I have been judged a lot lately for my need to share my personal stories. Although this is human nature and I don’t expect it to be any other way, I have always felt the need to try and justify why I do it and, mostly, I don’t do this particularly well. But, while reading The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, I came across the perfect line that sums up what it is in my heart that drives me to share what other people find far too personal to put out there:

“I share personal stories because I want to co-create a story of intimacy and cultivate our capacity for compassion in dealing with our human failings. I tell stories because I want to learn how to love well.”

I wrote while I was in India recently how being there brings me that sense of just being, a relaxation about self and an existence totally devoid of branding. As I grow, I define myself by the places my branches are reaching towards rather than by the place my roots are sucking from the earth. And with this comes a sense that, like the branches, my identity is being whipped around by my life’s experiences … and even when there is total calm, there is still a sense of movement within.

In many communities around the world there is a culture of story telling, of passing legends on from one generation to the next. We don’t live in a society like that and so we rely on the people who pass through our lives, imparting wisdom, spreading knowledge, sharing experiences that cultivate the compassion within us. We meet the people we need to and are fed by people who are guided our way. And this of course works in reverse too. We often think the work we do is where we end but every one of us has a part of us that needs to be shared. Every one of us has a story to tell.

I am a storyteller. That is what I do. I don’t write fiction because I am no good at it. My reality, my life, my shared humanity … to me, is enough story to tell. So, as I document whatever transformation happens in my life … and therefore in the lives of those around me who are part of my story by association … know that it is human nature to judge but know too that this is who I am whether you judge me or not. Judging me will not change who I am or what I write. But it may well change you.

I promise to be as honest as possible without hurting anyone. But don’t read my blog if personal issues offend or if you can’t get over my lack of the need for privacy.

Quoting the last stanza of one of my poems, Many mountains. I am:

… I am all the flowers and the trees. They are me
I am unpredictable. I am power. I am many
Penny, you are seen by all.
But you are things no one can see.

I’ll end by saying: Watch this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKbet4RdSo4

I will expand and embellish – as I am only too good at doing – and explain its relevance to this context. In time. But not now.