Honoring Narrative

I don't workshop other people's narratives with them unless they ask me. And usually only then if they're also paying me.

Someone else's narrative about their experience is part of their sacred experience—I don't want to steal this away from them.

When I witness someone in a narrative which strikes me as untrue or harmful to them or to me, I remind myself I am safe. I claim the emotional reactivity which wants to change their story, and honor it instead with witnessing and curiosity.

If a narrative strikes me as particularly problematic *especially then* I do not intervene. I take it as information about this person's practice of forming and believing narratives. I don't want to be the one who gets them to a narrative I experience as healthy and productive, I want to surround myself and engage only with those who are already capable of developing and living into narratives I experience as healthy.

I have nothing to create with someone whose practice of narrative formation and investment troubles me. Entering into relationship with them is entering into a pattern of conflict and repair, always getting to and getting back to a place where creation might be possible.

My energy and attention is for compatibility, cooperation, collaboration, and creation, and I know these are states of being which do not require a journey to get to. These are states I can either be in or be trying to get to, and if I see myself trying to get there, I be there instead.