__________________________________ Carol Sullivan

“I’ve been wanting to start writing about my life,” said the 76-year old woman last fall on the first day of “Turning Your Life into Story,” a class that I designed and co-teach at the Wisdom Center at Most Precious Blood Church in Denver.

Open to anyone age 55 and up, the five-session class teaches writing practices and offers resources for those who want to turn their lives into stories for family, friends, or a wider public audience. The outpouring of stories is riveting.

In one session, participants listed three unsettling experiences. Anne Mack wrote (quoted with permission): “At 15 I started going to sub-deb dances and was horrified to find myself a wallflower. I went to a private girls’ school and didn’t know how to talk to boys. (Couldn’t dance well either!) I prayed to die, but God didn’t take me.”

In another session, elders wrote six-word memoirs modeled after the popular Smith magazine Web site--

[http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/]. One writer quipped, “She read, wrote, blogged, bore(d) kids.”

In another session, participants wrote letters of gratitude to someone they felt they had never adequately thanked. These letters might never actually be sent to the person to whom they are addressed, as it may be an enemy, historical figure, or deceased person, or the letter might be sent to a friend, relative, or acquaintance. Elders shared these letters with eighth graders who had also written letters of gratitude. The eighth graders go to school in the same parish where the course was held.

One 14-year-old, whose mother had died two years ago, was paired with a slim grandmother whose frail frame and nearby walker belied the strength of her voice. The elder revealed to the eighth grader, “I was heartbroken when my mother died. I was 11.” Another elder, Lucy, later said that her eighth grade partner’s letter had been “so expressive and so compassionate!” The eighth grader had written to a troubled relative, and her letter expressed caring without disclosing confidences. Lucy exclaimed, “I wanted to be related to her!”

While the pairs weren’t relatives, elders and eighth graders did meet on common ground: as writers of the stories of their lives.

Participants also wrote biopoems, a relatively new poetic form taught in high schools and colleges. The poem uses a format that helps create a chiseled, vivid portrait of the writer or someone the writer cherishes CLICK HERE for biopoems.

I penned this biopoem to give my mom on Mother’s Day:

Frances

Mother, grandmother, widow eight years now,

Relative of conversation and culture,

Lover of books and family,

Who feels compassion and kinship with her children

Who greets all at the YMCA

Who needs solitude, solace, sincerity

Who fears unannounced company and not much else

Who gives insight, news clippings, Cracker Jacks, and love

Who would like to see her children and grandchildren often

Matriarch of a great family

Smith

Even after the fall course ended, the elders have continued to write their stories. Said one, “I want to write a memoir for my children and grandchildren before I die.”

Another participant, Sister Georgeann Quinlan, BVM, is writing a book to accompany a program she offers called “Angels Everywhere.” http://sistergangelseverywhere.com/ Several of the elders are writing for a more exclusive audience: the self. One explained, “I write to get to know myself better and to develop an ability to let go of past experiences.”

Perhaps the drive to turn our lives into stories springs from the same impulse that led cave dwellers to carve on walls, and poets ancient and modern to chisel words into poetry. As T. S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Stories let us explore life’s crevices, peaks, and canyons, arriving where we started but knowing ourselves for the first time.   © 2009 by Carol Sullivan

Carol Sullivan, PhD, is a Denver writer, author, workshop presenter, former state legislator, and English teacher who created and co-teaches the course “Turning Your Life into Story,” designed for anyone age 55 and over who enrolls in courses at Denver’s Most Precious Blood Wisdom Center-- MPB link You may contact her at E-MAIL CAROL.