What is life? Is it an experience of continually having our stories disrupted? The events of our lives disrupted? From what we think they should be, from what we wanted them to be? The things that happen to us. The things we think about them and about ourselves.

From a very young age my story was disrupted away from what it should be – what it could have been. There was disability and chronic illness in my family of origin – not what I or we wanted. There was bullying. There was loneliness. There was pervasive worry and fear. There were nightmares and daydreams. There was undiagnosed neurodivergence. That’s not to say there weren’t good experiences and moments of joy. But it was not the life I wanted. It was disrupted away from the norm. And so it continued. Parenthood – deeply longed for and worked towards – disrupted. A stable relationship – disrupted. Key friendships – disrupted. Loved jobs – disrupted.

I told certain stories about myself – that I wasn’t meant to be a parent, that I couldn’t do it alone, that good things never happened to me, that my family was uniquely unlucky and everything was working out so much better for everyone else, that I just wasn’t good enough, was nowhere near as good as other people. And some of these stories got disrupted. And some of them needed to be – still need to be, will be.

For what is life but a continual disruption of our stories? – the ones that happen to us, the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we – I – write? My actual novels that I give hours of my time and oceans of my hope. My beliefs about myself. The things I make happen in my life.

It’s time. To do things differently. To deliberately disrupt the stories I tell – about my experiences, about the world. About myself. To uproot my habits, my beliefs. To choose new endings, new ways of being and of writing.

I can deliberately set out to disrupt the stories I tell about myself and the world, to disrupt the way I’ve always done things and the things I’ve always believed… I can respond openly and with love and honesty when life disrupts the stories I had planned. I can disrupt the stories I am writing. I can disrupt the life I am living.

It’s my life. And they are my stories. And I can write them any way I want from now on.

Writing Counsellor

A Moodscope member