The Life Writing Workbook
How to Work through Your Life’s Unresolved Emotional Experiences
by
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MY NAME STORY
My chosen name is Aihi which means, ‘All instants are holy instants’. I’ve had many nicknames. My favorite by far is the way my mom would almost sing, "Myyyyyyy?" My uncle Rob, who came to visit us each Christmas, called me Skinny Minny. He was a big, round, happy-faced man whose eyes rested on us with such love. They just glistened when he looked at us. He loved my Dad - who really needed that and all his eleven children. He would fill his station wagon with oranges, grapefruit, and nuts every year at Christmas time. His great big belly would shake when he laughed, and through those warm and glistening eyes he would look at me and say, ‘OOOH Skinny Minny.’ Heh, heh, heh.’
My dad called me Skinny-legs-and-all. Perhaps you’re getting a picture of what I looked like in those days. And then there was this girl in high school who made fun of my buck teeth. I eventually got braces after I grew up and starting earning my own money, but her nickname for me wasn’t in words - just her gesture of fingers hanging out of the front of her mouth when she walked passed me. It’s Ok if you’re laughing. I’m laughing now, too, but it wasn’t funny at the time.
That’s it for me. Now it’s your turn. Writing your answers to these questions will start to give you practice in attending to yourself. If you finish this session and have time left over, feel free to move on to chapter three. This is the only time when it is OK to work through more than one session in one sitting as this one can be relatively brief for some people. Don’t rush it, though. Enjoy the pleasure of beginning to write your story in a slow, contemplative fashion.
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About the Book
I stumbled upon life writing at age twenty-nine. I was at that moment in a divorce when you know it’s over and it’s time to move on. I realized how little I understood my life and that I had no real sense of how to make a life. I wanted a life. I wanted a certain kind of satisfaction from life that I knew existed; yet here I was, very clear that this marriage wasn’t going to work out and faced with raising a lovely child alone as I made my way toward this certain something I couldn’t even name. I moved in with my best friend’s parents, who were very kind to me. To try to get a handle on things, I secluded myself in their basement for many evenings to dissect my life story. It was just instinct. Starting with my earliest memory, I started the walk forward, sifting carefully through each experience I could recall. I would approach certain memories in the writing, and my body would tighten. At first I just kept going, but those particular memories called me back. So I went back, slowed down, and sifted more carefully—looking at the scene, the circumstances, the people involved, and at myself, my emotions, my perceptions, and my fears. At the end of this rather intense process, there was no doubt that something in me had shifted. I felt a new sense of self-possession. I felt aware of myself in a way I wasn’t before. I can see this same new presence and power arise in the faces of others as they complete the life-writing process. The Life Writing Workbook guides you step-by-step through eight sessions of deeply engaging, private, and transformative writing through your life story.
About the Author
Aihi is a narrative psychologist and college professor. She is the originator of the Life Writing series, refined over the past twenty-five years, and winner of several community service awards, including most recently the 2015 New York Citizen Action Phoenix Award. She is currently training for her fourth half-marathon in the treasured Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.