Real Life Resilience

“It’s so hard for people who share children with narcissistic individuals because sadly, most people don’t understand what they need to do in a shared-custody situation”.  Kim Saeed, a No Contact Coach, shares her story of suffering and survival from emotional abuse at the hands of a narcissist husband.

Why is No Contact Important When You’re Involved With a Narcissist?

Kim Saeed is a No Contact Coach, an author, and an expert who has been helping survivors of narcissistic and emotional abuse. Her articles and blogs generally emphasize having no contact with the narcissist.

From her personal life experience, Kim has been able to point out the reason why one should hit the red button if one’s partner is a narcissist. She lived with a narcissist for 8 years, and even had a son with him, but she couldn’t let go of her abuser easily because she was emotionally attached. Every rational human being feels they shouldn’t give up hope, but it is wiser to realize that it’s an illusion with these individuals.

“It took me a lot of time to detach from my ex. I was just too emotional and that was how I broke down,” says Kim.

Emotional trauma is a particularly insidious form of social abuse. It’s overwhelming to see that a lot of people don’t realize that emotional trauma is the vehicle for injury. It can shrink one’s hippocampus which is in charge of our short and long term memory. The hippocampus is involved in the formation of new memories and is also associated with learning and emotions. Narcissistic abuse is an insidious form of emotional abuse. This is where the no-contact rule applies. No contact is completely blocking a person out of your life. No contact helped Kim to recover from narcissistic abuse from her ex.

Through writing about her own story, Kim inspired many folks who previously refused to speak out on these issues. Writing about it also birthed her phoenix process.

• As humans we tend to forget those traumatic experiences, so it’s important to write them down as they happen, this will help you to see clearly and you can look back and say yes this happened on that day.
• When she started blogging about her situation, she was motivated by online comments eventually making her feel there are other people who have similar or even more horrible experiences.
• When you start writing, don’t be surprised if it brings up some repressed memories and repressed emotions because these will help to work out the regrets of the past.
• Her recently published book – How To Do You No Contact Like A Boss! educates people about No Contact as well as Modified Contact for those who have children with their ex and who are on the verge of leaving.
• Sandra Brown who wrote Woman Who Love Psychopaths. She states that psychopathy is actually our number one health risk. It cost ten times more than depression does.
• Gas lighting is defined by things that the narcissist does and says to make you doubt your perception and lose faith in yourself and your ability to make intelligent choices and decisions.

How to Know You’re With a Narcissist

Journaling about his everyday golf game turned into a book opportunity for former professional golfer Tom O’Stasik. Along the way, he discovered that writing helped him get through the emotional challenges of life and process his thoughts.

Golf Journal Turned Into Books

O’Stasik was a professional golfer for 6 years. He started writing in a journal at the age of 17, due to his love for golf. A coach recommended journaling as a way to help him figure out how to improve, how to have more self-awareness and how to process things both good and bad. He soon realized that his writing reflected his personal life, especially when he was going through emotional challenges in different relationships. He went on to write two books, the Putting Assassin and The Men’s Divorce Playbook and he’s in the process of writing two more. Journaling helped him cope through his struggles and ultimately he was able to find himself and become the person he is today.

• The Men’s Divorce Playbook is about helping men cope with divorce
• Tom helped many other men deal with divorce and relationships as they turned to him for advice.
• He then realized there was value in some of the things he was sharing with them.
• He was inspired to turn his journal into a book after reading a book about somebody who did the same.
• The only person who initially knew about his journal was dad, this was because of the unique relationship they had.
• He is now coaching students to journal their thoughts, which will help them to achieve their dreams.
• O’Stasik journaled through his divorce, knowing that he could get through it because he had been through worse situations and came through on the other side.
• He uses journaling as a way to quiet his mind, by writing down his thoughts on paper, which makes it easier for him to organize them and get clarity.
• Journaling has increased his self-awareness by helping him work through issues and figure things out.
• Part of what Tom wrote were his goals and dreams. He soon realized there was power in writing with your own hand writing.

Take Home Message

• When writing about your life, tell yourself no one is going to read this. I can write whatever I want and just get started writing.
• Commit to your writing for a certain amount of time.
• When starting don’t worry about grammar and spelling, all that matters is getting out these thoughts, these feelings, whatever it is you’re trying to express, without judgement and without critique.
• Don’t be critical of what you’re doing, just commit to it and commit to the time and just write.

Lifestory Toolkit: Keep Writing

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

This episode’s Lifestory Toolkit features a software tool called Keep Writing. This software is at keepwriting.boxjar.com. It is a word processor that works like an old school typewriter: it doesn’t let you delete. If you really, really have to, you can type over mistakes just like with a real typewriter. The idea is that this will let you focus on productivity (instead of endless polishing) and on reaching your word count goals. It simply encourages you to Keep Writing!

Free Download: You Don’t Have to be a Writer to Write Your Stories!

“For me the end goal is always to help people tell a story with their photos. I realized in the process of helping my clients do that, if they couldn’t find their photos and they didn’t know where they were, they couldn’t even get to that next step.”  Cathi Nelson founded The Association of Personal Photo Organizers which aims to help clients organize important family traditions and memories that are captured through pictures.

Cathi Nelson, Treasured Memories Through Photos

A picture paints a thousand words, but a group of pictures tells stories of memories and traditions that are treasured in our minds. In the fast paced development of technology the number of pictures taken has more than doubled and more memories are being captured every minute of every day through our handheld devices. The storage of digital memories has become more complicated, especially with the advent of the cloud. Many memories are wasted because of unorganized pictures.

Cathi Nelson has formed a group of professionals who specialize in photo organizing called the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO). Photo organizing, creates a story and helps relay the story with the digital or printed memories. Organizing pictures lets you see the life story behind the photos and help pass those memories and stories on to another person. According to Cathi, “We take photos chronologically, but we live thematically; in other words we live through our family stories and traditions a lot of times.”

One of Cathi’s favorite quotes is from Ursula Le Guin: “There have been great societies that did not use the wheel but there have been no societies that did not tell a story.” Says Cathi, “I believe the reasons we take photos is to tell the stories of our lives. Our photos connect us to the past, present and future. The problem is often folks are too overwhelmed with their photos, they don’t know where to begin and they feel overwhelmed by the organizational process. I created the ABC’S of photo organizing to help.” Cathi shares an easy way to sort through both electronic and physical pictures call the ABC method that anyone can do. She explains how to document your family stories: “It’s okay to create the story, to tell the story, to set it up; and then use photos as a prop to document your story.”

Take Home Message

• There are different methods of organizing photos which can enrich the memories and stories of family and friends. Cathi’s ABC method is in her free download: Ultimate Guide to Photo Organizing
• If you’re interested in a career helping people tell stories with photos, Cathi has a free e-book which is available at http://www.appo.org/ called “Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Photo Organizer.”

Free Download: Does Your Scrapbook Have a Story Arc?

Does Your Scrapbook Have a Story Arc?

“If someone else can see themselves that much in my songs, then I kinda owe it to myself to share it; even if maybe just three other people get a little bit of healing from it.” Shellee Coley a mother and singer-songwriter, continuously influences future artists in creating and molding music as a reflection of life and experiences. She shares the impact of music on personal growth and harmony.

Shellee Coley, A Music Of Healing

Her love of music has been with Shellee from childhood. She wrote her first song at the age of 13, she now helps teen girls express their feelings through Circle Sessions. In creating music, she has become closer to her beliefs and is growing as person. Life definitely is an art; it is a never ending process of action and reaction. Every bit of experience and challenge that influence our life can reflect in the understanding of a larger story. A singer-songwriter, a teacher and a influencer, Shellee desires to help more girls in understanding the motivation and influence that the songwriting art has to offer.

Take Home Message:

• It is the small chunk of our life story and evaluating each experience that will help you understand the bigger picture of life.
• Influencing the youth in developing their skills, for the continuous development of a culture of creating art and helping more people express their feelings through songwriting.
• Our talents are our way of sharing our experiences to other people. Our experiences may help other people ease their hardships and can be a factor of motivation.
• Shellee’s free download is here – don’t miss it!

Lifestory Toolkit: WordCounter

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

This episode’s Lifestory Toolkit features a Word Counter. Wordcounteronline.net is a word count and a character count tool. Simply place your cursor into the box and begin typing. Word counter will automatically count the number of words and characters as you type. You can also copy and paste a document you have already written into the word counter box and it will display the word count and character numbers for that piece of writing. Knowing the number of words or characters in a document can be important. For example, if the author is required to write a minimum or maximum amount of words for an article or paper, word counter can help them know if their article meets these requirements. You can find Word Counter at: wordcounteronline.net

Free Download: 5 Reasons to Get Kids Writing and One Sure Way for Them to Enjoy It

Free – 5 Reasons to Get Kids Writing and One Sure Way for Them to Enjoy It

About: Shellee Coley

Shellee’s love of music has been

“Stay yourself. I know that’s so cliché but it means something…be yourself, stay yourself. Look how you want to look, sing how you want to sing, write how you want to write and just make your music and follow your dreams. Because that’s why I’ve been doing and that what I’ll continue to do. And it has done a lot for me.” This is how 16-year old Mia Z is making her mark as a singer-songwriter in the midst of the image conscious mindset that is pervasive in the music industry these days.

Mia Z on Staying True to Yourself

Having been born to a musically-gifted family, Mia has been singing and writing songs since she was a child. It also helped that she had the support and understanding of her mother who helped hone her musical talents. Eventually, she joined as a contestant on the show “The Voice” in Season 7 and made it quite far before being eliminated. Through this, Mia stayed true to herself as an artist. And staying true to herself has paved way for tremendous opportunities that have come her way since.

Take Home Message:

• Songwriting (or writing in general) is typically a solitary activity. But having a partner who can help flesh out the ideas you want to write about can help a lot.
• As parents, we should not push our children too hard but rather, allow and help them to be themselves and feel their way as to what they want be.
• We live our lives not knowing beforehand and eventually learning after. Just push through and live through whatever new experiences that come your way and get to learn and enjoy from them.

Lifestory Toolkit: Write It Now

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

This episode’s Lifestory Toolkit features a software tool called Write It Now. This software is at Ravensheadservices.com and it helps keep your writing organized. It coordinates your scenes as well as your thoughts and it helps with keeping your timeline straight for chronology and continuity. It helps you keep track of your characters, conflicts, storylines, chapters and keeps them accessible on a sidebar at all times. The software is priced around $60, but has a free demo version you can try to see if you like it.

Free Download: 21 Ways to Capture Family History

Click Here for Free Download – 21 Ways to Capture Family History

You have to get past your ego and find your shared experience with people. The things we’re most afraid to show people are the things we have most in common. Since I’ve come to understand that I’ve been able to write towards this common ground and connect myself with people and create an environment full of shared understanding.  And I really think that’s the power of music.

The Songwriters Experience

The biggest challenge of songwriting is to get over yourself and realize that the most beautiful thing about writing a song is that it can be shared.

Growing up in the quiet little Texas town of Dublin seems a fateful beginning for a soul singer. The youngest of four children, an unlikely series of childhood ailments provided Luke with an early sense of perspective that many never find even as adults. A bout of spinal meningitis proved almost fatal, a paintball accident left him blind in one eye and some years later a severe heatstroke left him struggling to overcome temporary brain damage and amnesia. And though these experiences inevitably influence his music, it is not in the fatalistic way you might expect. While his songs may have that soulful ‘written on the porch because the house was too damned hot’ feel, the end result is a style that feels ever hopeful.

Luke explains the moment he realized he was a singer/songwriter and he had realized his potential.

Take Home Message:

• When you practice songwriting, it’s like someone asks you questions that you don’t know the answer to and you explore that and turning the answers into stories.
• Understand the value and the challenges of having a unique perspective. Everyone’s life is completely unique to them. Within that, you can find shared experiences to connect with other people

Lifestory Toolkit: America’s Footprints

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

This episode’s Lifestory Toolkit features a website called America’s Footprints. This site gives you an easy way to privately tell your story in the form of a digital memoir. When you log on, you can create what they call a “footprint”. This “Footprint” is a unique profile, created on your own and in private, containing the poignant moments that make up your life story. You’re essentially building a digital profile that will forever store the memories and milestones in your lifetime…for the purposes of preserving your footprint in history. You can think of a Footprint like a memoir or autobiography, but on a much smaller scale. For example, as a member you can share stories of your childhood, and important lessons you have have learned along the way. You can talk about where you have been (schools, careers, etc.) and what dreams you wish to pursue in the future. You can add historic photos from your past that have meaning or significance in some way. And you can leave behind personal messages for your closest family, your friends, and even your future descendants. It’s at americasfootprints.com

Free Download: Click for Resource

“We have all of these weird urges or thoughts or ideas that don’t fit and you’re not allowed to say publicly. But if you can get that all out in not just a safe way, but a constructive way, you can use that to make something through stories,” says Author James Kennedy, creator of the 90 Second Newbery Award Film Festival. What’s a vomelette? You’ll have to listen to discover

90 Second Newbery Awards

The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is an annual video contest in which kid filmmakers create weird movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about 90 seconds. Every year, the best movies are shown at gala screenings all over the country—co-hosted by founder James Kennedy and other great children’s authors. The Film Festival is now entering its fifth year!

James’ book The Order of Odd Fish includes a villain based on a real-life person – The Belgian Prankster. It has been given high praise, including receiving recognition as the 2014 Young Adult Library Association Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults, the 2009 American Library Association nominee as Best Book for Young Adults, and is a 2008 Smithsonian Notable Book for Children.

Listen as James shares his crazy imagination, why Harry Potter works for kids, writing as therapy and art, writing your story and being ruthless with your own creations. And of course, there’s the vomelette story….

Take Home Message:

• Kids sometimes write weird, horrible, or crazy stories to deal with the pressures of living. Don’t let those stories worry you. They are processing the world and making it safe for themselves.
• Make time every day to write

Lifestory Toolkit: Cliche Finder

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

This episode’s Lifestory Toolkit features a Cliché Finder. As a good writer, you want to eliminate overused clichés from your story. It’s much different than a metaphor, which helps clarify a concept in a fresh way. Cliches are overused expressions. Ones that have lost their meaning over time and don’t provide the details needed for great writing. We need to eliminate them because we want to provide original and unique ways to share our stories. The Cliché Finder is an easy way to find the clichés in your writing. Just copy and paste your text on the website and the clichés are highlighted so you can eliminate them. Easy as that. You can find it at cliche.theinfo.org.

Free Download: Does Your Scrapbook Have a Story Arc?

Does Your Scrapbook Have a Story Arc?

On day one of self-employment, Nick Loper’s website went down and his vision of hammocks and four hour work weeks disappeared. Google shut down his account and he realized the importance of diversification. Since then, he’s written about his side hustle life, chronicling his experiments for the world to see. Lifestory Toolkit: Pro Writing Aid, Free Download: 5 Myths About Life Story Writing.

Scripting the Side Hustle 

Chief Side Hustler Nick Loper never imagined his first day of self-employment after quitting his corporate job would be a disaster. But he made lemons out of lemonade by trying out multiple side jobs and blogging about how well they worked for him. His life is an open experiment for others to see.

Nick approaches most things in life as an experiment because it lessens the sting of failure and positions it as an opportunity for learning and growth rather than a life or death event.

Nick has enjoyed writing since his grade school days and early in life started a blog to chronicle his life. “My Mom would say ‘Go play outside’, and I would say ‘No, I am just going to write a story’. It was like a weird thing to do, but you have that outlet even if nobody was reading it,” says Nick.

Ultimately, Nick niched his writing down to his side hustle explorations. One of the most addicting platforms he writes for is Amazon. He reaches many more people there than he can on his website.

Listen in for Nick’s fascinating story!

Take Home Message:

• Persistence in writing on a regular basis is a skill worth having. If you work at it, you’re going to improve it.
• Check out Nick’s website and podcast at: http://www.sidehustlenation.com/

Lifestory Toolkit: Pro Writing Aid

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

This episode’s Lifestory Toolkit features a web app called Pro Writing Aid Editing Tool. This software has a basic package that’s free and helps improve your writing by finding overused words, clichés, repeated words or phrases, and also uncovers diction problems like vague language and redundancies. There’s even a plagiarism checker. You can use it with Microsoft Word or Google docs, and there’s a Chrome extension as well. The premium version is just $35 per year and really that’s the one you need. The software is at ProWritingAid.com.

Free Download: 5 Myths About Life Story Writing

5 Myths About Life Story...

“Women have to put their foot forward and say I’m entitled. If I’m doing an equal job, I should have equal pay. For all the young women now who have never had to deal with these problems…I walked the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for you.” When Norma Yaeger acquired her New York Stock Exchange license in 1962, she didn’t know of any other women in the industry. The Stock Exchange didn’t even allow women to step foot on its floor. But having just escaped poverty in NY’s Catskill Mountains, and determined to support her children, Norma wasn’t going to let the exclusionary traditions of the financial industry stop her from becoming a stockbroker.

 
Equal Pay and Other Insights

• During the last century, Norma Yaeger broke down walls for today’s women. She earned a job in a male-dominated industry and demanded equal pay.
• She didn’t start her book Breaking Down the Walls for her audience, but for her family. She wanted her children to know what she had been through.
• Everyone has a story to tell. Make notes along the way, whether you intend to write a book or not. Because you don’t know what you intend to do years from now.
• She admits to failures, but she learned from them.  Resilience comes from picking yourself back up and doing things differently the next time.

Unless you know where we’ve come from, you have no idea what the future can hold for you. Many things will change during our lifetimes. Norma paved the way in many areas:

• If Norma didn’t find work, her family would have nothing
• In her day, women couldn’t hold a credit card
• She wrote “At that moment, I knew I am a woman who will punch through glass if I need to.”
• She had to get a loan to get new work clothes, and the banker said she had to get her husband’s approval. She refused, but got the loan anyway.
• When Norma got the job as a stock broker, her boss said there was one problem, “We don’t know what to pay a woman, we’ve never had one.”
• She got equal pay because she explained, “I have more expenses than the men….I have to hire a wife! Why shouldn’t I get equal pay?”
• Her book teaches women how to negotiate.

Listen to the full episode as Norma tells her fascinating story.

Take Home Message:

• The first five people to email stacy{at}stacybrookman.com with their mailing address will receive a copy of Norma’s books.
• Start writing notes about your life today. You never know when you will need those notes.
• Find obstacles and overcome them. Negotiate and step forward and say “I’m entitled.”

Lifestory Toolkit:  One Stop For Writers

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

One Stop For Writers

Ann expects to die with an open notebook in her hand. In fact, her tombstone inscription is already prepared: Loved This World, Pen In Hand. This poet and has been writing since the fifth grade. She believes writers live life twice, and that’s her favorite quote from Anais Nin. Listen as Ann shares how writing spurred her curiosity in life, and helped her get through depression. Lifestory Toolkit: Noticing The Details,  Free Download: 5 Ways to Get Kids Writing and 1 Sure Way For Them To Enjoy It

Curiosity for Life

• At 25 (in 1971), Ann drove cross country on her own to visit everyone in her address book, and picked up hitchhikers along the way
• She hitchhiked on her own through the US and Europe
• She loves to meet new people, and once introduced the US Ambassador to Scotland and a CIA agent on a plane. She is now invited to teach in Scotland whenever she travels there.

Writing Habits

• Ann writes every day, but not at a set time
• She handwrites (prints) because it is slow and it is about the period of a breath
• In her classes, she asks people to handwrite because of the pace and physicality of it
• Although you don’t get every idea, your ideas will come out at some point – perhaps connected to something else
• Ann collects her favorite quotes and writes them in a journal along with the name of the author, these serve as inspiration for her writing

Writers Live Life Twice

• The first time, you live your life
• The second time, you re-live it and re-experience it through writing about it
• There’s so much around to help you remember
• Ann’s depression took hold of her for a year. To keep her spirits strong, before she went to sleep, she wrote one thing of beauty that she’d seen that day. That helped her get through that year.
• At one point, her therapist asked if she was suicidal. Ann said, “I’m not suicidal, but I know why people commit suicide.” Writing (and a good prescription) helped keep the spark alive.

Lifestory Toolkit: Noticing the Details

(Brought to you by Lifestorytelling.com – Discover YOUR life stories!)

This episode’s Lifestory Toolkit features an activity I call: Noticing the Details. Writing that draws a reader in is composed of details that most people don’t think about until you’re conscious about it. This week, go take a walk through your neighborhood. What do you see? Notice the architectural details of the houses. What kind of plants are in the yards? What brand of cars are in the driveways? What do you hear? Birds? Kids playing? Cars on nearby roads? What smells do you smell? Flowers? Cooking? Car exhaust? Record these on your smart phone as you go along. Then, when you return from your walk, see just how many of those details you remember. Be a bit of a Sherlock Holmes and notice the details. Those are your little bits of information to include in your writing that will make it come alive. You’ll bring your reader on the walk with you, which draws them into your story. Try it once a week and see how much more you’ll notice about the world.

Free Download: 5 Reasons to Get Kids Writing and One Sure Way for Them to Enjoy It