Tic-Toc Tico

Jun21

I have been in Costa Rica for one month and time has evaporated, but my ongoing dewy body has not. When time slips away and you forget what day of the week it is, Costa Ricans call it Tico time, Tico, the name for all the people who are Costa Rican. And I am not Costa Rican, so Tico time is a new concept. I know about Island Time from living in Hawaii; that slow lingering pace that comes from being drunk on the smell of Plumeria. But Tico time is all about “manana, manana and manana”.

For me, it seems to be about putting off till tomorrow what you need done today, but it really amounts to a deeply ingrained feeling that nothing at all is urgent; not leaky pipes, broken air conditioners or in my case, having an order in for internet to be installed filed on April 8 and finally being up and running as of just last week. Tico time is when no one gets the job done till they feel like doing it. “We will be out tomorrow, we have the order I promise you and we will be there” was the mantra for over six weeks.

So this is what I have learned from Tico time: Don’t be an ugly American and intimidate anyone or you will get nothing. And, don’t bribe anyone either (which is a customary expectation for some I am finding out) since word will get around that you use money to get what you want. So, why bother worrying since it doesn’t make anything happen any faster? Get used to standing in line or sitting and waiting for your number to be called if you want to pay the electric bill, for lets say maybe four hours. And most of all, simply do not make plans that you are not willing to adjust, more than once. And let’s not even start talking about people getting anywhere on time for just about anything.

So patience, breathing, laughing, waiting and rejoicing when the air conditioner finally works is a daily prayer. Fifty percent of my day is going to be taken up with things I never spent more than a couple of hours on in the States. But with all the aggravation, I am learning to appreciate everything that comes with Tico time. There is an upside. I walk slower. I don’t hurry or check my watch ever. I cannot afford to get rattled or scowl or complain or get frustrated. So none of that is part of Tico time. As a result of waiting, and trying to be patient, I simply learn to make do, take in what is going on around me, slow down, do with less, be happy with more, and I am more content all the way around. I think the majority of the world who do not live in first world industrialized countries live this way all of the time.

It is a steep un-learning curve here in Costa Rica. For every miracle and flower, rare bird and magnificent thunderous storm there are trade offs. But the trade offs are things I really have come to understand are not really anything essential about life. I can in fact do without an internet signal…the world does not stop revolving and I can simply go down the hill to the Paradiso Café and meet new people, practice my Spanish and use their internet while sipping Costa Rican coffee as the roosters peck around the table. I can do without packaged food, unless I would like to pay $8 for a small container of almond milk. I can do without Pandora and I can do without electricity when there is a storm. In fact I can do without a whole lot of things that when living in the States I thought were essential.

But what I get to live without is surprisingly liberating:

No traffic of any kind and no rush hour. There is nowhere to rush.
Movie Theaters. I read old-fashioned books on my Nook.
Electro-magnetic bombardment of my body and soul. None here. No wires.
Sleepless nights. Without the EM’s, I sleep like a baby.
Pollution both chemical and noise. Now that said the cicadas are deafening.
Accumulation of things not needed. It is all about simplicity here.
Shopping, more shopping and shopping Malls. Need I say more?
Road Rage. But let’s talk about the two lane back roads where you pass down the MIDDLE of an unmarked highway.
Cops, rarely see them.
Speed limits not sure I even know what it is here.
Strip Malls thank god.

What I get to live with has become more than wonderful:

Unparalleled beauty out my front door
Wild and powerful weather every day
The sound of the ocean tides coming in and roaring out
Kind smiling people most of the time
Mother Nature at her finest and in Technicolor
Giant papayas for a dollar
Coconuts with straws for a buck
Fresh everything, and I mean chickens killed at 8am and cooked by 5pm if you eat chicken
No clothes, bare feet, living in the water.
Fabulous skin from the humidity.
Deserted beaches
Going to bed at 8:30pm and parrots rousing me at 5am, not so gently
Living inside of natures rhythm from sunrise to sunset
Being fully present in my body at all times. Having to watch every step I take
Learning to live with the Jungle. The Jungle is alive and has rules.
Animals, animals and more animals. Have not met a sloth yet but they are everywhere
Fruit falling off trees into my lap while I am walking the dog: Starfruit, Mango, Banana and Coconuts
Fresh fish, fresh coffee, clean food everywhere.
My list here is far longer, but you get the picture.

It has taken me my entire life to allow myself to leap into a new way of living that is not “American” at it’s core ( I will be writing about the extensive ex-pat community later). I have finally given myself the opportunity to learn a new language, to pare down everything I thought I needed in life and make room for what is essential; Sun, surf and the pulsating organism that is a jungle. The jungle is prana, it is the life force of Costa Rica. It is the breath of life and like Eden, it is pure and balanced. I think I didn’t really know that my life in the American fast lane was far too hard for me to achieve balance and equanimity. Peace is much more available here in the rainforest that is Costa Rica.

So, I am ready to tell some tales that will make you laugh and hopefully encourage you to take off your shoes and step out of your life for a while. There is a new you outside your box just waiting for a chance to explore our beautiful world which will simply …rewire you and help you to remember who you are.

Another Country, Another Me

May18

Well the Gypsy in me is on the road again. After a few months of snowy wonderful Colorado and working on a project while having the luxury of being around the corner from my oldest daughter, I was about to put a few roots down and after nearly five years rent an apartment. Then the phone rang.

As I have learned in this delicate art of navigating signs and serendipity I have finally, after all these years, become in tune with when I am moving in the wrong direction, when to stand still and when to simply say yes to the unexpected. This was one of those phone calls.

I am writing full time now and coaching people around the world who are bringing life to stories they were born to tell. One of those people lives in Panama and she and I were discussing her up and coming novel when she simply said:

“Maya you need to come live with me for three months in Costa Rica.”

Yep, that matter-of-factly. It was not really a question it was a done deed in her mind. In my mind I thought, heat, humidity, I don’t know Spanish, what about gluten free food, does Costa Rica take Blue Cross Blue shield and are there mosquitos? This unfortunate diatribe from an all too familiar nay-sayer in me lasted a whole 15 minutes and then the voice I have come to depend on stepped to the front of the line. She said:

“ What about beauty, adventure, healthy eating, learning Spanish, finishing your novel, getting a tan and slowing down, slowing way down Maya?”. I called Julianne and said yes. Then it all fell right into place as it always does, with the help of my LA daughter being willing to take my car and my beloved cat Hazel.

I arrived here in Ojochal (pronounced OhoCHal) on the pacific side of Costa Rica four days ago. That is a story I will tell next blog post. I am here now, living in such Eden like beauty, surrounded by the rainforest with the ocean visible from my room, eating coconuts and papayas 24/7 and realizing that American life is frenetic and hazardous to my health more than I thought.

So now after only four days, I will be sharing my adventures, my Aha’s, my challenges and my travels with you. I will post each week and share some stories, some insights, some recipes, photos and tips about being an Ex-Pat here in Costa Rica.

I wake to Parrots in large flocks soaring overhead and louder than any LA traffic but music to my ears. Parakeets are in all the trees that surround our home here, but what is most astonishing is that the minute I stepped off the little six seat plane in Quepos, felt the 100% humidity, the perspiration running down my back, all I could do was smile.

The regular afternoon thunderstorm is now revving up so I will unplug my computer and go and watch the show.

Sigue a tu corazón, Maya

The Gypsy off Road

Jan4

My Gypsy Blog was started nearly four years ago when I took a leap out of my life as a therapist (and a closet writer), and decided to discover the story of my life…on the road.

But one thing I was not prepared for was that if you pack up your life in one tiny car, put your cat on the front seat and open your map and go east, there is no guarantee of getting there. Not when you are open to what happens when you are on the road. There is no promise that you will end up where you think you are going. That seems to be not only true about life in about every way, but true about writing a story. You may decide to go in one direction and end up with a totally different story…writing your life.

I have been in almost every state in the U.S. and have wandered my way back to one of my favorite places of all: Colorado. I was on my way north one time and ended up in Oklahoma, I was on my way to NYC and stayed in Asheville NC for a year, I went to visit someone up on the border of Canada and didn’t leave for a year. I decided to settle in Seattle and promptly was called to leave and go back east. I flew to Africa swearing I would never ever leave and landed back in Oklahoma a far cry from Africa. I have set out on so many journeys that my mind had constructed, but in the end, my heart took me places that were unexpected, serendipitous and magical.

And then there are the times that are not so magical. Or at least in that sparkly happy-to-be-there kind of way. Travel strips you. It makes it near impossible to be your limited self, to be afraid or get lost. But, in the end, you still get do get afraid and lost and more often than you would like. You run out of money and have to take a job you don’t love. You meet people who are not kind or generous, you make decisions that turn out to be bogus or you stand still at a hundred different crossroads and don’t have one clue which way to go.

That is the story for a writer as well.

A good story has all those elements in it: You get lost in the weeds of your own story, you stare at the blank page and have no clue which way to go, you run out of money to pay the electric bill since you never leave your computer long enough to know what time of the month it is, you let someone read your writing and they trash it and you give up at least once a week and you then read the chapter you just wrote and are bored to tears. These are NOT the magical moments for a writer.

And I decided to take a new road in my life where that is all I am now doing…I write. I have one magical, fluid, simple ten page day. Then I reread what I wrote and cringe. Rewrite it and smile. I set out to finish some research on a project and it leads me down a new path of thinking. I read a bestseller at noon for a break and realize I am not as good as the author. Then I stumble upon a poem just itching to get out onto the paper and I am hooked on it, I swallow it whole and by 2am I have the making of a great screenplay. This is a writer’s life.

You put all these inevitable experiences for a writer together like a well woven tapestry and you have the landscape that a writer lives in day in and day out. It is just as exciting as going off-road in a four-wheel and getting high into the back-country.

I have a new map. It is not the well-worn Road Atlas I have come to depend on when I am on some one lane road in a January snowstorm in North Dakota while I look for Devil’s Tower, it is a map that is born in my heart. I love storytelling and have so many to tell. I love to help others write the story that has been simmering in their psyche for a long time. Writing is just as spectacular an adventure as travel.

So I am currently off-road. For the time being the gypsy in me is hunkered down in the snowy mountains of Colorado and I am navigating a new territory. I am mapping my own life in words….I am excited to see where this new road will lead. Please check often since I will post stories, and gypsy adventures. And hear more about my writing adventures at www.mythotherapy.org.

A Modern Day Parable

Jan4

A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas parables have human characters.

A parable is a type of analogy.

A Modern Day Parable

By Maya Christobel

I was at the usual bus stop staring at my watch and impatient to get to work. “Crap, I won’t have time to get a coffee”, I thought. Then she caught my attention. Her unruly and disheveled hair flew behind her in the wind as she bolted past me. Her green eyes were wild with expectation and her gate was long and certain. She was on a mission. She pulled me out of my worry and I set my briefcase on the bench. I could not help but follow her as she weaved in and out of unfamiliar streets as her long sky blue robe swayed behind her, threatening to get snagged on a lamp-post or caught in a passing bicycle spoke. Her arms pumped fiercely as if she were in a race.

When she passed a dog tied tightly to a bicycle rack on the corner of Park Street she stopped momentarily and slipped off the chain collar, then scooped up the brown-eyed beagle into her arms and continuing on as if she had expected him. I could not keep up with her and began to fall behind as she continued to rush somewhere I imagined to be very important.

Suddenly, a boy with his skateboard and then a large blackbird and some strange old man sitting near the park joined her and now there were many people following her. She turned down an alley where a homeless man living in a cardboard box watched her come near. She stopped, her face a breath from his startled eyes as she smiled a smile that nearly knocked him to his feet. Then she took his hand and pulled him up and without a word he joined the growing crowd of children and old people and animals that become a wave of energy pulsing through the streets. The growing mob of unlikely people started climbing up to the top of the small clearing overlooking the city.

By the time I could catch up I was breathless. There she was perched out on an outcropping of cinder blocks that rimmed a small off-road parking area, the city carpet below her. She was deathly still, standing quietly overlooking the smog and hazy hidden buildings below. Everyone became quiet, waiting for her to speak, to say something important, to tell them what to do, to levitate, to combust, to break down weeping. Suddenly she turned as if surprised by the throng and with a deep and haunting laugh said,

‘What fun life is. Thank you for joining me”.

A short story can pack a punch. There is not need for long chapters, details or perfect prose. A parable is rich with imagery, with feeling and with a great outcome: It leaves us pondering life. This is what a good story should do if it doesn’t make us weep or laugh or want to punch the door out first.

Jesus was said to be one of the best storytellers around and through his parables, whether you are Christian or not, lessons on living have seeped into the culture of everyone’s life in one-way or another. He told parables which always had an “Aha” to be learned. He told parables about the ten virgins, the Good Samaritan, the lost sheep and the Prodigal Son. We’ve all heard about the mustard seed and a grain of sand or hiding your light under a bushel. In the end these short, visual, descriptive lessons on life can be a great way to start writing your story.

Once upon the time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Perhaps,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “What great luck!” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Perhaps,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“Perhaps,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Perhaps,” said the farmer…

From a Zen Koan

Most writers are crippled and start sweating at the white, empty page staring back at them like a challenge. Most of the time there is a book to be written, all 300 uncertain pages. When a book is looking over your shoulder it is typical to simply say…”oh I will write ten pages today” and then start sweating all over again. Oh the pressure we put ourselves under.

I have been writing what I call “morning pages” for ten or more years. Just a free-flowing stream of consciousness that starts without any intention and always ends up somewhere I never intended to go: A poem, a confession, a rant. Lots of times I rant. But, more often than not, it is a story in the making. A little seed of an idea that I can come back to. It is in this uncharted territory of unexpected words where a story is born.

When I was living up in Crested Butte, Colorado in my “let’s open an art gallery and sell contemporary art to people who want cowboys and buffalos”, I was watching the news about a couple stranded in a snowstorm and living in their car for several days. I was seized by the need to make that into a great movie. I researched the couple, outlined the story idea, and then sat down to start writing a heartwarming screenplay about love, loss and redemption (since that’s what all movies are about in the end). By page 12 the story demanded to go in another direction and no matter how hard I tried to pull the story back into formation it wandered outside the lines of my own psyche and turned itself into a 120 page paranormal thriller with Jeremy Irons and Jodi Foster. I was captive to the story…it would not let me go and in the end the screenplay won several screenwriting awards. But it was not even close to what I had set out to write.

What did I do wrong? What did I do right? How did my idea morph into something so totally a product of my relentless imagination? Or was it that the story itself is energy that exists outside of my idea of time and space and was just waiting to be born? I have learned that this is truer than you might think.

The story was able to take me somewhere unexpected simply because I was not attached to the outcome and I just showed up each day, punched on the computer, got my cup of tea, put on my headphones to listen to movie soundtracks while I wrote and in the end allowed the muse to take the characters where they needed to go.

Working this way is exciting and is a bit like tracking an animal in the woods. Most of the time you think you are following a deer and in the end you find out that it is Bigfoot.

So start with a seed. With a sentence from how you feel about a photo, use a line of a poem and take off…see where it leads you. You just might have a whole lot of fun!

The Story of My Life

Jan3

This was a frequent phrase around my home growing up. “Holy Moly, story of my life”. If I got a collections letter in the mail, or I hear that a great guy has a secret wife, that my brand new shiny car needs a transmission or that in fact I really didn’t win the lottery…” story of my life”. A handy phrase. But what’s in a phrase?

We each have one story that repeats itself over and over again throughout our lifetime. I promise you, one central ever present and every changing “story of our lives”. The casts of characters change but they fundamentally play the same roll in our lives year after year. Every new love, new boss or new dog is just like a mother, brother, father, betrayer, helper, teacher and the best of ourselves the worst of ourselves. The place, the reasons, the motives, the fears, and the outcomes seem to remain similar as well.

So, if you were to just pluck out of the sky a scenario that you recognize as so familiar that it is a “repeat story” in your life, what would it be? Would the themes be endless hope, deep despair, betrayal, running away, lost love and fighting for what is right, or would it be, men leave, women love you but die, or would it be, am I good enough, can I prove myself, or that there is never enough money or time or money or love or money or food, nourishment or support. Could you be in Groundhog Day like Bill Murray where over or over again you love the wrong person, you loose everything you have and need to start again, you never feel smart enough or have enough of, or ultimately are loved enough. Does the white knight turn into the villain or are you the one who rescues and heals the world? We all have one story.

If we take the time to identify this story, which repeats itself over and over again for our learning and growth, then we have abundant power to change the story, but not before we look it square in the eye and say “Yes” this is MY story. For most authors who are seized with a story line and write until the days are a blur and who forget to eat or take a shower, most likely the book or story being written is a mirror of the writer’s psyche.

Most writers have to cop to the fact that writing is therapy. Writing is sanity. Expiation. Transformation and atonement. Most writers on a good and honest day will say that the story they think is pure fantasy is really from their own life, own fear, own desire to be a hero or heroine and to rewrite what went so wrong, so long ago. It is a powerful moment when you can write a fictitious character that is not you in reality so that they can do all the things that you only wish to have done or said or experienced in your life. Why else do we write?

And when we can fess up that our own story is driving the bus, we can not only heal our lives but we can write a story that touches the collective nerve. That is what makes a bestseller. In the end….the story will write you.

The Telling Room

Dec20

My generation had no idea that the age of the computer was coming or what it would mean. Back then spelling was a mandatory class we took. We could not go into middle school without getting a passing grade in “penmanship”. I remember practicing my upper case and lower case letters on lined paper over and over again until all my words flowed like little art forms onto the page without effort. The act of writing with a favorite pen and crafting a story for school magically changed brain chemistry and balanced right and left-brain. But, now days, writing on anything other than a computer is rare and making up stories is becoming rare as well.

Then in college we had Selectric Typewriters that were all the rage, which replaced the typewriters that had spools of carbon ribbon used by Hemingway. Then came the Brother Word Processor and life was about to change forever.

Fast forward to my daughter’s generation who had computers in school, spell-check and there were no spelling and grammar classes or cursive in school. In fact unintelligible printing replaced cursive and the intimate relationship between a well-sharpened pencil tucked neatly in a row inside of a wooden pencil box put to a blank piece of paper all but disappeared. In fact reading books began to disappear and daydreaming and imaginative story telling was capsized by video games and television.

The art of storytelling is under siege and in fact the power of storytelling is rapidly becoming a lost personal art, and an underutilized healing tool in our society. Even movies are slowly giving way to franchised super hero trilogies and beyond that dominate the world of storytelling on the big screen.

But, there are those who want to teach storytelling to kids and young adults as a means to unlock creativity, unleash personal power and heal lives. One such teacher and writer is Susan Conley, a co-founder of The Telling Room, a creative writing lab in Portland, Maine who believes in the power of stories to transform lives and change communities. She also believes that writing and storytelling healed her from cancer. Here is her story on TED:

Susan served as the executive director of The Telling Room for its first two years of life before moving to China, where she wrote a memoir titled The Foremost Good Fortune (Knopf, 2011). This book chronicles the years Susan, her husband and two young boys lived in Beijing, learned Mandarin, set out on The Hunt for the Greatest Dumpling in China, and contended with Susan’s cancer diagnosis. The book was excerpted in The New York Times Magazine and The Daily Beast and was voted a Goodreads’ Choice Award Winner for Best Travel and Outdoor Books of 2011.

Susan has been the recipient of two MacDowell Colony residencies, a Breadloaf Writer’s Fellowship and a Massachusetts Arts Council Grant. Maine Today Media gave Susan a 2011 “Greatest Women of Maine” Award. A graduate of Middlebury College and San Diego State University, Susan has taught creative writing and literature seminars at Emerson College, as well as at Harvard’s Teachers as Scholar’s Program. She continues to teach all flavors of writing workshops at The Telling Room and has a novel forthcoming from Knopf in the spring of 2013. Susan lives in Portland with her husband, Tony Kieffer, and their two boys ages 9 and 11, who are avid story tellers themselves and not at all sick of dumplings.

Quantum Storytelling

Dec3

I sat in a kind of stupor as the credits rolled, the crowd silently leaving the theater. I had a feeling that being in Oklahoma at the time, the majority of the moviegoers were baffled by what they had just seen. No one was talking, something had happened. I was the only one still in my seat. I had sat through three hours and two full bags of popcorn watching Interstellar. Not because Matthew Mcconaughey is beautiful or talented but because I knew that embedded in this film was far more than star power.

I am not going to review the movie here. But, I want to talk about how story can wake you up. Interstellar was written and directed by the Christopher Nolan who did Inception. Most of us know how it felt to watch that movie and witness something just outside of our grasp, but mesmerizing and intriguing enough to keep us glued to our movie seat. Interstellar was no different for me but far more powerful since it is a premier example of how story can change us at every level. I mean really change us.

That any filmmaker would attempt to take me into the heart of quantum physics and nudge me toward a new and more defined perception of time and space gets my attention. Flaws of moviemaking aside, I loved one particular thing about this story: That it revealed what the shift on our planet and in our own DNA as humans may be all about. And that is powerful.

I find myself gravitating to substance instead of the entertainment value of story. And Interstellar seemed to allow me to sink into the big questions of life, the unanswered questions, the heroic ones and the questions we all fear to really look into the heart of. Questions of where do we come from, why are we here, what is god, are we alone in the Universe, what is beyond three dimensional existence, is there more than one Maya in the solar system and what does relativity and gravity have to do with everything? As for me, those are the only questions I am interested in.

So when I took the leap three months ago out of the world of psychotherapy and embraced what I truly love the most in life, I did so with the understanding that story would heal us as individuals and story would heal the planet in ways that are ineffable, illusive, complex and sometimes simply a mystery.

I held up a torch in my life to ask for stories to come to me. I held tight to my deep love and passion for stories of transformation, survival, hope and love as the greatest power in the Universe as I intended to write only these stories, and help others bring their amazing adventures and dreams into reality. I got far more than I bargained for. Gratefully.

People from all over the world are finding me in some of the most unusual ways. Phone calls and emails from those who suddenly feel ready to reveal secrets of the Universe only they have been entrusted with, stories of unparalleled heroism that will change lives and creative dreams and fantasies that speak to transforming our own natures from war to love, and from fear to magic.

I am pausing to allow myself to feel how very important each one of these stories are and how I can be a part of birthing weapons of mass love and power which is the medicine our planet needs. Medicine the storyteller needs as well, which will affect them on the deepest level imaginable and affect the lives of their families.

Storytelling is a sacred event. I cannot urge everyone enough to begin to see the stories that you have lived or imagined as sacred energy that you were entrusted with long before you were born. You alone are the keeper of your own unique story of bravery, courage, pain and suffering, triumph of the spirit, love and lost love, finding god or becoming god.

The energy inherent in a great story or film creates a resonant response in our physical bodies, our thoughts and our hearts. That resonant energy begins a cascading shift and change in our own cellular nature. We are not only changed emotionally or intellectually when we read or watch an amazing story, we are changed energetically and physically. This is why I would always caution against the Horror and Death Film. We are changed in ways that only fear can accomplish when we subject ourselves to the images that these films provide in abundance.

And fear releases adrenaline and then fear becomes an addiction to the thrill of the adrenaline. In the end we are physically, emotionally and spiritually changed. The same can be said for the stories that we need far more: Stories of love and hope and courage. Stories of overcoming the unthinkable.

So, I am blessed to be given the opportunity to help any storyteller birth what is uniquely their primary and most powerful contribution to their legacy on this planet: A personal story that will resonate with the people who have simply been waiting for your story and just have not known it.

Later this week I will post under Screenplays the movies that are must sees and the books that should be movies. We all need food for the soul since our souls are under siege by technology and a planet in peril. Your story is a life raft, is a story to help each of us remember who we are, who we were born to be and who we have yet to become. Bravo to our brave storytellers.

Oral Fixation

Nov23

I have been back on the road as a gypsy for two months now and what living every day by the seat of your pants, or more accurately, navigating by the stars, is that your identity is up for grabs and your work in this world begins to reflect what you are learning along the way.

“I took the leap. I reinvented my work and what has happened in three short months is magical. I have the privilege of coaching and consulting with single mom’s in Colorado, professional women in Panama, a novelist in Ottawa, a single dad in Seattle, a poet in Boston, two medical students in NYC, a pastor writing a play, a dentist changing his world, entrepreneurs starting real estate businesses, beginning food blogs, writing memoirs and screenplays and self-help books. And it all stared with a fixation I had.”

I like to think of myself as a good communicator but that is not everyone’s sentiment about me. My friends and family might say I am a big talker, my father said I was “overly verbose”, one of my husbands just shook his head wishing I could simply embrace his silence and my daughters used to sit far from me in a theater when we were watching a movie, since they said I talked too much. And loudly I might add!

I confess. Most of that is true. But, in my defense, I am so in love with story that I always seem to have one to tell. But, since the advent of the computer and the communication gadget era we are loosing something profound: Our oral tradition. And the oral tradition is all about family and community. The era of sitting around the radio and hearing stories with others, since there was no television, or sitting round the fire hearing the local storyteller raise the hair on the back of your neck and now, even reading a book is becoming something from the past.

Storytelling was a community event. Now, we are all separate from one another even in the movie theater. There is no gathering of the clan; no family story night and bedtime storytelling has given way to watching something on an i-Phone, even at the age of 7.

The new ‘oral tradition’ is not really even oral any longer. The cell phone and finding a friend for a chat, has now moved to cryptic texting. Beautifully spun stories are now shared in sparse sound bites and short cut conversations. We are loosing touch with each other in the illusion of being in touch. We are forgetting that intimacy needs meaningful contact and we are trading a great story or a profound movie experience for the 3 min web-series while waiting for the subway seated next to four more strangers staring at their phones and pounding away on keys.

And I am not immune to these radical changes. Since I drive a lot I have traded thick page-turners for a book on tape. I have driven two entire states and missed most of the countryside because Stephen King, the master storyteller, and his book Dr. Sleep, was spellbinding. I really tried to get through Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games, but after two disks and horrible writing I peeled into the nearest Cracker Barrel and traded it in for one of the best books thus far, The Litigators by John Grisham. This is the closest I have come to listening to a great storyteller tell me an amazing story.

My commitment to shifting my work to mythotherapy and away from psychotherapy, is to assist people in finding the story in them that needs to be written and that can heal their lives. This adventure has turned out to be one of the most amazing adventures I have invited into my life thus far.

My work for 30 years has been with people and hearing the stories they endured, the stories that they want to overcome and heal from. As a therapist this was my life’s work. Healing stories has become something far more for me and what I am watching and experiencing is that unpacking a story, whether a personal one, a fantasy or a gigantic creative endeavor has the healing power of the best therapy out there. So, I took the leap and created Mythotherapy and made the strong intention to help people get their stories told, while writing my own.

In three short months I have left the east coast with my cat, created a Skype practice and put out the beacon for storytellers that I here to help, to coach, to collaborate, to work on writer’s block and get their story written and published. It has been amazing. Intentions are beacons. They are like a red flare shot over the ocean of life that the right person sees, when they need to see it. As a result, I have fabulous new clients from all over the world, thanks to the Internet.

I have the privilege of coaching and consulting with single mom’s in Colorado, professional women in Panama, a novelist in Ottawa, a single dad in Seattle, a poet in Boston, two medical students in NYC, a pastor writing a play, a dentist changing his world, entrepreneurs starting real estate businesses, beginning food blogs, writing memoirs and screenplays and self help books.

I am consulting with these wonderful and talented people on the next great Harry Potter book, a spin tingling thriller, a cookbook, essays to get into doctoral programs, a real estate blog that will make you want to rush out and buy every house in site, an unsolved crime, a Dr. Phil story that is shocking, a paranormal mystery and an alien Sci-Fi. And, I am blow away by those who are writing memoirs of true stories that we all need to read and hear.

My writing is better for every one of these people who are courageous enough to reach out and email me and then create a commitment to their story being told. My hope is that this oral fixation I have on telling stories, continues to manifest more amazing relationships and life changing stories we all need to hear.

Stories are our soul’s food, or hearts inspiration and our creative juice. Please. Tell yours.

PS: Did I fail to mention that committing to doing what you love works? Just sayin.

Manly Men

Nov16

Ok, I admit it. As I travel I have a little game since I am a big movie goer. I see where the cheapest movies are and hands down they are in Oklahoma. So is the gasoline for $2.35 a gallon. First run, big screen, movies are…wait..wait…$5.75. In Denver they are nearly $12 for one ticket, Asheville, NC $7.75 and in NYC $15 and up. And in Oklahoma you can get popcorn and a drink for under $6 compared to the usual $13.50. But, movies won’t keep me here for much longer as I wander back to Denver for the holidays and family.

But I have seen some movies lately that have shifted my consciousness. Interstellar being one which won’t let go and tonight I am seeing St. Vincent with Bill Murray. But, for the moment I want to speak about how my relationship to men is changing because of an uprising of movies… about men.

One of the most tragic stories in the history of our planet has to do with men. Yes you heard it hear from one who has spent thirty years speaking to women’s empowerment, raising one voice for women of abuse and delving into the history of terror for women which continues all over the world by the hands of mostly, men. So, this is a big moment for me as I come into my own deeper realization that we ALL have been brutalized at the hands of the Patriarchy whether it be religion or governing bodies, husbands, employers or terrorists. Men have suffered, as have women.

Men designed, supported and have lived by powerful beliefs since the beginning of time with regards to what “manly men” are, why war is necessary, why bravery and courage and fighting the good fight is at the heart of what men are required to emulate. Men grew up thinking about the hero, the warrior and living under authority that was not their own. As a result, most men simply learned to soldier through life with no idea of what really lurked on the other side of this dysfunctional set of rules for being masculine. Still in the most current dictionary the word Manlycarries a heavy weight:

Having or denoting those good qualities traditionally associated with men, such as courage and strength.

“looking manly and capable in his tennis whites”

:	brave, courageous, bold, valiant, valorous, fearless, plucky, macho,manful, intrepid, daring, heroic,lionhearted, gallant, chivalrous,swashbuckling, adventurous, stouthearted, dauntless, doughty,resolute,determined, stalwart;

What is wrong with this picture?

performing, providing and protecting became the most important part of what made a man a man, which morphed over the centuries, as any imbalance does, into a toxic reflection of the masculine that took on the mask of control over, power hunger, greed and a disrespect for anything that is not…all of the above. But, what about the human condition that is innate which men were encouraged to exorcise from their self-concept, namely, emotions, creative and spontaneous dreaming, and anything that seemed to scream the feminine, as in intuition as power, emotional intelligence and compassion for the most part, all aspects of our humanity which were not in the game of being a man.

Today, through the widening crack in the system, we are hearing some clear thinking and feelings on this subject as they spill out into our collective conscience. And, at the front of the line for telling the truth of what men have endured in the attempt to adhere to the “real man syndrome”, is the movie industry. Hidden and not so hidden in the fabric of the movies that are coming out in droves this fall, is the untold story of the patriarchal underbelly and the price being paid not only by women, but by the men themselves who have fought for their country, for families, for putting meat on the table and for simply doing what authority says in order to get ahead and be the norm. But the norm is not normal. These movies not only hint at the corporate rape of men’s souls, the pressure of being the provider, the soul crushing reality of all war, but they expose some of the most vulnerable truths that men never really talk about.

This underbelly of the patriarchy is fraught with guilt, shame, emotional pain, fear and suffering that the soldier from war arriving home with a life long case of PTSD is simply a mirror for. The men who were trained out of a large part of their humanity are equally pained by what lies buried and seemingly out of their reach and far from the light of day: Their inherent lovable-ness, their soulfulness, their feelings and their fears. Personal suffering that is hardly measurable, that has no way of being addressed, creates anger and depression, suicide and alcoholism and men litter relationships with brokenness, heart attacks, stress reactions and lack of intimacy.

There are at least four movies that stampede onto the screen this fall and winter and are couched in what you might think as being a “guy movie” but under the surface you are witnessing a revelation of the inner life of men. I am not talking about any of the Hangovers, The Interview, all the Seth Rogen movies and the plethora of wanna be cop movies since they just keep men Dumb and Dumber. But Fury with Brad Pitt, the up and coming Unbroken by Angelina Jolie, The Railroad Man with Colin Firth and The Judge with Robert Downey Jr. and the impeccable Robert Duval are stories of men who did what was expected of them in war, in work and at home and paid a horrible bone crushing, life sucking price which the women in their lives inherited.

Men brokered their own deeper humanity for towing the line and for fear of not being one of the boys. These movies eek out themes of the loss of love, the powerful bonding between men that can only be expressed by the short hugs or the slap on the back, the cold war between fathers and sons who cannot express emotion and the inability to be fully themselves are rare confessions from men in movies. And we as the onlooker with popcorn in hand, rarely get to see these themes unfold in all its pain.

As stories go, this story is the one story that our society needs to look square in the eye since things are changing and they will not be returning to “normal”. Men and women alike are crying for balance within and without between the masculine and the feminine and in the long run the shift that everyone is heralding on our planet has, at its heart, the crumbling of the patriarchy in all is dysfunction and abuse of spirit. Movies start consciousness moving outside the box, whisper the unspeakable, leave us breathless with visual brilliance in a moment that captures anguish which cannot be expressed any other way than with flying body parts. Then we watch the inevitable as Brad Pitt takes all the suffering of war and buries it deep inside just as our fathers, brothers and lovers have, only to create suffering for the generations that follow.

We have spent decades in the arms of a feminist movement that has made clear how ravaged, and how brutalized women have been from the beginning of time at the hands of the patriarchal model, but it is now time to have the conversation that is so needed regarding the wounded warrior, the brutalized man, the man who has been denied his soul.

I am inspired by the list of “man movies” that should become the most important “chick flicks” to see. So in the service of story telling I want to review all of the movies that I have mentioned here, not to give anything away, but, to coax you in seeing violent and harsh movies as a way to more fully understand the darkness of the patriarchy and what men have endured. I will add a new post for each movie to the Screenplay section of my website, starting with Fury.

Navigating the Times

Nov6

Having left the Rainforest of North Carolina and headed west I’ve landed in the middle of the country. I can’t say that travel through Tennessee and Missouri was the least bit interesting and at one point I just wanted someone to please beam me up and out of the sandwich I had become on I 40, as I crawled along with packs of sixteen wheelers for nearly ten hours. Crossing into Oklahoma, well, was a relief, as the trucks moved on toward Little Rock and finally let me out of what had been an interminable prison of fumes.

Sunsets. The best part of Oklahoma especially as they light the sky and on the horizon are mechanical oil wells pumping away with their black silhouettes like ancient dinosaurs still roaming the countryside. But once here, I remembered the years as a child on my grandparents farm but also remembered why this is not the state for me. The simplest way to describe my being the one to feel so alien here is to say that the mindset is overall…confining. Enough said.

I came to Oklahoma to house sit for my sister and hunker down to serious writing. But it took about a week to recover from packing, moving, packing some more, storing the last bits of my stuff, packing the car, saying goodbye to people I love, and then listening to my beloved cat meow for over a hundred miles. I have made this nomadic choice before but this round of simplifying my life in order to create more financial freedom and just more room in general for shifting my focus to my life as a writer, has not been easy. Age? Maybe. A very hard year? Maybe. But that’s not what I really think the difficulty has been. Each of us has our own personal stories we are living but on a global and cosmic stage that exerts a powerful influence on each and every one of us.

I believe that navigating the prevailing winds of change on the planet takes great focus, greater personal energy and impacts all of us at a deep level. Yet I keep orienting to life’s changing landscape as if it were twenty years ago when none of the challenges that currently impact all of us had revved up to the peak we are now facing. And so much of the shift all around us is …mysteriously unseen.

From ever-increasing electromagnetic assault, fear pollution, cellular change at a powerful vibrational level to inner tension from financial stresses, relational endings, health concerns, lost jobs, and the nagging questions of “why am I here and what am I doing with my life?”, these issues, energies and questions are epidemic for a huge part of the population.

These shifting inner and outer tides are no more prevalent than with those who understand that they are “old souls” on the planet for the umpteenth time. So, why is this the case? Is this collective phenomenon pressing on the old soul community harder because they have more tools or a greater commitment to change or transformation?

Is it because the shift that is brewing on our planet is simply requiring that old souls who have incarnated now are more responsible to lead the way out of one collapsing paradigm and into an emergent one of love and inclusiveness? Or is it that old souls are being pushed hard to shed all attachment of any kind, especially to lifestyle and constrictive or uncreative work in the world, so that they are unencumbered as freedom and mobility becomes a necessity in our lives? Yes. The answer is yes to all of the above.

So I confess. As I was swept along in between these loud, lumbering behemoths barreling down the road, containers full of mail, milk, food, tech, cows, horses and cars, I thought more than once, “What the hell am I doing?” And I have thought that many times as I drive from Oklahoma to Colorado.

Jumping into the unknown does not give you wings to soar above the fear or an endless measure of faith to overcome the doubt. In fact, taking a leap of faith because you cannot do anything other than jump, assures you that you will have a daily practice of quelling the doubt and fear, talking yourself into a few more uncertain miles until the Universe very predictably leads you into all the magic and the moments, the people and the places that you know instantly are why you jumped in the first place. Then you get up and do it all over again.

So tomorrow I will be in Denver, the Rockies looming in the distance with their first snowcaps. I look forward to being back to where I lived for eight years and crossing over the border, on through the town of Limon and then the vast vista of the high plans, the rolling sagebrush, and the cloudless sky stretched out before me. When I get there I will breath in the cooler Colorado air and simply say, “So, what will today bring?” I say that most every day now.