The Power Of Memory
How to harness the gift of Memory
First Memories - Vashon Island, Washington 1962
My Bucket Of Nails (draft abridged for my book)
I am holding my father's left hand with my right, squinting up into his face, horn-rimmed glasses, his ever sweaty brow, the smile of an engineer at work, sky blue and the sun bright behind him. I swagger with the weight of holding a plastic pail a third my size filled with nails. High stepping my toddler legs over rough sawn lumber and the large rocks for the bulkhead we were building to protect our property from the Puget Sound. We traverse over the construction terrain to the front concrete pad, the beginnings of our new home on Vashon Island.
My Father, Mother, Sister and I outside our A-Frame cabin on Vashon Island
We are building our A-Frame cabin, where I live for the next 12 years. I feel the happy sense of place, belonging and purpose. Like any tools, real or conceptual, nails can be used to build or to harm. Memories can be nails that build the future or hurt in the now, or rust in place losing their integrity.
In my first memory, I carry a bucket of nails. That is the main thing I recall.
In my earlier interpretations of this memory, in my 20's and 30's I believed I was not a fully valued and valid human being unless I was working hard to please and support another; the endless aching work of external validation.
I misunderstood myself and believed that I must be useful to be loved.
I now understand that I LOVE to be useful.
We build our internal home with memories and beliefs about those memories. In learning to bring to them to language, we can release the difficult ones, reinterpret them, and choose something new. This is the great gift of human creativity. We have been given the power, the tools, the capacity to build our lives, to remodel our mind, to make new choices, to refresh our interior architecture at any moment.
[Start here if you came from email]
My father began early entrusting me with a bucket of nails knowing I would help architect the companies and organizations and lifestyles of the future. He taught me to carry nails, fix and prime a well pump, clear sludge from a septic tank, build electric fences, push a cow from behind, dig out dried mud cake from the hot water heater room, run cable down the cliff, and think through how to escape a car that drives into the water, equalizing the pressure by rolling down the windows and swimming out. Taking a ferry to school twice a day for nine years straight I had pictured our car careening off the ramp and into the dark kelp swirled waters. I shared this fear once with my dad and he taught me what to do and had me visualize being successful in an emergency. By age five I knew that the square root of 4 was 2 and 25 was five. By age 6 I could open Heinekens, by age 13 I could talk rudimentary nuclear fission with scientists that would visit our home, and by age 16 I could talk nuclear talk and drink Heinekens at the same time. These became the life skills for a young woman entering the workforce in the early 1980s.
You are the author and architect of your home and of your life.
We often talk casually about our memories being either good or bad. I have been in the process of writing a book and recalling stories from my life. I have come to find that all memories when I relate to them from a place of awareness and choice, shine light from my past onto my NOW and present a gift.
I also understand, when people say “I don’t want to think about that” or “I don't want to go there” or “the past is in the past”.
Yet is it really? Memories that we avoid looking at are always looking at us.
They are patiently waiting for a door to open to deliver a gift. One way to harness the gift of memory is to free-write. A word from Lightyear on free-writing - when I say free-writing I mean write all-ways. Here are some of the ways I am talking about:
- Writing can allow us to “right” the mast of our ship so to speak
- Writing can help us discover our “rites” those passageways of growth
- Writing can shift us from the need to be right to the fulfillment of right living)
As an exercise, recall your earliest memories. Take a few minutes (10 or so) and free-write about the scene and sensations. Do your best to trust yourself and keep writing without editing. Even if you can tell the story with ease verbally, listen to what your fingers want to tell you as their infinitely unique prints speak from another vault of knowledge.
Reread the piece (out loud to yourself) and ask:
What light does this experience shed on what I am facing in my life in this moment?
What is it time for me to understand that I have never understood before?
What gift can I receive now that I could not receive before
When you are done, write me and tell me what you learned.
There is a deep bond between a person and their place of birth. I was taught by my teacher Dorothy Espiau to always work on my city of birth SEATTLE and give it all the love, energy, power and possibility that I am able.
I return to Seattle on April 17th - 19th for a Lightyear LIVE! and as I prepare to turn 60 in 2020, I offer you my BEST bucket of nails. At Lightyear LIVE! we will be diving into topics like The Power of Memory, along with the bedrocks of Lightyear including the Power of Knowing What You Want, Above and Below the Line, and Writing your 10-year Vision.
I have created Lightyear Live! Seattle in partnership with the community of Be Luminous Yoga to bring in the first SPRING of the new DECADE. Together we can hold the field of possibility, choice, and FUN steady while the world around us learns and grows in its ups and downs. Lilacs grow in Washington in the spring. Their scent fills the air with life.
In my lifetime, Seattle has evolved from a sleepy lumber town and stepped onto the world arena as the home of Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks and more. What happens in Seattle affects the whole planet - come and bring in your spring, and both share and fill your bucket!
With thanks and love,
Susanne