (rarely a few weeks) in the long goodbye—mourning my old life or the life I thought I would have. Instead, I spent much of my time simply getting on with things—organizing next steps in the messy middle. Throughout, I embraced new beginnings: from executive to cancer patient to retiree, from assistant deputy minister of communications to daily blogger, from someone oblivious to her inherited gene mutation to patient zero among relatives eligible for their own genetic testing, from one-time cancer survivor to two-time cancer survivor, from someone with breast tissue to someone with no breast tissue and two implants to someone with no breast tissue and one implant.

My superpower through this string of turbulent events has been writing. It's been an outlet for mourning what I've lost, for sharing what I've learned through the messy middle, and for redefining who I am. It's enabled me to express my emotions and to gain perspective. It's offered an opportunity to derive meaning out of difficult circumstances. It's given me a platform not only to share wisdom but to seek it as well. It's been a daily exercise in writing my story. That story could have been sad, bitter and self-pitying. Instead, it's been a string of posts filled with gratitude, love and little victories (and a few big ones too).