We’re up to over 400 Facing Stories! So choosing a featured story is getting easier in that we have more to choose from, but more difficult in that we have more to choose from. Make sense or is my brain on Christmas break?
Speaking of Christmas . . . it happens to be the favorite holiday of the son of one of our storytellers who participated in Hillcroft’s Facing Disabilities project in Muncie. Writer Kira Childers began Joyce Cline’s story like this:
Jason loves Christmas. He calls it “ho-ho.” Frosty the Snowman is one of his favorite songs. We used to let him unwrap everyone’s Christmas presents. He just loved the unwrapping, didn’t care what was inside.
In the story Joyce faces her mortality and questions what will happen to her son once she is gone.
The doctors told me during that time I needed to start weaning him off of the visits and the weekends at home so that, when I’m gone, it isn’t such a shock to him.
Read the rest of Joyce’s Journey to Letting Go
The Gift of Time
And all of this is really about time.
The holidays give us the gift of time to slow down and reflect, which reminds me of this anonymous quote:
“The best gift you can give to someone is your time, because you’re giving them something you can never get back.”
Today I colored Rudolph with my daughter. I took the time to color the entire picture, choosing multiple shades of blue for the icy mountains. I was successful on not feeling pulled to anything else – work, even writing this post, or answering emails. That’s not always the case. I’m never more disappointed in myself when I’m “playing with the kids” and checking my email or Facebook on my phone.
I was jealous of how many of the storytellers in the disabilities project could live in the present. J.R. and I attended their holiday party last month. When they danced, I’m pretty sure they weren’t thinking about that email they needed to get back to or how they were going to get a promotion at work this year. They danced in that moment.
We don’t just give time to others, we give it to ourselves too. Give yourself permission to slow down and enjoy the holidays because, as John Lennon said, “Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.”
Thank You for Your Time
We are so thankful for all the time that storytellers, writers, artists, and community organizers have dedicated to the Facing Project. Organizing and executing a Facing Project takes about 240 total man hours of the organizers’ time. Each story takes about two hours of a storytellers’ time and four hours of a writers’ time. Add that all up and more than 7,200 hours of time have been given to the Facing Project.
Thank you to Joyce for sharing her story, and to Kira for sharing her time and skills as a writer and photographer, and thanks to every other storyteller, writer, and organizer who has given time to our storytelling movement.
Best. Gift. Ever!
Happy Ho-Ho!