“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.” ~ Roger C. Schank, Cognitive Scientist
“Self-acknowledgment boosts your emotional and spiritual immunity, giving you the strength you need to release the past and rise above fear, doubt or resignation.” ~ Debbie Ford
As I’ve written here many times, I’m passionate about stories in different genres, styles, and formats. I love classic stories as well as the modern ones.
As I’ve listened to my favorite podcast, “What Should I Read Next,” I’ve been prompted to think about what stories hit that sweet spot for my reading, or watching satisfaction.
This is what I came up with. I love stories where the main character is plopped into an unfamiliar situation and must learn to navigate it. Along the way, he or she learns a lot about themselves. I also love stories about found families, unusual love relationships, quirky stories about an unexpected inner life of a character that manifests in interesting ways. But at the heart of every story I love, are characters who heal their wounds and their fears and transform them into love. When I say love, I don’t mean just romantic love. In the stories that feed my soul, the characters open their hearts and embrace the world around them, flaws and all.
While I love action books and pictures, I don’t want a steady diet of them. Once I got hooked on classic British literature in high school, it was the slow to develop, the quiet stories I have enjoyed the most.
I’m reading one right now that hits all those boxes. It’s The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. I started it on Monday and by the time this entry posts, I will have finished it. Part of why I love it so much is because it’s a gentle story of people just living their lives, trying to figure things out. Sometimes when life is big and dramatic, as it is now, I need the quiet stories to sooth my nerves.
In The Keeper of Lost Things, several character’s lives intertwine around a writer, Anthony, who lost the love of his life and the gift she gave him, on what would have been their wedding day. Her death set him on an unusual path. In an effort to find the small medallion of St. Therese, Anthony’s love Therese had given him, he picks up lost things, takes them home, catalogues them and then tries to return them to their owners. He writes fanciful stories about the items which are hugely popular. But as he gets older he realizes that some of the owners of the lost items don’t want them back because they represent too much pain. So he begins to write darker stories about them. His publisher rejects these stories which causes Anthony to stop writing all together.
Along the way, he hires an assistant, Laura, who is recovering from wounds of her own, and when Anthony dies, she discovers he has left her everything he owns with the directive to continue to return as many of the lost items as she can. And doing that leads her to discover all the details of Anthony and Therese’s story while helping her transform from an emotionally closed person, to someone open hearted. She finds her purpose because of Anthony.
I think it’s a blessing to have so many creative people offering their talents with different types of music, stories, and visual art to help us get in touch with our emotions. The other day I was thinking, and it occurred to me that my emotions, which have been bubbling to the surface lately, are my true link to the Divine. Our minds are great tools, but we get all tangled up when we try to understand the majesty and vastness of everything outside our mental constructs. It’s our emotions that help us understand, even if it’s only by small amounts how connected we are to each other and everything that exists. That’s why the arts are a necessity for our health. They help connect us to our emotions. They help us expand.
I’d love to hear what kinds of stories speak to you.
On another note, I’m getting ready to finish the audiobook for The Space Between Time. Because I’m teaching it may take me until the end of the year to finish it, but I’ll keep you posted about my progress.
Take care of yourselves. Thanks for reading, liking, and commenting. Blessings to you all.
Lucinda Sage-Midgorden © 2020
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards.
Have you ever experienced life shattering events? Yeah, most of us have. In The Space Between Time, Jenna Holden gets slammed by her fiancé walking out, her mother’s untimely death, and losing her job all in one week. But she receives unexpected help when she finds her three-times great-grandmother’s journals and begins the adventure of a lifetime.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published.
Sage Woman Chronicles 