February 3, 2018

Claim Your Voice

Have you heard the tale of Cassandra, the cursed Greek prophet? She foretold the siege of Troy, knew there were warriors hiding in the Trojan Horse, predicted to the day of Odysseus’ return, and more, but because the god Apollo was a giant baby-man, when she refused sex with him, he spit in her mouth, thus cursing her never to be believed.

This myth is almost too on-the-nose when talking about how women’s stories are treated today, particularly their stories of unwanted sexual attention. Those Greeks were really onto something, except things seldom ended well for their non-goddess females. Cassandra was ultimately raped, forced by Agamemnon to be his concubine, and then murdered by Agamemnon’s wife.

I want to rewrite that story.

Not the epic Greek Iliad, but a more intimate Minnesota version, one featuring a 13-year-old girl named Cassandra. She sees things, but because she is a child and because certain truths are always unwelcome, she is not believed. I’m going to give voice to her truth. I am going to listen to her and believe her. As a writer who likes to outline, to control the story, to walk cleanly from Point A to Point B, this following and nurturing the voice of a child will be challenging, more so because she is going to be navigating some of my own childhood’s back alleys as well as a boatload of cultural conditioning.

I’m wondering if you could help me. Many hands make short work and all that, except more like “many words make psychic space.” Specifically, if you claim a bit more of your voice while I do the same, we can cause a shift in what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. We can carve out space for Cassandra (and you and me and others) to tell her story.

You in?

It’s pretty straightforward, will take 20 minutes, and you don’t have to leave your seat. Here’s what:

1. Set the timer on your phone for 4 minutes. Freewrite, either by hand or in a clean Word document, for that entire time. Start out the freewriting with this phrase: “I didn’t feel heard when…” Don’t censor, criticize, or edit what comes after. Let the words flow.
2. When your timer goes off, reset it for 7 minutes. Close your eyes if you’re comfortable doing so and breathe deeply, in through your nose and out through your mouth. When thoughts come into your head, watch them go by as if they’re riding a paper boat down a stream.
3. When the timer goes off, reset it for 8 minutes. Freewrite, either by hand or in a clean Word document, for that entire time. Start out the freewriting with this phrase: “These are the things that are true to me…” Don’t censor, criticize, or edit what comes after. Let the words flow.
4. When the timer goes off, do a body check. Pay attention to any heat, tightness, bubbling—any physical sensations at all—and where it is located in your body. Be curious about that.

That’s it. You’re welcome to delete, burn, or save what you wrote, whatever feels right. The power was in the act of claiming your voice. Look for the little gifts that come to you as a result, starting with my gratitude—our voices make a beautiful, messy, life-changing chorus. Thanks, you. Big love!

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January 7, 2018

The Prince Experiment

On January 4, 2018, I had a dream that I undertook a one-year project: learn how to play that gorgeous sunburst Stratocaster that I bought 25 years ago (for real) when I thought it was my destiny to start an all-woman rock band. I experienced pushback in my dream and so went to the 400 Bar (West Bank Minneapolis, circa 1990), and Prince was playing. He took me aside, we danced a bit, and he told me that not only should I learn the guitar and start that band, but that I should use the year of learning as the structure for a memoir.

Oy. Prince, right? Apparently he recently visited another friend of mine in her dream and also encouraged her to be more creative, and why the hell WOULDN"T Prince spend the afterlife encouraging people? But still, the guitar? I'm 47. I'm a full-time writing professor and a full-time novelist (it's a good thing I don't do the math; also, please don't do the math). I have a 15-year-old son and a 47-year-old husband at home, and they're both a blast to hang out with. I've got the world's most amazing friends, whose time and attention I like to swim in like it's the warm blue sea. Not to mention, how self-indulgent is it to learn to play guitar when the world is on fire?

That last question is actually what made up my mind--that, and a list of five reasons to learn guitar that Nadine sent me--because I know that the hardest and best time to create is when life is the most difficult. I can spare an hour or so a week, ten minutes peppered here and there, to learn this guitar, and to maybe blog about it, and to maybe turn that blog series into a memoir. You're welcome to join me, to share your creative endeavors in the comments, and to offer unsolicited guitar-playing advice, starting with: I just pulled that guitar out for the first time in years to snap that photo. It's got a broken string. I don't know how to change broken guitar strings. I guess I'm gonna learn.

Cheers.

p.s. I just looked up the year my guitar was released. 1981. I would have been eleven, living in rural Minnesota. That was the year before Prince released 1999 and blew my small-town mind. Down the road, I'll tell you the crazy story of how I came to own that guitar. For now, let's just appreciate the man...

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December 31, 2017

Be the One

I was introduced to the Rule of 7 in 2002. It appeared in a textbook assigned to me when I took over an Introduction to Critical Thinking class. The Rule essentially goes like this: a person needs to hear new information seven times from seven different sources for it to stick. Internalizing this was a lifesaver. I was teaching in a rural college, where I encountered theses like, “Youth in Asia should be illegal,” “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” and where my students felt entitled to debate whether those in the LGBTQ community should be allowed to adopt children and declared themselves “not racist, but…”

I also taught many bright, open-hearted students. In fact, they were the majority, but those defiantly ignorant ones stuck with me. I’ve been reminded of them often in 2017 because it seems they’ve taken over the news waves, the White House, the country. And as much as I would like to steer (shove) the unkind and the willfully ignorant into seven different encounters with the truth so they would wake up, I know I can’t be the seven. I can only be the one.

The Rule of 7 reminds me of Aesop’s fable, “The Crow and the Pitcher” (and yeah, in middle school I nerded out on my Aesop’s fable collection, Grimm’s fairy tales, and Greek mythology; I still love them all). The tale is about a thirsty crow who finds a pitcher of water. She can’t reach the water through the narrow opening, the pitcher is too heavy to tip, and she’s about to die of thirst. That’s when she notices pebbles lying on the ground and gets a bright idea. She drops the pebbles in, one at a time, until the water is high enough for her to drink.

Those pebbles represent the truth, but we each have only one we can drop into the pitcher. We must speak up—we are being led by a madman and our democracy is in danger; sexism, racism, ableism, heterosexism, and ageism are real and immeasurably destructive; true change requires deep discomfort and hard work—and silence is no longer an option. The problem is compounded because this societal disruption is playing out for many of us on a personal level. I’ve experienced terrible rifts in my family this year. I want to fix everything, convince everyone we can do better, but in the end, I’m only one person, one experience, and I'm only allotted one pebble to toss into any person’s pitcher. They need to encounter the other six somewhere else.

Realizing this makes me both melancholy and empowered, a mixed bag for sure. But I haven’t told you the best news yet, which is that, if you live the Rule of 7 when interacting with people whose worldview and choices make you sad, it frees up MOUNTAINS of time to create, live, march, love, and play. By the way, thank you to everyone who's tossed a pebble my way, and continues to share their pebbles. I need 'em.

Be the One in 2018.

p.s. Enough about dealing with them. Let’s talk about you and me, and how we’re gonna write a different story for 2018. Please leave a bit of joy—a photo of someone you love, glitter and sequins, a great sentence you read or wrote, a kindness you witnessed or heard about, favorite GIF, your guiding word for 2018, etc.--in the comments below. Any happiness posted here before January 7 will enter you to win, no strings attached, one of ten seats in my online, self-paced Rewrite Your Life class which shows you how to transform your life experiences into a healing, kick-ass novel.
p.s.s. If you need this online class but can’t afford it, email me (jessicalourey@gmail.com) before January 7 to let me know. No details necessary. I trust you.
p.s.s.s. That awesome vintage image was created by Milo Winter and is in the Public Domain.

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