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MENTALITYBy: Aaron Medrano

Table of contents1. Redemption story2. Healing3. Creating Self-story4. Spiritual Story5. Family is the story6. The Power of a Story7. How The Story Connects us8. Conclusion

Redemption StoryMy Reflective essay will be about my little redemption story of how I was given a second chanceto be better, not as a student or an athlete but as a person. That scholarship changed me for thebetter. It was called A.C.E.S. Scholarship, and once I saw that, I took that opportunity to bettermyself and get grades up a lot better and I can prove myself that I can work hard in cross countryto get that national team spot but first I have to get the lineup for the region spot. When first gotback to Cowley for my second year I knew I had to turn things around get my grades up andfight for the spot for regions as much as I can. I was getting my grades up and everything butunfortunately during cross I had got hurt and I missed two cross country meets and when Ifinally wasn’t hurt anymore I competed at Butler and earned my spot for regions and I was likeyes let’s go now, time to show them what I got. Weeks go by its region time and I race and I’mcompeting trying to get that national spot I was so close but I came up short but, luckily I wasable to be on the traveling team on the way to nationals and what I found out that my coachpredicted me not to be there but I proved him wrong. Everyday I worked hard to prove myselfworthy. I was able to beat the GPA requirement and was able to continue my second semesterand now I’m going to an NCAA D2 school in Oklahoma. I can say I redeemed myself and nowI’m doing better for myself. I thank for everybody who believed in me and I want to thank mydoubters for making me work harder.

HelThe story talks about how a story heals family heritage. But I never had a story that it really heals thefamily heritage. We have understood in their councils that decisions made by the living tribe must takeinto consideration the impact on the next seven generations of the tribe. Angeles Arrien, a transculturalanthropologist raised in the Basuqe traditions of the original mountain people of Spain, teaches that ourancestors hover over the cradle of each new baby born into their lineage and ask— Will this be the childto heal the line? Will this be the one to change our story? In her teachings she proclaims, “What is notintegrated repeats itself until it is integrated. When we attend to healing the self-story, we realize theinterconnection of self-story and family story. If we change the self-story, we change the stories of thosewe relate to. It’s like plucking one strand of a spider web: one thread moves all threads. “I rememberexactly the moment I realized I was taking on the work of healing my life and family,” she says. “ It’s ascene of such pain that I would do anything to not repeat it and that ‘anything’ has turned out to becommitting the rest of my life to growth and healing. Which hasn’t been easy either, but is still moretolerable than waking up that Thanksgiving Day in 1971” What Kit has done is to make her family storyconscious. She has put her-self into cultural context of her lineage and evaluated what happened to her inlight of what had already happened in the family line. She began linking behavior that had never beentalked about, at least not effectively talked about, and is now making these links and their accompanyingawareness part of her lineage story. Whenever someone does this work on behalf of a family, it giveseveryone in the family the opportunity to perceive themselves and their inherited characteristicsdifferently. When something exists in a family that is not discussed, it goes into what Carl Jung termed“the shadow,” the unacknowledged aspects of the self.

Creating Self StoryCreating a story of the shelf. It says here that, “our own self-story contains so many details,nuances, emotions, and memories that is is often easier to notice the path that choice andinfluence create in someone else’s story.” This part of our attraction to each other: what can welearn from our story that helps us sees our own? We imagine ourselves in each other’s stories. Inthe first half of this book, we invite you into our story in hope that we would find our own storymirrored there. Here’s the voices to carry the narrative: a young woman in Africa, an old womanin Arizona, a visionary Danish friend, two Episcopalian priests. Our story is contained in each oftheir narratives, and their stories are contained in our own: it’s a treasure hunt. The self-story isthe narrative voice in the stream of consciousness that runs babbling along the edge of ourawareness. Minute by minute this narrative defines who we are and what we are capable, or notcapable, of doing. It speaks a lot of nonsense, and it whispers our greatest truths all jumbledtogether. One of our primary internal tasks is to work with this narrative until the self-storysupports our abilities to grow, to fulfill our promise to the world, to keep our commitments toother people. The self-story is the story we stand on. The self-story is the most influential storyof our lives, yet it is often the one we are least aware of, because it speaks to us largely throughinfluence. Influence is the capacity of something a person, event, or remark to act as acompelling force on our beliefs, behaviors, actions, and opinions of ourselves and others,whether or not we are often unearthing in the therapeutic process. The three questions we tellourselves Will we open the lens to influence and see who we are? How will the world change ifwe do? I’m in Africa. Will Africa let me in?

Spiritual Storyspirituality and how it connects us in our minds and it usually comes from the mother because we werebrought in the world by our moms. It ended with all the things in life looked as mothers, brothers andsisters, cousins, and extended family. We can talk about religion. Religion is also story. Religion growsout of our innate spiritual base, but it takes spirituality and systematizes it to foster uniformity,universality, and immutability. Religion develops a priest class that serves to interpret religious teachingsto ordinary people. It develops a hierarchy, becomes a landowner, becomes protective of its wisdom,centralizes its sacred places and texts. And each religion believes it holds the correct interpretation of theDivine, of human nature, and of the world before, during, and after life. Religion developed in humanhistory at a time when people began to organize beyond locale into larger identifying groups. Before, andeven after, the rise of mary definition of where, and with whom, they belong. Starting five thousand yearsago in India, Hinduism began to consolidate hundreds of local gods and goddess into a complex pantheonof deities to interface between the spiritual world and human society. Just as Krishna brought order toheaven, the priests of Krishna brought order to the continent. Born into this system in 1029 BCE,Siddhartha Guatama Buddha introduced new elements of thought and insight that became codified asBuddhism. In the Middle East, Abraham, born around 1800 BCE, discovered monotheism and foundedJudaism for the twelve tribes of Israel. When Jesus was born into this system, he introduced theologicalshifts that became Christianity, and around 600 CE, Muhammad introduced another shift in monotheismthat became Islam.

Family is the storyThis is true individually, and also collectively wether the collective is the family or society. In thevernacular of Alcoholics Anonymous the shadow is called “ the elephant in the living room.”Everyone knows that something is wrong, but no one speaks it. That obstacle is silence thatobstacle is fear; that obstacle is facing the unknown. Every family I know well enough toglimpse its story has developed family behaviors that perpetuate themselves from one generationto the next. For there are, in every family, corresponding behaviors that thrive in the familyshadow. In the midst of whatever else is going on that is held in the light of story, people alsocome to expect certain negative or unacknowledged behaviors to mysteriously recur. They mayeven regard these things as a family curse. While families often cannot, or do not, “talk aboutsuch things,” other people perceive our familial flaws and do talk about them. Want to know theshadow in your family? Ask your neighbors or a child under five. They live their lives on a largerscale than the rest of us, but what perpetuates who they are, and the urgency with which theirancestral line whispers over the cradle, are no different from our own. If we step up to thechallenge of healing the family story, we need to be grounded in the healing of our personalstory. We start there, standing firm in our own life experience and the person we have becomethrough linking, editing, disorienting, and revisioning our personal story. Consciousness is theability in the human mind to be simultaneously aware of our feelings, our thoughts, and ouractions. What exists in my family that I want to celebrate? What exists in my family that I wantto change? I didn’t want to erase or diminish the reality of who they were and what they livedthrough, and I don’t know if I could have undertaken this work while they were still living, but Iwanted to add my experience to what they handed me. Otherwise, what is evolution for?

The Power of a StoryWe know what negative and positive narrative is capable of doing in our own minds. We know that storyis so powerful it can drive us mad, send us spiraling down in depression, send us reeling into anguish andthat the world can change on a word. We know that story is so powerful it can redeem us, reconnect us,pull us back from the brink, and send us into bliss. Even if we have done those things we ought not tohave done, even if we have betrayed and hurt one another, story is how we start to make amends, start tosee each other again, work to understand. Story is how we come home. Story is a search for community.Open your mouth, grab a pen, type on the keyboard sing out who you are, for I need you. I am looking foryou; you are looking for me. We are tribe. Something is happening to me: I am thrown into the spiral ofmy experience. I’ve never been here before. I am disoriented. But I know I cannot possibly be the firsthuman being to experience this where are the stories? Not that I’m going to live through somethingexactly the way anyone else has, but the purpose of the map is to show us how. And then I take my ownsteps. None of us can judge exactly what is needed: we don’t know; we just set out the stories becausesomeday, somebody will need these clues. You may have entered this book alone; you leave this bookheld in a network of storycatching. It will save your life: for the story that gets one person through makesa map for getting the next person through. Storycatching is really the art of story releasing, of puttinggood stories out in the world, holding them high and tossing them onto the wind like a hawk taking flightinto freedom.

How A Story Connects UsIn the beginning talks about how a story have a sense of self and how it connects us with theworld and outlines our relationship and everything. The power of the story comes into the roomand all the ways a story can connect us and stirr us by words alone. The power of a story isunderstood by the powerful and yet the power of story belongs to all of us, especially the leastpowerful. Then it starts the story of fatherland the family named Baldwin. It begins withsomeone born on 1946 from the Great Falls Deaconess Hospital same place where his or herfather was born in 1920. The person grew up in cities thousand miles east and they would traveland not stop except for breakfast and knowing the end that we knew the gospels truth. I learnedabout The Essential Elements of Narrative it talks a little bit about the stories life is seen throughthe honey jar, slightly distorted by personal experience, perception, inclination, and fancy.Storytelling is not testifying before some arbitrator of “truth” who will judge us. They say thatstory is the way we dribble sweetness over the often harsh realities of life’s everyday grindmeaning like in basketball terms dribble a basketball is sweet but over the harsh realities in thereal world on the court against the opponent of every basketball player’s grind in their everydaylife. Even the story adapts to fit the media and the times like the newspaper. Even on a tvcommercial is a story even a email chain are stories as well. Even at a work environment theywill tell stories that happened to them a while ago or what they promised to someone. Anywhereor anyone can have a story to tell no matter you see or hear there will always be story around usin the world. Even our gestures tell a story. For example our coach will tell his stories about histime coach at Colby or even our teammates will remember the funny and happy times thathappened to them. That’s what we know of the essentials of narrative that anything or anyonecan have story for us to tell.

ConclusionI want to thank everybody who reads this andknows my path to continuing the person I ambecoming and It was fun. I had a great time atCowley and now I set forth to the better thingsin life I will never ever forget Cowley and thememories I’ve made here.