WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO
This shit is hard. I tell people’s stories for a living, and it’s still tough for me to tell if my Instagram really represents me. Barf. Here’s my take on showing yourself as you are: part intersectional, part esoteric, part a deep skewering of storytelling. –M.E.
#1
Society centers some identities and peripheralizes others.
Center yourself anyway.
If you’ve been socialized to think you’re outside the norm, a sea of doubts may rise to meet you when you want to represent yourself. But take heart, people are doing it anyway and changing the landscape for us all.
Lizzo
“Big black girls, if you’re reading this... you’re a cover star. Nothin less. Period Pooh. Fin bitch.”
Lizzo does this brain-defying thing in her Instagram stories: she crops in close to her face, looks into the camera, brings you in around her lips or eyes, not saying anything, just showing herself. I always feel hypnotized. It’s like she’s training me to really see her. And I love her for it.
Michael R. Jackson
“Live your life and tell your story in exactly the same way.”
The living Michael Jackson created A Strange Loop, which is a 🎶 ”big, black, and queer-ass American Broadway show.” 🎶 These songs are so jarringly true that it feels like humanity has reached a new level of honesty.
#2
Storytelling has a tradition of formulaic structures.
Ignore them.
Before you ever even told a story, you might have heard hundreds or thousands. That patterning can get in the way. Telling your actual story is easier when you identify and put aside the typical story stuff.
Main character
Stories tend to focus on a main character who’s more important than all the other characters combined. Is that realistic? What if you don’t tell a story this way? What other ways are there?
Ups & downs
Typical stories are obsessed with the rise and fall. Doing better and doing worse. How else can you describe what’s happening? What gives life dimension beyond the good and bad? What other kinds of moments are there?
so Predictable
Many stories have a set path with a predetermined happy ending. How is it different to tell your story with unknowns and ambiguities, with a path that’s still in progress?
#3
Telling your story means knowing what your story really is.
It can be hard to find a blank page to start on. There are so many ideas floating around about what we are, how life is, and where we should go with it. It takes sifting through and peeling back to find out, “okay, this idea, or this value, or this direction — is really mine.” In this journey, my gut has been my best friend telling me what’s true for me now and what’s just… not.
Spend time in the inquiry.
