Mission
When events, places, and people of our lives are wrapped in story, they become conduits for connection.
I believe that:
- One of the most powerful forces in life is the connection between people
- Important connections are waiting to be discovered in the writing of personal stories.
My mission is to help people write their stories, to creatively connect the story-sharer with the story-reader. I work with individuals, families, and organizations.
How does connection happen through story?
- Finding common ground.
- Bridging physical and emotional distance.
- Looking back at the past and forward to the future.
- Creating understanding.
- Inspiring others.
- Discovering things unknown and rediscovering that which was forgotten.
- Relating in shared experience.
- Revealing and sharing insights, values, beliefs, and life lessons learned.
- Finding humor
- And more..
Here are a few examples from my own cache of story connections.
“So that’s where I get it from!”
While I was reading an account of the 1925 first ascent of Mount Logan, the tallest peak in Canada, a simple family connection became something more. The leader of that climbing party, Albert MacCarthy, was a great-uncle on my mother’s side. Sure, I’d heard about Uncle Albert through family stories. He and his wife, Bess, had beloved dogs that rode in the couple’s open car wearing goggles on their doggie faces to protect their eyes (another story entirely!) But after reading the Mount Logan story, my own drive to climb high in the mountains, which isn’t shared by any other member of my immediate family, made sense. I had a bond with my long-gone relative through vivid shared experience. Another connection detail emerged from the MacCarthy stories. Aunt Bess had been a mountain climber in her own right first, introducing her husband to the sport. A woman climber, just like me, in my family history!
“I can help people write about their lives.”
Oliver Sacks’ book, Gratitude, created a passion in me to help others write their stories, leading me to start my writing business, Peggy Rosen Writing, LLC. Dr. Sacks wrote Gratitude just prior to his death from terminal cancer in 2014. In this small volume he expresses his gratitude for a full life of purpose, his regret at time running out on that full life, and his legacy of lessons learned. That little book inspired me to combine my love of writing and skills with people to help others tell their stories with courage and intention.
“You DID? Did you get caught?”
My mom has a simple story from her childhood that delights me. She and her two sisters lived in a fashionable hotel where my grandfather was the manager. When Russian dancers came to town for a performance and stayed at the Carvel Hall Hotel, the girls were forbidden on the floor occupied by the foreign guests. Consumed with curiosity, the three snuck up the stairwell and hid there, peeking around the corner to see what they could see–wild dancing in the hallway, raucous laughter and shouting in another language, fueled by not-a-small-amount of alcohol. I’m sure I too would have disobeyed my parents to spy and eavesdrop. We were all kids once. Even my mom.
Current stories have as much as those set in the past.
I believe that my own current story about living with an almost-disabling visual impairment might connect with someone, somewhere, someday in a positive way. If so, I hope they tell me about it.
Your story, like a magical boomerang sent out into the world and gathering connections on its journey out and back, may return to you with surprises and benefits. Its touch could connect to someone with a quiet understanding, or like a flash of lightning. Either way, I encourage you to put your story in writing.