Roadkill: How to Retell Your Story and Reinvent Your Life

When someone asks me why I write, I think back to something that happened years ago that profoundly affected me and changed my life in an instant. Oftentimes, it’s the smallest moments in life that can have the biggest impact.

As a young married woman in a writing workshop, I was asked to pick a family treasure to write about. I was blank. Quickly I began thinking about what makes something a prize in a family, and I knew it had to represent some amount of love and evoke deep emotion. I scanned my brain for what might fit that bill and nothing but one ridiculous word kept swirling around. I dismissed it for being such a lame idea and blamed my family for not offering many treasures to choose from. Some people in the group were having trouble picking just one while I still sat blank. Is this what happens when a nuclear family sells everything off but a few resentments to leave Kansas* and strike out on their own with only a car full of kids and a Folger's coffee can to pee in? By now people were beginning to share. I had to confess to having nothing while trying to laugh off the crazy thought going through my mind. The instructor asked kindly if I would be willing to share, and I gulped. Under my breath I uttered the word roadkill, hoping he'd move on, but that stopped him dead in his tracks. With eyes cast down I noticed he had Danner boots on with a little bit of mud on the edge so perhaps he had some strange appreciation for roadkill, too? I tried to describe how I was perplexed watching my young husband's curious reaction to seeing roadkill on the highway. While I expected to be embarrassed by the instructor's response, he prodded me to continue. I explained that while I obviously knew my new husband was a nature-loving biologist, I was shocked by his fervent affinity for animals, both dead and alive. In order to truly understand him I needed to see the world differently which meant I had to look with new eyes at roadkill, and this was stopping me dead in my tracks.

The instructor chuckled with a delight that only a poet and outdoorsman himself could muster. He explained that being a country boy from Tennessee he knew all about using Borax to treat and preserve animals into “study skins” and understood the beauty of doing so. After being sent off to write, I attempted to piece together the vivid story now set in my mind and somehow form it into a poem. I jumped at the chance to have the instructor look at our writing before sharing thinking he could weed mine out or help me somehow. The next day he headed straight for me, paper in hand. Uh-oh. He held it out and said: Do you know you have written a love poem!? I had never written a poem on purpose before, let alone a love poem*. He handed me the prize and set me up on an empowering path. Sometimes we have to “unlearn” something in order to be open to a new way of thinking, a new way of loving. In that moment being open lead to both finding my unique voice and rewriting a story I didn’t even recognize as my own.

In hindsight I had a hunch that roadkill evoked the love and deep emotion of a family treasure even though I couldn’t tell you how or why. Yet, somehow this instructor knew and followed his own instincts to help me see that and voice it. He knew with the proper crafting of words I could even carve an heirloom out of it, and he trusted me to figure out how. He believed I had what I needed inside to do it. He also believed in the power of using the right words in the right way to tell your story, and, most importantly, of working with and honoring what you have. I’ve come to appreciate how much wisdom he passed on in offering that up to me. Much like he prodded me to speak my truth that day, I encourage you to give voice to who you are in spite of how it might look or sound from the outside. Find that story by befriending the deep thoughts that you keep coming back to. Let them speak to you. Let them surprise you. Be empowered.

Here are 10 practical ideas to empower you to tell the messy, beautiful story of your life, your way:

1. Don't rule anything out. The possibilities for how to tell your story are endless. Look everywhere. Be open.

2. Don't listen to anyone but the still small voice inside. You are the only one who knows if you are going the right way. Respect that voice. 

3. Learn to follow your gut. Sit with your Self (not your ego). Block out the noise so you can hear it. Train yourself to listen. 

4. Don't expect the way to be straight. It might feel like you're going in circles, but it will spiral into progress when you are ready. If you are circling back, there's something more to feel, heal, and/or reframe before you spiral on. That’s OK.

5. Don't blame anyone else for being lost or not handing you what you want. You aren't lost. You just have to step onto the path you are blazing with each step. Keep going.

6. Don't give up. You may have to start taking the step before you see where it lands. Be empowered. Do it anyway.

7. Have some faith in yourself. If you've lived long enough to have a story to tell, count yourself lucky enough to know which way to go. Then go there.

8. Don't push the river, flow with it. Let yourself be surprised by where it takes you. You might even be surprised at where you’ve been. Keep your mind full of wonder.

9. Don't be scared off. Fear can be there, but you can choose to walk right by it, or through it, or around it. Don’t be afraid of the mess or the beauty. Just tell the truth.

10. Don't be ashamed of your story. No matter how much you wish you were on someone else's path, you're not. Name it and claim it. Whatever it is, it's yours. 

*The poems referred to here, 1957 and Roadkill (a love poem), can both be found in Tiny Lights: Small Poems for Big Moments.