The Speak Up: [Greatest Hits] Silent Stories
Sharing a few of my favorite newsletters from our past platform, so that you wonderful Substackers can get the goods.
A version of this newsletter was first published in October 2023 on The Speak Up’s previous platform
In this newsletter:
- The wild imagination of a silent meditator.
- Trust and uncontrollable narratives
- The discomfort of tapping into authentic communication
Friends,
I’ve been silent here for about a month! It’s been weird to stay so quiet and very un-Hillary to miss my self-imposed deadlines for putting this newsletter out into the world.
Two weeks ago I returned from a 12-day Vipassana meditation course in Western Massachusetts. This was my second one in a little bit less than a year. Last year, after the very first course I declared that it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and why not do this every single year from now on. So I committed. And here we are after round two.
If you are curious about Vipassana and what a ten-day (it’s really 12!) course entails, here’s some more info. There are meditation centers around the world that offer them.
The key information about this course that you need to know for the sake of the story is that there is complete silence between the meditators with the goal of no eye contact or physical contact. Halfway through the 10th day the silence is broken and you spend the remainder of your time (less than 24 hours) at the meditation center able to speak to fellow participants.
Another important thing to note is that you turn in all technology, notebooks, pens, books, etc. All of the ideas and experiences that came to me during this course, were not documented in any way. What I am about to share is a memory of an experience a few weeks after the fact.
And that’s what a story is, really.
I spent 12 days with 115 meditators without learning most of their names, where they were from, why they were there, who they were, or what they planned to do next.
No one knew my name, where I was from, why I was there, who I was, or what I planned to do next.
While in theory you aren’t supposed to make eye contact, let alone interact with other course participants, it is impossible not to observe the people around you. We are all sitting next to each other at assigned seats in the dining hall. We are all sitting on assigned cushions next to each other in the meditation hall. For hours.
I lived next door to fellow meditators.
I walked in the woods and around a field with people in front of me and behind me.
I lined my shearling Arizona Birkenstocks up with indoor shoes of all varieties before I entered for a sitting in the big hall.
I had a tiny, private meditation cell in a Pagoda with meditators in their cells around me.
And while I was there to quiet my own mind, and observe things inside of me and outside of me as they really are, it was impossible to ignore everyone else who was going through this course.
I observed body language and dining hall habits. I looked at their clothes, their facial expressions, and the color and size of their water bottles.
I watched a community of freshly laundered items try to flap free from their clothespins on an outdoor drying line, trying to guess which shirt belonged to which person.
As I encountered my fellow meditators each day, beginning with our 4 a.m. wake-up and ending with our 9:30 p.m. lights out, I imagined their lives outside of where we were now.
I imagined where they lived, their jobs, their families, hobbies, everyday routines, and why they showed up in the place either for the first time or as a returning student. I guessed their personalities and their emotions.
By the time the silence was broken on the 10th day I had built up an entire narrative around each person that I encountered.
So as we started to speak to each other, and I would guess I spoke to about 15 people total, I realized how wrong I was about each person in every possible way. There were unexpected accents, word choices, and energies. Reasons for showing up in this space that I could have never imagined for them. People who knew each other but had to stay apart and in silence, for the entire time we were there. Mothers and Daughters. Husbands and Wives. Friends.
There were all of the other people I wanted to speak to but due to the structure of the day and how overwhelming it was as an introvert to go from this deep quiet place with myself to having more of an outward presentation, I wasn't able to.
It was frustrating because once I was able to listen to the real stories of the real people who were there, I wanted to know them all.
And once I was able to share who I was with words, I knew that I could help other people shatter their imagined narratives of me, and show up as I really am.
The first person I spoke to was the woman who sat to my left in the dining hall. She was the only one I spoke to before the whole experience began and the only one that I didn’t create a narrative for as the days went on. We had spoken enough the first day that I didn’t have to build a world around her. I confessed all of this to her. How it felt weird to speak to only one person just before the course started, how while I was seriously meditating and following all of the instructions and guidelines for the practice, I still found myself creating stories about other people.
“Maybe it’s just me because my whole world is about stories,” I explain to her after giving a bit more context about my life and work outside of this 12-day course.
“Oh, it’s not just you. I did this too. I had a story for every single person here.”
And I don’t think it was just the two of us.
I think most people, when put into this profound group experience without being able to listen to anyone or give voice to anything about themselves, false narratives are going to be generated.
It wasn't just that we weren't allowed to talk, we weren’t allowed to speak for ourselves and elicit stories and information from others.
Extreme meditation circumstances aside, I can also think of moments in time for myself, for my clients, and for people that I don’t personally know where I was (or they were) technically allowed/had the opportunity to speak up and share a story, but their stories stayed silent.
And when my story stays silent, someone else is going to make one up on my behalf. It’s no longer my story. And chances are that story won’t be anywhere near the truth.
I left the meditation course with so much. I’m full of emotions, experiences, and ideas most of which I cannot fully articulate or even comprehend just yet.
But one message that came through loud and clear:
While there will always be false narratives out in the world, I will do everything I can to make sure that everyone (including myself) knows that their story(ies) does not have to stay silent.
I feel further grounded in my mission to help people give voice to their stories, to rewrite the narratives that aren’t serving them anymore, and to get those creators of false narratives to stop imagining and start listening.
There was absolutely a moment earlier this Summer when I thought, “Maybe I don’t want to continue running Tell Me A Story. Maybe I’ll do something else.” I know that several of you reading this heard me say this out loud at some point. But every time I brought this up in conversation I also brought up my passion for supporting people who needed help with their stories, particularly people in the public eye who haven’t always had the chance to own their narrative for one reason or another.
I had to get quiet to really understand this push and pull. And the quiet further proved to me that stories shouldn’t be silent. The pull pulled me further into my purpose.
And while I’m almost certain I’ll have more to meditate on (pun intended), I am thrilled for the clarity that has come through.
Before I sign off, I have two small moments to share.
1️⃣ Last week I attended a virtual podcast taping for one of my favorite shows. The two co-hosts were interviewing a writer whose latest book is getting a lot of media attention due to its subject matter. A few questions into the interview, the writer got up and walked away from her computer. Not because she was upset by anything that was asked of her, but because her dog was requesting a snack.
For the several minutes that followed, she yelled half-formed responses from the other room while we, the virtual audience and podcast hosts, looked at an empty chair.
My first feeling was of anger and I thought, “How could this person, a NY Times best-selling author, do something so unprofessional and weird in the middle of what is supposed to be a captivating and compelling conversation?!?!”
But then I stopped for a moment, took a step back, and changed my response. I smiled, I had feelings of delight and I thought, “Wow. This person is in the public eye in a huge way, is very well-respected, has so much to offer anyone who will listen, and she didn’t care one bit about how she presented herself to these podcast co-hosts or the virtual audience. She was truly herself in that moment, comfortable in her space, and tending to the needs of an animal that she loved. How cool that she can be all of this and do all of this in such a small moment in time.”
What if more people showed up to podcast interviews and book launches in an unexpected, unapologetic, true-to-them way? Instead of walking out of the gallery view, we might get a headstand, a pedicure, or tears of joy. Who knows!
The possibilities are endless. What would you do?
2️⃣ I’ve been having a lot of one-on-one conversations lately as I continue to expand my own visibility and professional network. And the more I talk about my mission to help people craft a new narrative and eradicate old stories and false narratives, the more people respond with “Oh wow, you need to talk to so-and-so, they need this work right now. ”
A few weeks I was having this type of conversation and the response I got was this: “My best friend is in the most current cast of [insert name of Reality TV series here]. The show has not aired yet and she told me that the entire cast has a group text chain going to express all of their panic and fear of how their story is going to be told now that everything is completely out of their control.”
This panic is universal regardless of how you are in the public eye.
And while there is a certain amount of story surrender that happens when one agrees to join a reality show, there is absolutely a way to have story preservation and a strong enough sense of (and trust in) self to stand up to the noise that comes with being visible. I’m here for the preserving, the re-writing, and the self-actualizing. It’s possible! That’s it for now. Thank you for reading.
Speak soon,