On any given weekday, a typical conversation amongst a few of my close-knit creative co-workers included invoking names such as Baby Cakes, Reg, and Samantha. Although the people involved were less than five, the participants were upwards of 23.
An imaginative generation earlier, my best buddy, Sherry Berger, and I began isolating and categorizing the voices in our heads. You know, that brain chatter which silently frames how we think about ourselves and interprets our circumstances and relationships. As a way to help us understand why we were thinking and acting in ways which were actually not beneficial to our emotional well-being, we assigned names and descriptions to the parts of our psyches which kept showing up in our conversations.
Although the rule of thumb in storytelling is never to be the hero of the story we are telling, I must make an exception to this story…I am the one who started it.
On a rainy morning in the central Minnesota woods, I was tucked under a quilt in our motor home reading one of my creative fiction writing books. There were writing exercises at the end of each chapter. This particular one asked me to write a paragraph about…well…anything…but the twist was, write it from the perspective of a character completely the opposite of me (“me” meaning the person participating in the exercise). For example, a religious person writing as a prostitute. A person who follow the rules portrays an anarchist. An extrovert describes the details of the paragraph as a person with social anxiety.
I went through this writing exercise with fireworks going off inside me. Each word blasted through bits of myself I didn’t realize even existed. It was one of the most enlightening and surprising processes I had ever encountered. This was the conception which led to the births of my Merry Band of Mad Folk. Taking this writing exercise and broadening it from thinking in opposites to including many shades of gray, I began to see the insightful effect of capturing my inner shadow selves and giving them distinctive voices. Vulnerable parts of me, potentially addictive parts of me, and definitely my ego self vied for attention all day long. The conscious effect for me was indecision, resistance, living in a state of “if only”, and myriad other nuanced imbalances.
Samantha, my bouncy 10-year old, competes for attention with Whitaker, who in charge of logistics and keeping everything in good working order. Phyllis, my overzealous superhero, embarrasses Meg, my conformist. Beulah is very careful with her chores, since sounds and scents must be highly monitored due to Mark’s extremely sensitive central nervous system. I was delighted to discover Commander Winifred in a large metal canister filled with vintage dolls from around the world, given to my mother as a child. This tiny gem dressed in black was reborn, decades and decades later. Jeremiah, my monk, has been a gentle, guiding light in more recent years, advocating my commitment to a quiet, disciplined, compassionate lifestyle. He helps keep everyone calm and balanced.
Humor has been an essential ingredient to tantalize and court parts of me that were very resistant to this process.
I had no idea a writing exercise undertaken in the silence of a Minnesota woods would ultimately become a therapeutic tool. And the only reason it wove its way into my friends and trusted co-workers is because I opened my mouth and mentioned it.
What I like most about this process is that it is infectious. I only get through a few sentences about how fascinating, fun and helpful it is for me when I am cut off by the listener. With a furled brow and a gaze suddenly drifting off into the distance, I see it happening, ‘I wonder if I have voices in MY head?’ (of course they do, we all do…it is part of being a human). I can hear it even though no words have been uttered. From there, depending upon who they are, they either eagerly start asking me questions about how can they, too, can do this, or they walk away with words to this effect, “That’s…um…interesting (??)…Leslie…but not anything I could do.”
Either way, it evokes a strong reaction. And it is a tremendous conversational gauge to give me information as to whether this process is something that can be integrated or not. Full disclosure, I do not walk up to a person upon first meeting, introduce myself as Leslie and add, “Would you like to meet the other 13 parts of me?” No, this is a subtle facet of relationship, only able to be conceived and incubated in trusted, safe relational spaces. But it helps me create my own boundaries around how much of myself I bring to the relationship so it is balanced for both of us.
And the part I like best, is sometimes, upon rare occasion, it begins as a rebuke, but then later, as the friendship deepens and the walls begin to drop as trust is developed, it resurfaces and takes hold. At that point, there is no turning back. We … are…getting to know each other!
