Mining for Meaning
Meaning through Metaphor
Prompt: write about the word or phrase you have underlined previous work might symbolize. See if you can better understand what that object might represent.
Emerging. Expanding. Un-boxing. The Unboxed People.
The boxes of culture, family history and expectation. How can someone move from a locked in space to a new level of awareness? Reading the unboxed people, seeing a couples therapist, moving from laboratory to classroom: un-boxing requires an external catalyst and an internal response. A new situation, a new place, a new activity. Jumping on the pile of people at Berne’s invitation, accept the invitation and the unexpected consequences. Mary inviting skinny-dipping at Mount Madonna, in the dark providing safety to explore beyond the box, shedding layers and moving into bigger spaces, mastering the bigger spaces – hearing the rapping on the outside of the box. Someone pointing to the discontent and showing the larger possibility and saying yes to the larger possibility: wash, rinse and repeat. Individual boxes, religious and cultural boxes, sex boxes, relationship boxes, thinking boxes: being able to take a meta-position from outside the box and seeing multiple boxes and helping others escape from the boxes I have discovered. See someone else do it, do it myself and perhaps invent something new. Step outside and recognize others in boxes and assist them to escape. One story, The Unboxed People, printed in the Voices journal long ago, gave me the framework for expanding.
Prompt: Choose some detail that has only been mentioned in past writings and expand its presence in story and see what it might teach you.
Hoagie Wyckoff asked to join us at lunch during the TA conference in August 1971 in San Francisco California. I did not know that her mission was to recruit me to join the budding feminist movement within the women of ITAA. The words may have been introduced by something like “do you realize that” but if they were didn’t matter because what I heard was seared into my memory.
I heard “you’re not free.” Our conversation may have continued with examples of how women, specifically me, or subject to different rules than men were. But the next thing I remember is me saying is “I am free! My husband lets me do anything I want to!” Somehow, I heard the contradiction in my own pronouncement. I began to recognize all of the ways I and most women I knew had been brainwashed to believe we didn’t have the right to do so many things that men took for granted in the world.
When I returned home and those things became more apparent, I asserted myself and insisted on being included as a partner in the new business my husband was forming with two others, the Rocky Mountains Transactional Analysis Institute. We called it Rumtank for short.
I designed taught a new class, “A Woman’s Life Is…”, to introduce TA and begin to awaken other women. Then the first independently published issue of Ms. magazine was released with the blueprint for what to do next: create a formal consciousness-raising group! And we did!
Juxtaposition
Prompt: write a scene about some activity you pursued in the last week.
I invited our 17-year-old grandson to join us on an afternoon trip to the Museum of nature and science. To my surprise he accepted. I had been wanting to see the temporary “Bugs” exhibit, and to get us out of the rut of just staying home repeatedly doing mundane things.
From the backseat of the car, Evan described his morning of medical tests to prepare for his upcoming semester at an international school in China. This young man, an important part of my life, is poised to take off: first camp than a college tour (alone) and then leaving for China.
As we drove into and through Denver I began to just comment on our history and places we passed, especially the places where Jonathan, a Denver native and spent his early life. Evan was interested and asked questions.
As we approached the museum the conversation turned to “do you remember” your own history at the museum? A wonderful recalling of the many summer visits that almost always included a museum visit. I realize that this might be the very last time we use our 20+ year old Grandparents Membership to the museum.
The exhibit was fabulous. Evan elaborated on many of the displays and vigorously attacked some of the do-it-yourself challenges. Meanwhile I marveled at the newly installed features that automated some of the annoying, line-standing details of museum visits and at the vast extent of expanding human knowledge. I also marveled at how quickly Evan grasped how things work and explained them to his aging grandparents, and once again, how much this 6’1” athlete can eat when we took a refreshment break.
Prompt: choose a scene from your memoir and weave it together somehow with the action scene you just wrote. The challenge is to make seemingly unrelated scenes work together. What do you learn about yourself and how you see the world by looking at the combination of these two pieces?
The way Evan approaches gathering information about the world reminds me of myself at his age. He follows whatever interests him, without regard for other people’s expectations.
I remember wandering into the biology prep lab at the end of the day as a high school sophomore and discovering one of the teachers helping a group doing an experiment on two anesthetized rats. They wanted to see if they could transfer sarcoma tumor cells on the first rat and see if would grow on the second rat.
I was fascinated and spent a long time watching them. There was no way to notify my parents that I would be late but that was okay. I, like Evan, had enormous freedom because I was trusted, so I could follow my interests without being questioned. This fascination led to me entering the school science fairs, and eventually the city science fair three years in a row. As a high school senior, I eventually won an honorable mention.
That same year I want a statewide essay contest on the value of animal experimentation and was named the top science student in my graduating class of 211, mostly college-bound, kids.
My curiosity provided tons of rewards. I stayed in senior Girl Scouts despite my father’s desire for me to conform to nice Jewish girls Bnai B’rith Girls activities. I spent a month trip-camping through the western states with my Scout troop. That hooked me on Colorado, and 3 years later, I transferred to the University of Colorado and met my future husband the day I moved into the Sigma Delta Tau sorority house.
That independence also almost kept me from graduating from college. I had talked my way into a challenging bacteriology class with an outstanding professor in the school of pharmacy. I didn’t realize that I would not get the arts and science credits in my science major that I needed to graduate. I was saved by the intervention of the Dean of Women.
I created a pattern of doing what I wanted to do and getting official sanction later. I didn’t get my teaching certificate until after I had several years of classroom experience. I never got a state license to practice my profession because my studies were with cutting-edge masters instead of inside classrooms. (I always managed to practice legally with nominal appropriate supervision with a colleague.)
I was grandfathered in as a Master certified Coach because of my previous work in transactional analysis, coaching people in education and organizations, and because of my writings to promote the coaching profession. In short, I usually managed to learn what what interested me from pioneers in the field and included information across several fields that didn’t even seem to be related.
Mood and Tone
Prompt: write down three words that describe the mood or tone of the piece you just wrote.
Curiosity. Awareness. Determination.
Prompt: now that you’ve identified the mood or tone take a little further and complete the sentence with a free write: if this essay were color, it would be ____ because…
The color would be purple because it’s a combination of blue steadiness and red fire. And purple comes in many tones, sometimes leaning toward the blue other others toward magenta, which I think is slightly more radical and rebellious but firmly grounded in tradition. And fire flickers in the fireplace burning first in one place and then another depending on the fuel available at the time. The fuel is the wisdom that needs the heat and oxygen to transform.
What you learn about your memoir by reflecting on its mood does the mood or tone suggests some hidden meaning?
In some areas I respect tradition but in most I think I see possibilities and do my best to create the transformations that I believe lead to a better world. I define a better world is a place where children are safe and loved and have what they need to grow and contribute and be happy. That means helping adults heal from past limitations or perhaps grow past those limitations and evolve to new levels. I follow that path myself and each time I have broken out of a box to confront the larger issues I have found it valuable and want to help others do the same. The mentors I’ve had have done for me what I try to do for others.