No Ordinary Stories

gratuitous picture of the Oregon Coast just to get your attention and because everyone thinks blog posts are more interesting when there are pictures to look at and because I think that this blog post will be VERY interesting.

I promised awhile back that I would tell you more about a project that I'm doing for Stampin'Cat that is near and dear to my heart....and now is the time.

The name of the project is "No Ordinary Stories" and it is an idea that has been bouncing around in my brain and filling my heart for some time now. It's something I've believed in since I was very young. It's a simple idea, but one that is often overlooked. If you distill it down to one basic thought, it is this--in every life, in every person, there are No Ordinary Stories.

Some of you are confused--isn't that the name of the project? Let me explain with what I wrote to introduce the class. I think that it will make more sense then.

I believe we are significant.
I also believe that we forget this important fact.

Let’s talk about stories for a minute. Let’s talk specifically

about other people’s stories.

We can’t get enough of other people’s stories.

We read them in the news, in magazines,

in books, sometimes in the tabloids, on the internet,

and in blog after blog after blog.

We can’t get enough. We are riveted.

Yet when it comes to our own stories, we downplay.

We stammer and become suddenly shy.

We feel like we have nothing to say.

Some of it is that we are taught

not to brag or boast, we are taught not to be prideful.

We decide that our own stories are not worth telling.

I believe we are significant. I believe our stories are significant.

They deserve to be Celebrated, Lived, Loved, and Shared.

I believe that there are
No Ordinary Stories.
Your stories need to be remembered and written down. Your stories matter.
If you don’t tell your stories,
Who will?

I believe those words with all my heart. I believe that somewhere along the way down the road or path or superhighway of our life, we forget parts of ourselves. We get busy furthering our careers, or wiping noses, or going to class, or cooking dinner, or driving to the next destination on our list, or washing load after load after load after load of laundry that we forget to remember how great we really are. Sometimes we might even forget who we are.

This is what I propose: Let's start writing down these stories. I would love to see this blog post passed around and around and around and around. I'd love to see a whole grassroots movement of women remembering their significance in tangible ways. Let's link and share and link and tell and write and share and link again, until we are all connected with a web of words and stories and significance.

I'll provide a prompt here if you get stuck. But I hope that once you start telling your stories, they will just tumble out of you and one story will lead to another and another and another and you'll have a notebook or a folder or a journal or a blog just full of all of your wonderful stories.

I can't wait to read yours.