A Spell for Retiring Old Stories

Our lives are made from stories.

Stories help us learn and grow,

by turning our experiences into wisdom.

But, if they’re not allowed to change,

stories can restrict us, and keep us

stuck in old patterns and mindsets.

Let’s learn how to honor those stories,

while setting ourselves free to write new chapters.

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Make Magic:

What stories are you telling about yourself

that feature a main character you no longer relate to?

Let’s re-see those moments in a fuller way,

extract the wisdom they have to offer,

and update the stories to honor the beautiful,

evolving creature you are still becoming.

Transcript: A Spell for Retiring Old Stories

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. So happy that you are here with me today for a spell for retiring old stories. So, this is one of the big things that I help people do. I help people see themselves and see their past differently; to have a more flexible and creative way of seeing where they've been, what they've done, what's happened in their lives. 

And I find that when they can see their selves and their lives more flexibly, what tends to happen is that they get so much more creative and so much more empowered as they are continuing to live and co-create their story or, rather, their stories, because I actually don't think that there is a single story about you or about me or about us. I think there are lots of ways to tell the story. 

So, what do I mean then by an old story? I'll begin here just with an anecdote. [laugh] I remember I was sitting once in therapy with my incredible therapist who really just helped me so much in this life. I don't know how I could have done it without her, actually, any of the big changes that I've made. Really, she helped me to till my own mental and emotional soil to break it open and break it up so that I could sow and plant new seeds. 

OK. Before I get too far into that metaphor [laugh], let's just talk about this moment. So, we were in session, and I was telling her a timeworn, much loved story—and I wonder if you have one of these too—is one that I had told so very many times. I had told it so many times, I was actually a little bored with it. 

It was almost like I would shift into this narrative gear, and I was telling a story. It wasn't even really alive to me anymore. It's just the tale of hardship and woe that I would always tell about leaving graduate school. And the story, for the record, went like this.

Mid-dissertation, after I had completed almost every requirement to complete my PhD, almost everything else was done, but I was mid-dissertation, and I was quite miserable, and I wanted to take a break. I wanted to take one year off, and I didn't have any responsibilities except for writing my dissertation in this moment. So, you know, I didn't have any teaching responsibilities or anything like that. 

And I went to the department head, and I said, "I really need a year off or at least a semester. I need to take a break. I'm quite clear that this would be the very best thing for me right now." And in this program, I had a stipend. I was on a yearly stipend. And, so, I said, "You know, could we pause my stipend, and could I just take a year, and then could I come back?" Right? 

So, can you even hear just I'm—I find this story so boring. So, the department head said to me, "Well, no, or if you really want to do this, we will require a note from a psychiatrist saying that you are unfit to continue in the program." You know, and this is the part when I would tell the story where I would say, "Doesn't that tell you so much about, like, how they treated us, and how they treated mental health, and, you know? 

But now I'll just tell you that, in that moment, I said, "No. I'm actually great. Like, I'm not having panic attacks anymore," which I had been. "I'm not suffering from a lot of anxiety. I actually feel very, very clear that the best thing for me is a break. I feel I'm in an empowered place, and I'd like to take a break."

And they said, "Well, then you'll have to leave the program." And in that moment, I said, "Well, I will. I'm done then." And they said, "OK. But if you ever want to come back, you'll have to reapply." And I said, "Yeah, don't count on it"—or at least that's what I said in my head [laugh]. 

I think out loud, I said, "OK," and I turned around, and I left the office, and I never went back. And, so, I am three chapters and a defense shy of a PhD. So, that's the story that I was telling my therapist and that I had told so very many times. 

And you'll notice that in that story, I'm the hero. [laugh] Of course, I am. I'm the hero, and the department head and the program, they're the villain. And, you know, this story is very contained. Also [laugh], it depicts this kind of turning point or this moment in time, and then it's almost like you could see, like, an ending page that says "The End." [laugh] 

It's like there's not—it doesn't really go on to say what happened next or all the various ways I felt after that. It's like it's a very kind of frozen-in-time story. So, those are sort of three things you can look for when you are looking to apply this spell, the spell to retire an old story. 

One is that you're kind of bored telling it. Like [laugh], it's like, "Oh, boy, here we go. Let me launch into this." It's not really alive for you anymore. Two is that the story has a very clear villain and a very clear hero. And, listen, it may be that you are the villain in the story, or it may be that you are the victim, the heroic victim. And then three is that the story is very like frozen in time. It's like this big dramatic moment or a culmination or a turning point, but then we don't really go beyond it. 

OK. So I told this story to my therapist, and this is how she began to help me to free myself from it, and also really helped me to take this kind of frozen-in-time story, which had kind of like one moral and one meaning and one interpretation, and then to actually integrate it more thoroughly into the fabric of my experience. Yeah?

OK. So, this is what she said. She said, "Hmm, knowing what you know now, like, being who you are now, if you went back into that moment, how would you handle it differently?" So, I love this. What's happening here when you go back into your old, tired story, and think about it not from the perspective of who you were in that moment, right, like the way that I had been telling that graduate school story was the same as I had told it the day after it happened, and then I hung on to that story for like a decade. [laugh] I told the same story.

And what my therapist's question asked me to do was to remember and to assert that I actually am not the same person I was. I have grown. I have gathered wisdom. I see myself differently. I see the world differently. I see my options differently. Right?

And, very importantly, when she asked me, "OK. If you could go back knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?" she was not at all implying that I did the wrong thing. Right? And I want you to, please, like, when you play with this, know that it's not that you did the wrong thing—not at all. 

It's just that when we have a narrative where we are frozen in time, and when we are cast into the role of either the hero or the villain in the story, there's so little flexibility. Right? It's almost like trying to weave a steel thread into a fabric, into a tapestry. It's like, I can't weave it. It's too like rigid. 

And this question of, "Hmm, if you could do it again, knowing what you know now, if you could take this wisdom you've gathered, and if you could go and do things differently, what would you do?" it softens and makes more pliable and makes more creative that narrative thread. Yeah?

So, when I answered this question, I realized, you know, I was pretty impulsive in that moment. Like, you know, I think in that moment, there was a lot of impulsivity going on. I was making these big, bold, life-changing choices in lots of places.

Like, definitely, my hair was pink in this moment. [laugh] I was really asserting my freedom. And I don't regret it. And, at the same time, that kind of woe-is-me tale of finishing graduate school, it really diminished the amount of agency I had in that moment, because I actually did have choices.

When I told and retold that story again and again from the perspective of the big, bad department, you know, denying my autonomy and my mental health, I kind of flattened the story, and I didn't really acknowledge the extent of my own co-creation of that moment. Yeah?

I didn't choose to go to the dean of the school to make my case. I didn't choose to leave the office saying, "Hmm, I'll think about it," and then try again maybe with the help of an advisor or the help of a sympathetic professor. Right?

I also contributed to the drama of that moment by making a very rash choice. And this is not at all to blame myself or to shoulda, woulda, coulda. It's not about that at all. But it is about reclaiming my own agency, my own response ability. I did choose to respond in a certain way in that moment. And in that way, instead of it being a very flat narrative, I get more interested in me as a character in that moment. [laugh] Yeah? 

OK. So that is one way that we can begin to retire an old story. And by "retire," I mean like just to let it go; not to trash it, not to reject it but to honor that it has served its purpose. Right? 

Just like, "Thank you for your service, story. Wow. I really needed you, old story, to help me to feel good and virtuous about doing a really scary thing, which was about leaving graduate school. And while you helped me, while you helped me kind of be the hero of my story, I apologize, I am now bored with you. I am no longer receiving a benefit from telling that story in this way. That story actually flattens and reduces who I am. So, thank you for your service, and you can retire. Let's have a new story, yeah."

So, one way to get that new story, of course, is to look back and to say, "Hmm, knowing what I know now, what would I have done differently, or even knowing what I know now, what else was happening in that moment?" If you find yourself getting into any kind of like self-blame and shame with the "what would I have done differently?" if that does not evoke curiosity for you, then try out this other question, which is, "Hmm, knowing what I know now, what else was happening for me in that moment?"

Because I can look back to the graduate school moment, and I can say, oh, my gosh, like, I really [laugh]—I was changing everything from my hair color, to my romantic relationship, to the way that I dressed, to who I thought I was. I mean, I was really in the middle of a huge identity shift, and that was a part of a huge identity shift. That was only one of many declarations of independence. Yeah?

OK. So, that's one way. I was kind of looking back. Here's another way, and this helps especially when the story isn't so far away. Like I told you, that graduate school story, that was like a decade, even more, like 15 years earlier. So, when you are telling an old, old story, that's a wonderful place to go back into it, and to say, "Hmm, what else was going on there, and what would I have done differently, knowing what I know now?"

If the story you're ready to retire has happened more recently, if it's not so dusty [laugh], then here's a simple way to begin to retire it. "OK. That happened. But what happens next? But now what?" Yeah?

So, OK, you had the falling-out with that person. It was painful. It was scary. It was exhilarating. Whatever it was, you had the falling out. But already, as you are retelling the story, it's just getting a little old. It's getting a little old. It's getting a little boring. You're kind of like settling in to tell the story. It almost feels like pressing on an old bruise to see if it still hurts.

In that case, the question to ask yourself is the question that reminds you that you are an author of your stories. You are telling your stories, and so the question becomes, "Well, OK, so what happens next? So, then what happened? What happened next? Or now what happens?" 

What happens now so that the story doesn't stay kind of frozen in time but, rather, you realize that that moment was simply one of many moments, and that the significance of that moment shifts as your telling of the story shifts. You see what I mean? 

It's like I had this falling out with my friend and, oh, it was painful and it was difficult and, also, I'm still integrating that experience or, if I choose to, I can continue to integrate that experience. I can say, "And here's what I'm learning about myself." And I can say, "And here's what I didn't expect. Here's what happened that I didn't expect would happen." 

And I could say, "And, going forward, here's what I'm thinking now," yeah, so that the story of what happened doesn't get frozen and locked there but, rather, remembers that I, as the autobiographer [laugh], here I am continuing to tell my story. 

I can go back into that old story. I can take what's helpful, I can take what's empowering, and then I can also look at what's not helpful. I can look at what's disempowering. I can basically keep and build on what is helping me to grow, and I can examine and retell what is holding me back from moving on.

Because that really is the point here, is that you, as a hero of the story, you are so complex. There is so much to you. There are so many sides, and each and all of those sides is evolving and growing all the time. The things that have happened in your life, they can absolutely be defining moments where you really were invited into new understanding, new perspective on yourself and your life and the world.

They can be defining moments. But they don't have to define you and who you are. That actually is something that continues to evolve—continues to evolve—and so if you want to take those old stories, and bring their wisdom, bring their best contributions into your life, if you want to stop telling something that's old and boring and bruise-y, or something that's like crystallized or frozen in time, if you'd like to extract the wisdom, and re-vise, meaning, like re-vision, re-see that moment in a fuller way, then this is how you do it. 

All right, my friends, so a spell for retiring old stories. You might go back into it to see it differently, and you might remember that, here you are, still living your story. You might begin to focus on, OK, so now what happens, and what happens next, and what happens after that?

Because, my love, in the end, these old stories, they have served us. They have illuminated some kind of truth about this world. They have helped us to see ourselves in a certain way. They've helped us to see a certain aspect of ourselves. And, at the same time, there is so much more to you, to your life, to what's possible.

And, so, any old stories that are tired and holding us back, when we let them go, we are so much more free and so much more empowered to have a wise and creative say in what happens next. So, I'm excited for you to apply this spell to a tired old story, and see what comes alive. I bet it's you. All right. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording