Book Stories: The Jumper Cable

Let’s have a moment of undignified honesty here: This week has been hard. In the perspective-maintaining, keeping-emotional-shit-together department, I mean. I have blogger friends who duck away from the internet the moment one of their pieces goes live, and I understand why. There are few things more unnerving than to realize your heart and soul are being taken in by thousands of pairs of eyes, filtered through thousands of sets of experiences, and setting off thousands of personal reactions. Even though that’s exactly what we writers want—for an audience to engage with our words—the reality of it can knock us off balance.

Brené Brown calls it a “vulnerability hangover.” In this foggy and fatigued state, we can’t quite pull anything into clear focus… least of all WHY we’d thought it was a good idea to share our tender-skinned selves with the world. Noise is too noisy, cheer is too cheery, and our own self-protective instincts lock us out of ourselves. I woke up yesterday without two words to rub together, and I concluded in true Bethany fashion that this meant I was done. All of my writer-ness had been used up. I no longer had anything worth saying, and the internet police would be along shortly to repossess my blog under the Imposter Act.

If one could buy tomato juice in this country, I would have been chugging the stuff.

Yesterday afternoon, I finally gave up trying to write anything for the day; I was getting nowhere at the speed of a runaway train. My backup plan, going to the park for a mind-clearing run, was then precluded by the crackle of incoming thunderclouds. Ah, screw productivity, I thought and reached for the brand new book on my nightstand. (Reading in the afternoon is up there on the luxury scale with chocolate in the morning and shaved legs just before bed. Partyin’ hard, mom-style.)

About two chapters in, I had my computer back out. I wanted to keep reading, but the things I was reading were giving me the rare gift of compulsion to write. The next couple of hours yo-yoed happily between book and Word document, other people’s stories charging up the storyteller in me. Turns out, when you crack open a book called Speak, you’d better get ready to do just that.

“When you’re the one on the fringes, one of the most powerful things someone can say to you is, ‘Me too.’ And really, it’s one of the most powerful things someone can say to anyone, regardless of status or social placement. The intrinsic value of mutual understanding and experience is immeasurable and priceless.” – Nish Weiseth

This isn’t a book review. Rather, it’s the story of how engaging with my friend Nish’s words gave me back my own. The more I read yesterday about how storytelling matters, deeply, to the world (and especially for those of us trying to model our ways of life on Jesus), the easier it was for me to remember why I’m here, why I write, why I subject myself to the odd vulnerability hangover. Because stories matter. Mine. Nish’s. Yours. The controversial stories. The painful ones. The ones we think no one will understand (which, in my experience, are the stories that lead to the deepest connections). The ones we are afraid to tell and the ones we can’t help telling. The ones that open us up to potential judgment and criticism… and to the almost-certain bond of “Me too.”

I wouldn’t say that I’m completely recovered from this week’s sense of displacement, but I’m not stuck in the fog anymore either. Besides, if I find myself at a loss for words tomorrow or the day after or the day after that, I have this handy paperback jumper cable right here on my nightstand.

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This is the first in a series I’m excited to be starting here. Instead of writing traditional book reviews, I’d like to share why certain books have impacted me, how they’ve entwined themselves through my daily life, and what the long-term effects are. After all, what better way to talk about stories than through the medium of story? I’d like to open Book Stories up for guest posts as well. If you have your own close encounter of the literary kind to share, just send it on over to hello{at}bethanybassett{dot}com. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes!