turns out it was his dad’s story

Steve was digging into why he felt he couldn’t leave the job he’d had for 29 years. “I’ve never liked this job,” he told me. “I stayed in this same line of work my entire adult life to feed my family and keep a roof over our heads. I always hated, hated doing this work. But it paid well, and we had a nice house. Never mind that we were miserable. And I was miserable. And now the kids are nearly out of college, and my marriage has been over for six years. So why can’t I just quit? What’s happening with me?”

I asked Steve to tell me what he had been told about men and work, but to put it in the form of a story. “Okay,” he said. “There was this man, and he believed that he didn’t have the right to do work that he found fulfilling – so he was doomed to do work that crushed his soul, in order to make sure his family was taken care of.”

A story work exploration has many questions to choose from, to go deeper into the story and see it more clearly. Something prompted me to ask one of the big ones. This story felt very personal – and one way to track where those strong personal messages come from, is to find where the story came from. I said, “Tell me who modeled that story for you, and how.”

Steve took a big breath and said, “My father.” Steve talked about his father’s career – high points and setbacks – and how his famously hard-working father died young of a heart attack. “And he always said all he ever wanted was to be a good dad – which was sad! He was so fucking angry because he had a job he hated, and he was totally emotionally checked-out, but made sure we all had money for college.”

Steve began to cry.

Story work seeks to dig into not only the story that has guided our behaviors and beliefs, but also what its effects have been on us. It’s important to slow down and pay attention to the moment where the story has emerged from our unconscious and into our awareness. It’s often connected to feelings in our bodies – in this case, a deep pain and sadness in Steve.

“How willing would you be to take some time, and write out the story of your father’s work life?” I said. Steve laughed over the phone; I was working at home, he was in his truck. “I’ve got my trusty journal and my pen right here – sounds like I’m gonna go do some writing in the park.”

“I think it might be helpful for you to take a long time. Because the story you’ve described has a lot of sadness in it. I encourage you to feel into the grief or anger or sadness you imagine your father might have felt. Let it be part of how you write the story.” Then I added, “And be sure to refer to him by his name – not as ‘Dad.’ In order for this story work to really help you get free from that story, it’s got to be about him, as a person, not as an extension of you.”

So now Steve gets to do a few things.

He gets to see his father’s life and career and struggle and bitterness with the eyes of a grown man, and maybe even as a friend, with compassion.

He gets to do some thinking about what he wants his own story about work to be, starting now.

And, depending on how he chooses to proceed, he gets to discharge some energy and pain that’s been in his own body since he was a kid. Crying is good. We’ve got other tools, too – I personally enjoy rocking in a rocking chair while re-reading a story about something that was painful for me, but now that I see it outside myself, I feel less impacted by it. There’s something about the rocking that helps my body sort the pain and sadness. I think Steve mentioned that he’s going to go do his feeling-work around his father’s story by sitting under a big tree out in the greenbelt and talking to his father about it.