Writing your life story be a healing process – even if you have zero intention of ever publishing it. But many people who want to write don’t know how to get started. We talk to expert storytellers Allison Fallon, author of “Write Your Story,” and Sandi Marinella, author of “The Story You Need to Tell,” to give us some expert writing insight and advice. This episode was made possible by generous support from Ken Stevens.
Writing your life story be a healing process – even if you have zero intention of ever publishing it. But many people who want to write don’t know how to get started. We talk to expert storytellers Allison Fallon, author of “Write Your Story,” and Sandi Marinella, author of “The Story You Need to Tell,” to give us some expert writing insight and advice.
This episode was made possible by generous support from Ken Stevens.
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Dr. Denise Millstine:Welcome to the “Read. Talk. Grow” podcast, inspired by my conversations with my own patients about what they are reading. On “Read. Talk. Grow.”, we discuss women's health by talking about books, especially fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction books that portray or explore our health topics. We use reading to better understand how it is to live with or navigate these conditions. In the same way that books can transport us to a different historical time or into a less familiar culture, they can draw readers into various health experiences. On the show, we connect authors and experts to talk about women's health and integrative medicine issues, including those often considered intimate or hard to discuss.
I'm Dr. Denise Millstine, and I'm an assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic, where I practice women's health and internal medicine and direct the Section on Integrative Medicine and Health in Arizona. I'm the host of “Read. Talk. Grow.” and the medical director for the women's health blog through Mayo Clinic Press. I am always reading and love discussing books, so let's get started.
Our topic today is one of our integrative medicine topics, the use of writing to heal. Our featured new book today is “Write Your Story: A Simple Framework to Understand Yourself, Your Story, and Your Purpose in the World”by Allison Fallon. We'll discuss this book and topic with the author of a related book, Sandra Marinella’s “The Story You Need to Tell.”
Our guests are Ally Fallon, who's an author, speaker, and founder of Find Your Voice, a community that supports anyone who wants to write anything. She's written three prior books of her own, ghostwritten eleven books, and collaborated on countless others. Through Find Your Voice, she has helped leaders of multinational corporations, stay-at-home moms, Olympic gold medalists, recovering addicts, political figures, CEOs and prison inmates to use her methods as powerful tools to generate positive change in their lives. She's lived all over the country but currently lives in Nashville with her family. Ally, welcome to the show.
Allison Fallon: Thank you for having me. So excited to be here.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Likewise, we can't wait to talk about your book. Our second guest is Sandra Marinella. Sandi is an award-winning writing teacher and author. She's taught stories, sharing and writing to thousands of students, professionals, and cancer patients for over three decades. When she faced breast cancer herself, Sandi turned to her personal writing as a way of healing. The experience inspired her to teach writing to heal and transform to patients, veterans, and those in life-altering situations, including here at Mayo Clinic. She wrote the book “The Story You Need to Tell” as a guide for writing to heal and grow. Her work embraces both story and writing as personal, transformational tools. Sandi, welcome to the show.
Sandra Marinella: It's an honor to be here with you, Denise and Ally. It's really nice to meet you, Ally.
Allison Fallon: Very nice to meet you, too.
Dr. Denise Millstine:Again, we'll be talking today about writing to explore, heal, and make meaning from our personal stories, which is a component of integrative medicine, somewhat a form of narrative medicine.
Ally, you're not new to the world of writing and telling your own story and writing memoir, but this process was not intuitive to you when you started. Tell us about your early experience of writing your own books and your own story.
Allison Fallon:Yeah, I quit my fulltime job to write my first book over a decade ago now, about 15 years ago, and I knew, I had a sense kind of deep down in my gut that I was supposed to, I don't know even what I mean by that, but I was supposed to write this story. It was like I couldn’t not write the story, but I didn't really know what the story was. I just knew that I had a story to tell. So I quit my full-time job. I had saved up some money and given myself a bit of a buffer to take some time away from working full time to write this book.
And I thought maybe it would take me about six months to write it. And it wasn't until over three and a half years later that I finally published my first book. So needless to say, the process of putting the book together, pitching to agents and publishers, all of that was much more complicated than I expected it to be.
But I did learn a lot about myself on that journey, and about how stories get put together. Namely, I learned that starting with some sort of a formula or a framework or a structure can be really, really helpful. I had this naive like young creative view of creativity that it was going to be like a bolt of lightning would strike me, and the inspiration would just flow through me, and the story would just kind of spill out onto the page and that was not at all how it happened.
In fact, at the time I was living in Portland, Oregon, and I didn't have a car. I would walk or ride my bike everywhere, and I did a lot of just wandering aimlessly around the city, from coffee shop to coffee shop, waiting for that bolt of lightning to strike. And it didn't. It didn't exactly work that way.
So then, when I had the opportunity to start helping other people put together their stories into a memoir or a creative nonfiction book, the first thing that I did was start to ask myself, what are some of the predictable things that we know to be true about stories? How can I put some boundaries around this? So that the overwhelming task of writing a book doesn't have to be quite so overwhelming. And that that same structure is what I apply today when I work with people who aren't looking to write a book, but who have a story that they want to tell for healing purposes.
There are some predictable things that we know to be true about personal stories that are true in every single story, and when we follow that framework, it gives us like a bit of like bumpers or a track that we can drive on that makes it a little simpler.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I love in “Write Your Story,” how you create this picture of you in the coffee shop. Just almost journaling. Really? Yeah. You're just writing and you think it's all just going to flow. And I think that many of us would think that if we were to approach writing a memoir. Sandi, is this something that you find commonly?
Sandra Marinella:Oh, yes. Absolutely. I generally go to the Wildflower Bread Company every morning and try to get started. And it seems, Ally, doesn't it seem like you end up writing more emails than you did in class?
Allison Fallon: I have to eventually just turn off my email. I have to, like, cancel the internet because otherwise I won't get anything done.
Sandra Marinella: Yes, you go to a space and it really takes a long time to work a pattern and a practice into your life, I think. And I'm so glad you found the one you found. I think it's a beautiful practice. Ally, you’re bringing that structure of narrative writing to regular people. And I think all of us need that structure, that understanding. Of course, I came to it very differently. I was teaching literature in high schools in college. And then I realized, wow, this is so important. Literature is so important, the way that it affects and teaches us how to solve problems, how to live our lives and people don't understand it from that human therapy viewpoint. And so I guess then I began to write more about nonfiction. I thought it was going to be a great creative writer like you, a great yeah, I wrote a couple of adolescent novels that are still in the drawer back there. And so then I realized, oh, I'm into self-help. I'm into trying to help people find the power of their writing and your story. So, like you, I had a very similar experience and cancer changed all that and meeting Denise Millstine helped with all that as well, we have much in common.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Sandi, when you're teaching, let's focus on people who are patients or maybe navigating the cancer journey. Are you finding that it's helpful for them to start with a structure or to free write? Maybe both. What's the balance there?
Sandra Marinella: Such a beautiful question, Denise. I think both. I think most people who are beginners, as Ally has learned, they need a framework. And through the years, I found a framework very similar to Ally’s that I like.
I developed in the classroom this process of what I call chapters. Write down the chapters you have in your life and then begin to pull in those chapters and then look at the characters. And it became so obvious to me that character was so important in teaching us how to be people, you know, in writing about character.
And then trouble. Of course, Ally talks a lot of trouble. Janet Burroway says in her book, “Imaginative Writing,” it's all about trouble. And it is. Really life is all about trouble. So how can we manage? How can we hold that? How can we take that forward? So yes, I very definitely learned that framework matters. But I've also found that a lot of people who are blocked or blocked with trauma, that a whole business of — I'd love to hear what Ally has to say about this — but the whole business really of writer's block to me is that you may not be ready to write that story.
Allison Fallon: Yes
Sandra Marinella: That is a traumatic story. And I try to respect that and give space for that. And that's where positive writing comes in. And gratitude writing and other ways of writing that we can help them hold story and move forward and not get stuck, not traumatized or retraumatized by. What do you think, Ally?
Allison Fallon: Yeah. I mean, so everything you're saying I agree with. You are right that we have so much in common and I could add so much to it. But I will say I've always said about writer's block that writer's block is not just writer's block, its life block. And that when there are words you can't seem to find on the page, it's usually because there's something you want to say or do in your real life that you can't yet say or do. And writing can be diagnostic like that. It can show us where we're stuck in our real life. And it also can be the tool that we use to set ourselves free. Because sometimes it's easier to do it first on the page and then find the courage to do it in your real life. Sometimes you tell yourself the truth first in your writing and it's a secret between you and you, and then when you feel like, ‘I'm sturdy-footed on that now. I'm telling myself that truth, and it feels good to tell the truth.’ That gives you the sort of confidence and sturdiness that you need to go out into the world and tell one other safe person the truth. So yeah, I think that's a really important point about writer's block.
And then I also want to tag on to what you said about problems, what you called trouble. In my book, I call it the one big problem that you're facing in your story and I say that problems are an essential ingredient to stories. And it's funny because when you start to think of your life through the lens of narrative storytelling, you realize how useful problems can be. When we face problems in our regular life, when we get that terrifying diagnosis, or we go through the breakup or, you know, a divorce, or you have a financial setback of some kind, you're just like, oh, no, not again, this horrible thing that's happening to me. But in story it’s when the hero comes up against an obstacle. Actually, this is like the juiciest part of the story. This is like, this is exactly what the hero needed in order to become the kind of heroic figure that we know that they can become. Without the problem, there's no story.
And when we begin to see our lives through the lens of narrative structure, we can start to actually accept and receive problems this way in our life. Which isn't easy, but it does give us the ability to close the loop on stories much quicker, so that we don't get stuck in those same loops over and over again.
Sandra Marinella: Wow, I would love to piggyback on that if I can. The whole idea of the hero story and the Joseph…I love how you built Joseph Campbell into your … and I love how you tell your story about divorce and going to the cafe every day and trying to write that.
But I want to piggyback also into the trauma thing, because I want the listeners to know that if they hit a trauma, they probably don't want to write that story for a while. They probably want to wait and give their mind time to adjust and wrap itself in the wholeness of that story before they accept it, and then can write about it. Writing can be problematic. James Pennebaker teaches us with his research, that the flip out rule is imperative. That we must be very, very careful when we are dealing with people who are traumatized not to retraumatize, not to kick them back down into the gutter of where they were. I love that your book emphasizes, and I try to emphasize this in “The Story You Need to Tell” as well. That you come up against the hero, you have.
Allison Fallon: Yes, yes,
Sandra Marinella: A neurological choice. And I can move this forward. Am I going to be the hero? And you say that in your book about your own experience. That's such a great section in your book, I love it. Thank you.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Because the two of you navigate this world, you have thrown out so many components that I think are critical and I really want to make sure that our listeners who aren't familiar with narrative medicine have heard some of these terms and that we unpack them a little bit.
So, Sandi, you're making an excellent point that writing in this way is meant to crack you open. And if that is what's happening, it's imperative that you have support around you, whether that be somebody trusted that you can speak to or a therapist or mental health professional, or at least a number you can call, should you find yourself unwinding a component of your life that brings up a lot of triggers and emotions.
But just to go way back to the beginning, because we've heard about character, which I think many people think of character in fiction, but not necessarily as a component of memoir. We've heard about hero, which we definitely need to talk about, but let's just even talk about story structure, Ally, because this is really what “Write your Story” offers to the reader, is this very clear structure for those who are interested in using narrative to explore their healing. And can you even just start with the very simple structure and basic foundational structure of what is a story arc?
Allison Fallon: Yeah, a story arc is what gives a story its shape. And what I say in the book is that if a story doesn't have a shape, it's what I call a flat story. And it's the kind of story that is really boring, uninteresting and we immediately check out. You've probably had an experience before where you were in the middle of telling a story and you thought, like, I can't remember why I was even telling you this. That's an example of a flat story. It doesn't have an arc to it. It doesn't have that tension and intrigue and drama leading up to the highest point of conflict and then the drop to resolution.
We recognize that shape intuitively as a story, and you don't even need to be taught the specifics of a story arc in order to know that it is an interesting story, and a story that doesn't have a point is not interesting in the same kind of way.
So there are a couple of elements that give a story that shape. The main element, if I have only one that I can give, is in personal stories, that an arc is shaped around the transformation of the main character, who I call the hero. So the arc is created because the hero is different at the end of the story than she is at the beginning. So if you are going to define one thing that helps you see the shape in your story, it's that you're going to face a big obstacle and you're going to be different at the end of that obstacle than you were at the beginning.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Fantastic. Okay, so we are talking again about hero. Which I suspect many people who are thinking about writing their personal narrative are thinking, but I'm not the hero or I'm not the central character.
Sandi, talk about the importance of the hero and how that might not mean what a listener unfamiliar with the structure of story might think it means when they hear the term hero specifically.
Sandra Marinella: Oh, absolutely. I think the hero is a beautiful term, and we can thank Joseph Campbell for his brilliant work on mythology for decades and pulling this whole business of the hero journey out of literature, saying this is the primary story that we are all telling. He found it in all cultures, through all time. We are all on this journey, and I think Ally and I probably would both agree that we are all consistently on this journey.
We are all in the process of dealing with hard things. As Ally says, the one big problem. And then we have to find a way to cope and we have to find people to help us cope. The mentors, I call them the guides, she calls them the people that will assist us, they’re the counselors, the physicians like you, Denise, the friends, the support group, the church people, the book club, the people who are there for us.
And I love that Ally puts in her book and the books. Because books can be our guides, our mentors. And that's what you're doing here, Denise, showing us the way with books.
But back to the hero. So the hero becomes all of us. The hero is the protagonist, it’s called in literature, it's the main character. You hear that term probably as often as you do hero, but you come to understand that we're all up against the wall here. We're all facing something impossible. Constantly.
You solved one problem. I got over my own cancer. My kid, my own cancer in 2012. As Denise knows, that kickstarted my journey into not just teaching story and writing, but to teaching writing to heal. Because that journey was so hard. But I got through it. I made my transformation. I decided I'm taking this work out to the world. I'm going to work with Denise at Mayo. I'm going to work at the Veterans Hospital downtown and other venues. And then what happens? My son gets very serious cancer, so boom, it's like there's another journey that the hero has to take.
So the word, it’s a little bit scary. And I think Ally points that out in her book. The word hero is a little bit intimidating to us, but we really are the hero. We are on our own personal journey trying to make this life the best we can make it. So don't be afraid of the word. Take it on.
Dr. Denise Millstine: You literally say in “Write Your Story,” Ally, you can't write your story until you're willing to make yourself the hero. There's a beautiful story, it's brief, in your book about a friend who has a friend with cancer, and she really resists making herself the main character because she views it as her friend's story. Can you talk about when people are going through this process and how you approach the person who says, but I am not the center of this story?
Allison Fallon: Yes. So if you choose not to be the center of your own story, you have to make somebody else the center of your own story, which is stepping out of your seat of agency. I think, though, the main reason that people really resist putting themselves into this position, A. because it is a lot of agency, which gives you a lot of accountability and a lot of responsibility, and that can be terrifying to people.
But I think on the surface it's more like, especially in the case of this story that I told in the book, this woman who's writing her story about walking with her best friend through cancer, and her best friend had been so heroic and had not survived her cancer journey, but had, just been so heroic and had such an amazing story of her own along the way, that Cindy was like, I'm not the hero in the story. She's the hero in the story. I don't want to overshadow what she was able to do because she was so much stronger than I was. And all these other things. What I taught Cindy to do, because stories are built around a hero who wants something and has to overcome some kind of conflict or problem in order to get it.
So I asked Cindy the story, because I was trying all my strategies to kind of get her to move herself into the position of hero, and she just couldn't get there. So I was like, at the beginning of all of this, when Bonnie was first sick, what did you want? And she said, I wanted to save my friend. And we're sitting in a room of people, because I was at a “Write Your Story” workshop, so I asked to everyone in the room, I said, “How many of you in here know what it's like to be the hero in the story who wants to save someone and can't do it?” And everyone raises their hand. I said, “How many of you would like to read a story like that?” And everyone raises their hand.
So the point being that the hero in the story is not even necessarily heroic. They're not always able to save the person they're trying to save. They're not always, they don't always make the right choice. Sometimes the hero in the story is the one that we're screaming at as the audience going, no, don't do that, don't walk down that dark hallway. So the hero makes tons of stupid decisions. They lack confidence. They're stumbling and fumbling along the way. But the reason that they're called the hero is because they're the person who the story is centered around. They're the person who we’re watching, going, we can't wait to see who they become. And who else could possibly play that role in your story except for you?
Dr. Denise Millstine: I love that so much. We had a prior episode where we talked to Catherine Newman about her book, “We All Want Impossible Things,” in which a friend, where the protagonist, the hero, is supporting her friend, who's in hospice. And when you talk about that book, you say, this really is Ash, the friend's story, not the friend who passes away.
And I think that's so clear. And how you have written about the structure and given us the ability to see that the hero isn't perfect and the hero is meant to simply change, not necessarily save the world or, you know, win the gold medal or, whatever it is that we think of in sort of typical hero connotation.
Oh, I have so many questions for you all. I want to make sure that we get to most of them. Sandi, what do you say to your learners who show up at your workshops and say, But I'm not a writer?
Sandra Marinella: I ask them if they have a story. Everybody has a story. As a matter of fact, one of my workshops that I teach to cancer patients, I call “Story Circle.” I call it “Story Circle” because there's so much fear of writing. There's so much, “I'm afraid to tell my story. I'm afraid to share and write my story.”
But I think once you begin asking, and this is where prompts become so important, and they have to be so guided by our intentions and what we hope for these people so that we have to put them out there gently and carefully, and we have to give them some guidance. So I often just introduce them and say, “Okay, tell me the story of one thing that's important to you. Just one thing. Tell me the story of one strength that you have. Just one strength.” So I give them these little stories that we tell together, and then they begin to open up. And then I say, “Could you write that one down?” And they begin to write them down, and pretty soon they're scribbling like a crazy person. I mean, they're just, they find their words.
I started out in this last “Story Circle” with 25 cancer patients at the end of this session, two nights ago, 14 of them had written complete stories about their lives, and they were transformational stories, as Ally talks about. They were, so I mean, the others told stories or had little bits of things, but I also love poetry. You give them the freedom, right?
One of the problems with writing and being the writing teacher is too many rules. People are afraid of those rules, so you introduce them to beautiful, inspirational poems by Mary Oliver. You know, anything that will help them hold story and let it go and release it into the world, make them feel better and grow. That's what it's all about. And I just find, isn't it the greatest joy, Ally to be able to help them do that?
Allison Fallon: Yes. Yeah. It's it is the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, which is why I was so excited about this book, because I've written other books. My last book was called “The Power of Writing It Down,” and I've worked in publishing for a long time helping people publish their works.
But what I noticed is that the thing that gets me most excited is not helping someone hit the “New York Times” bestsellers list. That's fine, I mean, it's like it's cool and you celebrate it, but the thing that makes me feel so human and so happy and so alive and so like I have a purpose in the world, is watching someone just like you're talking about Sandi, someone who may never publish their story, but who finally has the epiphany that they have one worth sharing and who gets it down on the page, and who feels that sense of safe in their own skin, like, ‘Yeah, I belong here, my story belongs here, and I deserve to share my story.” That's like, I'll do that for the rest of my life.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I think it's really important that your book is structured with a framework. And Sandi just used the term rules, but really it's meant to be something that's built on. It's meant to be lanes for guidance. It's not meant to be this rigid, you know, you write this sentence first, which is followed by this imperfect grammar. Can you talk about the difference between rules and writing with a framework, and how that would be different from what we originally talked about, which is just kind of free writing without a framework, which may be a little less productive?
Allison Fallon: Yes. The analogy that I use in the book that I think works really well is a jigsaw puzzle. So I share the story of how I went on vacation with my family, and the first few days we were there, it was pouring down rain so we couldn't go anywhere anyway. So I dug into the game closet and pulled out this thousand piece jigsaw puzzle and got just completely enamored with putting this puzzle together. My husband and my brother-in-law and I sat at that table for hours on end for two days straight. Just like focusing so hard on one little part of the puzzle. And it hit me as an epiphany afterwards. I was just like, nobody made me do that. That was something I wanted to do on my vacation. It was fun. It was relaxing. It was cathartic. And the energy that I encourage people to bring to their writing is that energy. An energy that's not like, there's no deadline to me. There's no one breathing down your neck going, you've got to do this. You've got to write your story. If you don't, then what? And nothing happens. But this is something cathartic to do. It's something interesting to fixate your brain on. It's something fun, something you could do, you know, with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine just to pass the time in the evenings because you're fascinated with yourself. And I think that energy helps to bring together these two sides of the coin that really go together, even though they seem like opposites, which is that there is a formula to follow.
Every story that we are interested in follows rules, it does, it follows the framework. And yet you can play inside of the framework and break some rules strategically to make it even more interesting. But you can't really do that until you know the framework. And sometimes, like Sandi was getting at, the framework can feel intimidating. So you have to kind of start without the rules and then impose the rules. And so it's this constant dance back and forth between rules and no rules. But sometimes I'll meet people who will say, like, I don't use a formula, I don't use a framework. But when I dig deeper, I realize you actually know the framework so well that you don't even know you're using it. It's just become a part of you because you've read so many books and so many stories that follow the structures that we know and love, that you're just doing it intuitively.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I love that inherent ability to pick out the arc of the story. If you're a reader, if you're somebody who's a good storyteller, even if you're a verbal storyteller, you probably have intuited the framework. But for you to put it out so clearly, I think is really helpful.
Sandi, when people do this process, when they tell their story, what stands to be gained in terms of healing?
Sandra Marinella: Oh, I think the word healing is a beautiful one to begin with. I think just laying your story out there when you can. I mean, I have worked with some rape victims that it takes years before they can lay their story out there, but when they lay it out there. Well, you know, the data on catharsis is not as strong as we'd like it to be. But I think more than that, it gives a reflection. It gives them the ability to see their story, understand who they are, and not see themselves as we learn from narrative therapy, not see themselves as the problem. You are not the rape. This is something that happened to you. So how can you hold that hard story, how can you put it over here in your life? And who are you? Who can you be? How can you write your story forward? So I think there's so much, so much value in so much data that supports the power of reflection, the power of learning who you are from your story, the power of learning to solve problems and not be problems from your story. The power to reframe and have a different lens to look at life.
I think one of the best things that comes out of the process, and I'm sure that Ally will agree, is this whole business of reframing. When people learn to hold their story differently, it's a different life.
Allison Fallon: Yes, I agree with that 1,000%. As you were talking, Sandi, I was thinking about how I asked myself the question earlier when you were talking about writing about a trauma and how complicated that can be and how delicately we have to handle that. I was sort of thinking, like, I wonder why when I went through my divorce, I was able to write about what took place in my life. It was almost like I couldn't not write about it. I knew I needed to, and I think one of the big reasons is that I was really resourced.
Like when we write about a story, we go back and revisit it. You almost relive it. And when I was in my toxic marriage, I was in an abusive situation where I wasn't resourced. I was cut off from family and friends. I wasn't allowed to talk about what was going on in my life. I was having these really horrific experiences and I wasn't allowed to voice them. And then once the marriage ended and there was, the contact was cut off completely. Then I was a resource. I had these friends. I had a therapist who I was seeing twice a week. I went away for a week to onsite, which is like a week of therapy here in Nashville. I had mentors and guides and all kinds of people who were supporting me and helping me, so I went back and relived the entire experience. But this time I relived it with people who could help me and that reframing came because I had these guides who could help me reframe it. And I don't think I'd ever made that connection before, but I was just like, I wonder why I was able to do that. And I think it really is because I was resourced.
Sandra Marinella: Oh, I think that's beautiful. And I think it's important. And I think you also had years of a bad marriage that you had already come, I think, to terms with.
Allison Fallon: Yeah.
Sandra Marinella: So I think it's a different journey for every single person. And I know, you know, this, that we just have to be respectful of the journey and gently let the story come because it will be a lifesaver.
Allison Fallon: Yeah.
Sandra Marinella: The framework and the framework is awesome.
Dr. Denise Millstine: The other thing you say in “Write Your Story,” Ally, is the importance of something you touched on earlier, but I just want to highlight, is agency. You tell your story or someone will tell it for you. And can you just talk about the importance of telling your own story?
Allison Fallon: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of us inadvertently and unconsciously allow other people to tell our story for us and to us. It's almost like our parents tell us who we are. They tell us the story of our lives or our spouses tell us the story of our lives or the media. Advertising tells us the story of our lives, and then we just regurgitate it and reiterate it. And a lot of times we're doing that. I mean, I would say most of the time we're doing that without even realizing we're doing it. We think we're telling our own story, but we're regurgitating a story that was told to us, you know, like maybe you're told a story as a kid, that you're a difficult child. And so you walk around saying, I'm a difficult person. I'm difficult to deal with. I'm difficult to be around, you know, the things that I would just have people check in with themselves, the things that you say about yourselves to be true, like I'm disorganized, I'm loud. Whatever you say about yourself. Is that a story that you made up, or is it a story that someone told to you and now you're regurgitating it?
And the power of taking the narrative back into your hands is you get to decide what you want to say about yourself. You get to decide what your identity is. And the act of storytelling is really the act of identity formation. It's deciding, who am I in this story? I may have made some choices that I would rather not face because, you know, we've all made mistakes and have regrets. But at the end of the day, what kind of a character am I going to be in this story? I get to decide and I'm the only one who can decide.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I love that. I think it's so important to re-explore those beliefs, particularly those long held ones. Well, you both have put resources out into the world. We have the book, “Write Your Story” by Ally Fallon and “The Story You Need to Tell” by Sandi Marinella. I just want to end with you both giving advice to our listeners who are thinking, but how do I start? Where do I begin? How do I even, you know, enter into this process?
Sandi, you want to go first. And Ally, you can follow.
Sandra Marinella: Sure. What I do when I hit a new story is I head to my bookstore, Changing Hands, and I buy a journal, and I begin at my cafe. I begin to write, to write that story, just as Ally did with her hard story. I think that's really a fun thing to do, a ritual to have. And you can take that forward. There'll be a lot of advice and a lot of rules, and there's classes like my classes, and Ally teaches these great classes. There are all kinds of resources available to help you write that. I would join a community because community is wonderful in writing. Having people around you is wonderful. And they'll be “rules people,” I mean, I don't know if rules is the right word, but people will give you direction.
I’ve worked with Julia Cameron. She always talks about “three pages.” You know, you must write three pages every morning. And I have watched so many writers fall off the ridge over that. So in the research, as much as I like Julia, she's a great, great person. You need to follow your pattern. You need to find, get up in the morning and follow your pattern. But follow it, follow it, find the way you work and then do it at least giving you a great structure. Use that. Use inspirational poetry, inspirational quotes. You can do it.
Allison Fallon: I mean, everything you said is like, I would second everything that you said, Sandi. Also just as a general like what I tell people to do, is to keep it as simple as possible. So then I'm tagging off of what you said, Sandi. But I think the idea of being a writer, the reason people say I'm not a writer, they opt themselves out, is because we have this view of writer as this elite group of people that only certain people get to be included in. So we're very vulnerable to the feeling of shame that that's this other group, and I don't get to be involved. And so coming into a practice of writing, understanding that we're vulnerable to that feeling of shame and going, like, if I set myself up for failure by saying, I'm going to write three pages a day, every morning for the rest of my life, and I have a morning where my life is just too busy, or I just am not feeling it, and I don't do my three pages, then I'm going to go into this spiral of, oh no, I always do this. I'm not disciplined enough. I'm never going to be able to write. And I just tell people, keep it as simple as possible. I love the idea of going to buy a new journal because it it's like a gift you give to yourself instead of like a setting yourself up for some crazy expectation.
And then just writing what happened. I always tell people, just start by writing what happened. If you need a place to start, one starter prompts that I give people is, “It all started when…” Something about that prompt seems to help people kind of find a place to enter into the story, “So it all started when…” and just write what comes to mind and be willing at the beginning to break all the rules. Just write it in bullet points, or write three words on the page and then color for the rest of the time. Or you know, anything that you do is progress in the right direction.
And I even tell people, especially if they're facing writer's block, that sometimes when you're not writing, you're still writing. Sometimes when you go for a walk around the block, you're still writing, or when you take a shower to take a break, or when you go for a drive, or you take your kids for a walk. Like that's still part of the writing process, because your brain is sort of digesting everything that you're wanting to talk about, and then later you get to go on the page. So give yourself tons of grace and compassion, and whatever you do, don't opt yourself out of this group. There's no red tape like you put it there in your mind, but there's no one keeping you out of the group of writers except for you.
Sandra Marinella: Beautiful.
Dr. Denise Millstine: This has been a fantastic conversation. I want to thank you both for your work and for inspiring our listeners to hopefully think about writing to heal and incorporating writing in their lives and telling their own stories. Thank you Sandi. Thank you Ally.
Allison Fallon: Thank you so much for talking with me today.
Sandra Marinella: And Ally, what a great way to have this conversation. Thank you both so much.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Thank you for joining us to talk books and health today on “Read. Talk. Grow.” To continue the conversation and send comments, visit the show notes or email us at readtalkgrow@mayo.edu.
“Read. Talk. Grow.” is a production of Mayo Clinic Women’s Health. Our producer is Lisa Speckhard Pasque and our recording engineer is Rick Andresen. This podcast was made possible by the generous support of Ken Stevens.
The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not designed to replace a physician's medical assessment and judgment. Information presented is not intended as medical advice. Please contact a health care professional for medical assistance with specific questions pertaining to your own health, if needed. Keep reading everyone.