Isabelle Hardesty has always had a love of magic and nature and weaves this into her books. Hardesty is currently working on Midnight in Belle Fleur, the sequel to The Witch of Belle Fleur. She lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest.
How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell
Eleanor, David Michaels
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, TV series (2014) Ken Burns
Star Trek, original series (1966 – 1969)
Edward James Olmos
Battlestar Galactica, TV series (2006 – 2009)
Nichelle Nichols
“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.” ~ Roger C. Schank, Cognitive Scientist
This episode is brought to you by PodMatch, the dating service for podcasters. They introduced me to Vance, and I’m so glad they did. I hope you’ve enjoyed our conversation and remember that if you have a podcast or something to share with the world, check out PodMatch and tell them Lucinda sent you.
I’m so passionate about stories that I created the Story-Power podcast and Patreon communities so I’d have an excuse to talk story with other story lovers. If you’re passionate about stories too, and want to talk about what you’ve learned from your favorites, come join me at patreon.com/StoryPower.
“As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has- or ever will have- something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.” ~ Mr. Rogers
“In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.” ~ Mr. Rogers
“It’s the inner world that needs adjusting, tweaking and plucking when the outer world fails to please.” ~ Mike Dooley
After a week like we’ve just lived through I have only one thing to say, I want to be like Mr. Rogers.
I was too old to be the target audience when Mr. Rogers’ television show first aired. Which kind of makes me sad, but I was lucky to live with a Mr. Rogers type person, my dad.
This is what I learned from my dad, and Mr. Rogers: I feel better when I’m kind, when I help someone feel that they are important, and when I try to understand how another person must be feeling. I feel worse when I’m mean, blame other people for my problems, when I’m judgmental, or want revenge. It’s that simple.
I know, I know, the way we feel about ourselves gets in the way of remembering to be kind, as do our wounds. The popular idea that we’re all separate from each other also gets in the way. But the truth is, we’re all connected. That’s why we can feel the atmosphere when we walk into a room, why we cry at sad movies or books, why when the parent is yelling at their kids in the next aisle at the grocery store, we feel like they are yelling at us. Or when we see someone do something nice for someone else, we feel like they did it for us.
Popular movies like the Star Wars series using the concept of “the force” are based on the idea that everything that exists is connected. Carl Sagan tried to get us to understand that when he said in the first version of the TV series, Cosmos,“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” Which, in my mind means we’re connected to everything that exists because we’re all made of the same stuff.
Since I don’t live in those communities where the tragedies happened, the only way I can share their pain is to weep and hold those in pain in my heart, then go out and be like Mr. Rogers and spread as much love and kindness as I can. It’s the only way I know how to balance or reverse the negativity that is spiking right now.
I hope you are finding a way to stay balanced during these crazy times. Blessings to you all.
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
PodMatch
If you are a podcaster, or have a message or fantastic product you want to share with the world, I encourage you to check out PodMatch. Use the affiliate link and tell them, Lucinda sent you. Then contact me so we can set up a chat.
Story-Power on Patreon
I’m so passionate about stories that I created the Story-Power podcast and Patreon communities so I’d have an excuse to talk story. You may have seen my Story-Power posts here. If you’re passionate about stories too, and want to talk about your favorite stories, come join me at either SageWoman.life, or patreon.com/StoryPower.
“Only a man that carries a gun ever needs one.” Territorial Marshal Wistful McClintock from Angel and the Badman (1947) James Edward Grant, writer/director and staring John Wayne
I apologize but today I’m going to be preachy. I’m appalled that it is taking us so long to get it that we have to turn away from guns and find a better way to relate to each other. I know I can’t force anyone to see things my way. But I do believe that we’re all here for a reason. And more and more I feel that my reason for being here it to spread love. Unfortunately today, I’m feeling angry and judgmental. My heart is broken. I have old wounds to heal too. I’m not perfect but I do want to share some thoughts. Take them or leave them as you see fit.
When the mass school shooting happened this week in Uvalde, Texas, my first thought was, “When are we going to stop this?!” My second thought was, “How long has this been going on?” So, I looked it up. My jaw dropped. The first mass shootings, which also happened to be school shootings, took place in this country in 1891! What?! What is wrong with us?
Here’s my take on why we fail to stop the sale of guns in this country despite all the suffering it causes. We’ve been living under the illusion that we live in an unsafe country. So we arm ourselves. For some people knowing there is a gun or guns in their possession makes them think they will be safe from all the bad people out to get them. Fear, fear, fear is at the heart of this erroneous assumption. And because we’re fearful we place our faith in guns.
Some people blame Hollywood for our violent ways. I say art reflects the society around it. It doesn’t create it. Well, it can try. I was thinking about John Wayne, the epitome of the 20th Century tough guy. Yes, he did lots of movies where he was the tough guy. But he was the star in three really important movies where his character realizes that there was another way to live other than by the gun, or his fists. Stagecoach, (1939), Angel and the Badman, (1947), The Quiet Man, (1952). In perhaps his most famous movie, The Searchers, (1956), his character comes to realize that seeking revenge is soul killing. Using guns to solve problems is soul killing too.
I’m only an amateur student of history, but it seems to me that the earliest immigrants came to this country for freedom. But it was freedom for them not anyone else. They wanted to be able to not only worship as they pleased, (though if you didn’t worship the same way they did, you were wrong) they also wanted to own land and govern themselves so they could become wealthy. But, they saw the people already living here as threats to that freedom, so they took up arms and stole from them. Taking up arms became an unwritten necessity and was solidified when they decided to rebel against England and King George.
But maybe a reckoning is coming. Maybe the more mass shootings that happen, the pain and suffering helps people wake up to the fact that if you’ve got a weapon in your possession, you are more likely to create violence than you are to create peace. We need to flip the narrative that has had us in its grip for so long.
Guns can’t protect us. There is plenty of everything to go around. Not everyone is out to get us. We do not live in a dog eat dog world unless we create that in our minds. Wealth does not buy us happiness, only inner peace can do that. The greatest truth of all is that only love is real. Everything else is a false construct we create. It’s our false beliefs that trip us up and make us miserable.
I know that breaking the habit of long held beliefs is difficult. We’ve assumed certain things to be true. Examining those beliefs and easing our fears is not an easy task. I know because I’ve been doing it for a very long time. I KNOW that society will change as individuals do their personal healing work.
Let’s remember one thing. Stamped on our money is: “In God We Trust.” Not in guns we trust. Do we believe that or not?
I’m sending my love to all of you who follow me. Thanks so much.
I’m so passionate about stories that I created the Story-Power podcast and Patreon communities so I’d have an excuse to talk story with other story lovers. If you’re passionate about stories too, and want to talk about what you’ve learned from your favorites, come join me at patreon.com/StoryPower.
If you are a podcaster, or have a message or fantastic product you want to share with the world, I encourage you to check out PodMatch. Use the affiliate link and tell them, Lucinda sent you. Then contact me so we can set up a chat.
I’m a forensic psychologist and story-collector, with a history of working in prison, court, locked psychiatric facilities and emergency rooms. The most important certainty I carry, from all my time working with inmates and patients and onlookers, is that the only real difference between “us” and “them” is who carries the key to leave. And that everything we experience, from crippling anxiety to serial murder, is not always rational, but there is a logic to it. I can make things understandable.
“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.” ~ Roger C. Schank, Cognitive Scientist
This episode is brought to you by PodMatch, the dating service for podcasters. They introduced me to Vance, and I’m so glad they did. I hope you’ve enjoyed our conversation and remember that if you have a podcast or something to share with the world, check out PodMatch and tell them Lucinda sent you.
I’m so passionate about stories that I created the Story-Power podcast and Patreon communities so I’d have an excuse to talk story with other story lovers. If you’re passionate about stories too, and want to talk about what you’ve learned from your favorites, come join me at Patreon.com/StoryPower.
“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.” ~ Roger C. Schank, Cognitive Scientist
Ever since I started my Story-Power podcast, I’ve been trying to put my finger on the ultimate reason I love stories so much. I’ve talked with several guests about how we humans tell ourselves stories about what’s going on in our lives. Most of the time the stories aren’t true. If that’s the case, why do we tell them to ourselves? And why do we read, watch, and tell each other stories in the first place?
Over the last few years, world events have pointed out how detrimental telling untrue stories can be. There have been so many tragic events that I can’t keep up with them. So what do we do about that? How do we combat the fear, the hatred, and the power grabbing stories that are in the news every day?
My teaching buddy, Dave Dahl, always asks our acting students, “Where is the Love?” in their monologue, or scene. It’s something one of his favorite playwrights, or friends says when they are working on a play. He asks it no matter what play he’s working on. Where is the love? The first time he asked our students that question, my heart filled with love and appreciation for him. That’s the perfect question to ask ourselves in any given situation.
That quote goes along perfectly with A Course in Miracles, a spiritual system that has been around for maybe 40 years. The exercises ask the student to consider that the way we were taught to see the world is wrong. What we think of as truth, isn’t. The one thing I take away every year as I do the lessons is my favorite quote, “Only love is real”. Everything else is a construct of our minds. So, when I’m confronted with difficult situations, or tragic things happening in the world, or even when I’m consuming a story with lots of violence and hatred in it, I look for the love in the story.
It’s hard to find the love sometimes. But there are those heart opening stories where forgiveness happens in the midst of some horrific crime. Even in the midst of war, we can find love. Think of stories like Schindler’s List. There are lots of real life stories like that to be found if you look for them. Some of them are being reported right now.
I teach a class called Dramatic Structure. And not long ago, I realized that almost all of the movies I choose to show, both classics and more modern, have themes centered around love. Even really violent ones like The Equalizer, which I mentioned when I was being interviewed by Angelina Carlton for an upcoming episode for her podcast, “Designing Your Legacy”. Surprisingly, it’s a story about love. Denzel Washington’s character is a mysterious person, who we discover as the movie goes along, has black ops type skills. He’s a widower and promised his wife that he wouldn’t use those skills any longer. But then he meets a teenage woman who he discovers has been a victim of sex trafficking. That sets up this dilemma inside him. He likes the girl and wants to see her be able to be free to follow her dreams. He has the skills to free her, but what about his promise to his late wife? Eventually he decides that using his dubious skills to help someone is better than not caring at all. He finds love for a fellow human being who is suffering and he comes to her rescue.
And maybe The Equalizer is the perfect illustration of why I love digging deeply into the themes of stories. The world isn’t perfect but we can make choices every day that help make it a better place to live.
I am determined to look for the love even in the most horrific situations. It might be hidden but it’s always there. If I focus on loving the people who only know hatred, fear, and greed, maybe that act of loving will make a small difference in our shared experience. I don’t always find it easy to do this. My first reaction is to blame and condemn. But then I remember, “Only love is real”, and that I have all those dark feelings inside me too. In different circumstances, I could be the person perpetrating that crime, or starting the war, or cheating people. So it’s a balancing act. I need to heal my own dark emotions, forgive those who have wounded me, and I need to show compassion and love to those who are deeply wounded themselves.
The best times for me to look for the love is when I’m deciding which candidates to vote for, or organizations to support, or when someone I know needs help, or when some negative reaction is triggered in me. And then I have to love enough to forgive.
Where do you look for love?
Welcome new followers. Thanks to all of you who like, or occasionally comment on these posts. I appreciate you very much.
I’m so passionate about stories that I created the Story-Power podcast and Patreon communities so I’d have an excuse to talk story with other story lovers. If you’re passionate about stories too, and want to talk about what you’ve learned from your favorites, come join me at patreon.com/StoryPower.
If you are a podcaster, or have a message or fantastic product you want to share with the world, I encourage you to check out PodMatch. Use the affiliate link and tell them, Lucinda sent you. Then contact me so we can set up a chat.
Sage Woman Chronicles 
