In 1950, only one in four Americans was single, notes Harry Buinius in “Table for One: Embracing Singlehood,” in the February 14, 2022 issue of Christian Science Monitor. Today, nearly half are, if you include unmarried partners, LGBTQ individuals, and those not yet married, notes Buinius. 

But it’s still a challenge being single. You get the crappiest table in a restaurant. Couples prefer other couple friends. Some married women are afraid you’ll steal their husbands. (Please!) 

Is the story changing? Yes, but you have to look below the storyline to see it. 

Here’s the Story We’re Told to Believe

In the 1980s, “family values” became the storyline of a culturally conservative movement in the U.S., notes E. Kay Trimberger, professor of women’s and gender studies at Sonoma State University, and author of The New Single Woman. 

Academics, public policy professionals and religious stakeholders pushed this narrative in the 1990s. They also confined it to a traditional definition of marriage, noted Trimberger. 

This was the story they told, despite the fact that Americans were increasingly questioning the institution of marriage and breaking out of it to create a more inclusive, both/and proposition.

Here’s the Underlying Design of the Old Story 

An underlying design drives every story and its moral. In this story, the underlying design pushed on an unsuspecting public is one of silos. An either/or design dictates you live in either one silo or another but you can’t swim between both.

A webbed design says, “Wait a minute. I am both.” And the data is supporting this shift. 

A New Design is Rising Up 

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe V. Wade, in August 2022, Kansas, a Republican state, voted to keep abortion rights. Voters spoke loud and clear: we want control of our bodies, and the right to decide whether to abort a child, regardless of our political persuasion. We may be Republican, but in this issue, we’re voting with our Democratic sisters.

Those voters were doing exactly what the married vs. single narrative shift was doing. They were changing the design that directed the narrative, from a silo design to a web design. And when that underlying design changes, all the narratives laid on top of it—marital status, sexual orientation, political beliefs and more—are signals of deeper and more tectonic change. 

Your role? To stake your claim and support that new design in your life and the circles of influence your life touches, shamelessly.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

Narrative therapists coach their clients to look for a new and more positive story embedded in a client’s “old” and often pathologically riddled story. It’s there, they say. It’s all a matter of where you place your focus. 

This applies to our personal stories. It also applies to a culture’s story. And baby, that new story is bubbling up regardless of what the news says.

The Dragons Are Here

I recently discovered When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill. Billed as a feminist tale, it tells the story of a time in the 1950s when women were transformed into dragons with superpowers. I had to smile. 

(Unbeknownst to most people, the dragon is “the serpent on legs,” noted feminist author Barbara Mor in The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, and represents the feminine.) 

 “The dragons are here,” said the bookstore clerk, an enlightened Gen Z woman, as I perused Barnhill’s book. “The witches are coming next,” she said matter-of-factly. She is the future, I thought, as we talked.

And it’s brighter than the politicians and naysayers would have us believe. Granted, that future may not come for a bit, and its emergence may be bloody (all births are), but trends are hinting at a new story. 

The Witches Are Coming 

The pandemic boded well for witches. In fact, the psychic services industry had a boost during the pandemic, according to IBIS World, an international market research firm. But then, all you have to do is scan current publications to know that. 

Marie Clare’s 2021 article, “The Sacred Boom,” shows the rise in psychic businesses. And a quick search on feminist publication Bust Magazine reveals that over 1,000 articles. Indeed, the witch and witchy themes and things are becoming ubiquitous, including on a recent walk in my ‘hood.

“Witches are everywhere,” a neighbor informed me as I admired her “Witch’s Garden,” as the sign proclaimed. “They are your mothers, your aunts and your grandmothers.” Her confidence was unshakeable. “Sure, we do spells, but we also march in protest. It’s the witch’s way.” 

The Story IS Changing

Today, the word “witch” is being reclaimed, noted Lindsey West, pop culture opinion writer for the New York Times, in her essay collection, The Witches Are Coming. 

I picked up Lindsey’s book because I loved the title, loved her bold writing and matter-of-fact candor about what is. Yes, she writes, women are coming after men, just as men have come after women for centuries. So what? Get ready. Don’t play nice.

“We have to be the witches they always said we are,” writes West, “and counter their magic with our own.” 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

My brother died unexpectedly several years ago. His death gave the grief that had been piling up for the last 10 years an acceptable outlet in a culture that would otherwise tell me to “cowboy up,” as my old boyfriend would say.

Luckily, in 2022, the American Psychiatric Association added “prolonged grief disorder” to its bible, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), noted the New York Times. This means that researchers and clinicians can now treat it with medical interventions such antidepressants and therapy. 

The Good News and the Bad News

The good news is that therapists can now use a DSM code and bill insurance for clients who would otherwise not be able to afford therapy. (My health insurance company, and the therapists who offer such counsel, label it “adjustment disorder.”)

The bad news is that now, something that is a natural part of life, has a pathological spin. My grief—and by association me—carries the label of a mental disorder. Sure, I know otherwise, but I can’t help but think that my psyche is soaking up a subtle message about my lack, as so many of patriarchy’s subtle messages preach. 

Is the DSM a Work of Fiction?

In Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses (HarperCollins, 2022), Sarah Fey recounts her personal journey through multiple mental health disorder diagnoses. She also provides a history lesson on how the DSM came about, and the fiction of its “truths.” 

In her forties, Fay learned that the diagnoses she’d received— and all mental illnesses/mental health diagnoses—are not scientifically valid, she noted in an article in the March/April 2022 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Rather, such diagnoses are subjective and based on self-reported symptoms and a clinician’s opinion, notes Fay. 

I’m sure the folks who made up the DSM story were well intentioned. But biases are implicit; we’re not aware of them. And too often, they spin a tale that continues the larger story of the culture which, in patriarchy, is the “Something’s wrong with me,” story. 

Here’s the Whole Story of Grief 

Grief is painful and heart-wrenching and gut-ugly at times. But the story we tell about it is not one of pathology, as our culture would have us believe. Rather, it is a story, and an invitation, to enter one’s own unique personal mythology and remake some part of it, and oneself. It is, in fact, the ultimate Call to Adventure.

This is the work of the soul. This is also how the soul deepens and expands and is able to hold the entire breath of who we are and how we want to be in the next chapter—and at our own deaths. 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

Do you have big travel plans this year? You’re not alone. But before you hop on the plane, pay attention to the games you’re entering so you can decide whether you’re okay being played, or want to step out of the game entirely. 

The Diversion Game

If you’ve spent way too much time calculating points, and exploring flight or airbnb options, you’re already enmeshed in the Diversion Game. Here’s how it played out for me last year.

I had three piles of priorities to be completed before I left town. One pile held all the work deadlines. Another stack had all my personal priorities, such as making sure the plants got watered. The last stack held my ballot for an upcoming election. Guess which priority went to the bottom of the list? 

The “Me vs. The Environment” Game

The environmental impact of flying is high. In fact, it is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gasses, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. 

So the next time you choose to upgrade to first class, or elect business class on an international flight with a sleeper, keep in mind that you are contributing not less but more to environmental stress.

The “Walk of Shame” Game

Studies have shown that air rage is four times higher in planes that have a first class section coach passengers have to walk through to get to their seats, noted psychologist Keith Payne in The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live and Die. That rage is a result of shame about one’s status in the cultural hierarchy.

The way to win this game is to see the shame for what it is—a story created by the same marketing folks who brought you frequent flyer points. The goal of their game is to get you to consume more. The way you win, however, is to see the holes in their story, claim a new one (see the “Me vs. The Environment” game above), and keep walking.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

“Revisionist history,” that is, revising history to meet economic agendas, is happening across the globe today. And it is occurring in both autocratic and democratic societies, noted New York Times columnist and international reporter Max Fisher. But it’s nothing new. 

Ever since the Bible, those in power have been rewriting history to meet their own economic needs. But unlike those early days, we’re smarter now, or so we think. Alas, too many of us are being played in a larger con game.

Scoring: Business Models In Disguise

Scoring drives every game and the game of revisionist history is no different. That scoring takes the form of the business model. It’s how the game designers make money and win. 

Luckily, journalists are exposing that scoring for what it is, especially in the U.S. 

• Francisco Cantu outlined the immigration business models in his beautifully crafted memoir, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border.

• Benjamin Lorr outlined the grocery industry business models in his engaging narrative nonfiction work, The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket.

• Amelia Pang exposed the heart-breaking business model behind made-in-China products in Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods.

Here’s the Con: Your Personal Score 

Your life is your personal scoring mechanism. Like the game designers, your goal is to “win,” that is, to make money and build wealth, and/or to live emotionally pain-free. So you get smart about it. You order from Amazon. You don’t open the lid on emotional challenges. You shrug your shoulder with a “What can I do?” attitude about social issues. You turn your back on anything that might disrupt your comfortable lifestyle.

Then, you tally your personal score. If it’s in the black, for instance, if you saved money or didn’t feel any pain, you think you’re winning. But alas, your “wins” are part of the larger game. You’re doing exactly what the big-money game designers wanted: boosting their bottom lines and bowing to their agendas, often at the expense of others or the society. 

What You Can Do About the Larger Game

• Make sure your (values) ladder is up against the right wall. That means looking below the storyline, of cheap goods for instance, to the business model a company is using and all the ways it makes its money. Then, assess if what they do and how they do it, aligns with your values. If it doesn’t, step out of their game.

• Decide to look and live more deeply. Look below the storyline you’re being fed. Don’t turn away from emotional pain. Confront the dragons of personal and social dis-ease and befriend them. (You’ll find, by accident, a more meaningful life.) 

• Do nothing. Continue to live without much thought to how the larger game’s scoring impacts all those who contribute to it. Make your cage comfortable (a nod to Virginia Woolf) and live within its confines. 

It’s your move.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

The body is a myth-making machine, and offers up, time and again, in our aches and ills, a deeper story, a more meaningful narrative that begs to be remade.

I saw this myth-making in action many years ago, when I led a women’s circle. I asked the women to tell a story about themselves. As they did, they did something I hadn’t expected: all the stories were about the body. 

The Body’s Myths

Every myth I heard was different. One woman talked about her flat chest and how the boys in school made fun of her. Another talked about her “chipmunk cheeks” her mother discussed with her friends. Another talked about the body brace she wore from ages 13-18 and that she never felt like she fit in after that. 

As the women told their stories, I saw the myths buried below the stories’ facts—to learn how to fit in, to stand up for oneself, to accept oneself. I saw, too, the heroism demanded to face and transform those myths.

What is a Myth?

A myth is a symbolic story. Traditionally, it is “a story that is make-believe on the outside but true on the inside,” according to Robert Atkinson, in The Gift of Stories: Practical and Spiritual Applications of Autobiography, Life Stories and Personal Mythmaking. 

But that dual vision can also be applied to the body’s mythic coding, I learned first-hand.

I was grappling with a colon issue at the time, and had just written my life story for a graduate school assignment. (I was also reading Atkinson’s book simultaneously.) So, as the author suggested, I went hunting in that manuscript for the symbols of my body, and the underlying myth.

Red: A Mythic Clue

When I went hunting in that manuscript, the symbol “red” was everywhere.  

• It was in the color of the first chakra when I couldn’t digest formula at six weeks old. 

• It was in my father’s legacy of Scarlet Fever that I had in childhood.

• It was in my red school uniform and the red play clothes I insisted on wearing.

“Red” represents the right to have what you need to survive. It is my task, my soul work, one of my personal myths as I travel through this physical life and the life of my body.

How to Release a Myth

In American Music, author Jane Mendelsohn tells the story of a massage therapist who works with a PTSD patient and, accidentally, releases his myths. The premise of the book is that “…the past sits in our own bodies, buried beneath our muscles and bones,” notes Jennifer Gilmore in a New York Times book review. Over time, the past “…turns mythical.”

Our task then is to surface those myths, using whatever means we can—bodywork, journaling, artwork, movement, sound and so much more—and transform them emotionally.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

The story of Gods and humans has multiple versions. Each is a metaphoric container—a story—driven by a “truth,” aka “the moral of the story.” But that, too, is a fiction. To change the story then, you have to work at that deeper level.

Here Are Some Versions of the Story

Mathematicians believe the universe is a giant simulation. And when we discover a mathematical truth, we are unearthing aspects of the code the Master Programmer used, writes mathematics professor Edward Frenkel.   

Gaming industry social scientists translate the story into gaming language. They suggest we’re living in a giant game where Master Game Designers and Storytellers dictate our behavior. If that’s the case, we can’t win the game, but we can maneuver through it, or step out of it entirely once we see it. 

Religious and spiritual leaders translate the story into their language. Divine figures and sacred texts dictate our behavior, they tell us. They build holidays and holy days around such stories. We imbibe them and embed them in our psyches.

• There is the story about the god impregnating a human (Christmas).

• There is also the story of a human rising to the level of the gods (Easter). 

Scientists offer two versions of their story, one old and one new.

• We live in a physical, mechanistic world (Newtonian science) you can know—and control—by taking its parts apart.

• We live in a relational field (quantum physics) where what you look for is what you find and where you are, in fact, the Creator.

Every version of the story follows a similar design, an either/or hypothesis: there is us (powerless) and there is something outside ourselves (powerful).

Here’s How to Work at the Deeper Level and Change the Stories

Every story has an underlying design—the moral, aka “truth,” of the story—that drives all its versions. So to change the story, and all its versions, you have to work at a tectonic level. With the story of Gods and humans, what if we changed the underlying moral—the design— of the story to include both parts of the equation?

That is, what if we are both human and divine (as quantum physics hints at)? What if we are both parts and a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts? What if we are the gamed and the game designer, the Master Programmer and the programmed?  

Not only would this disrupt the current story and its versions. It would also offer something beyond our wildest comprehension: a greater truth, a deeper knowing, a more glorious mystery that we can do little more than fall into.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

Retail therapy is alive and well. (It was tested and won during Covid.) And although its benefits are temporary, I have to remember that’s the game. We’re programmed to keep shopping, and playing.

It Wasn’t Always this Way

Once upon a time, retail therapy was a foreign term. People lived frugally, writes Yval Noah Harari in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. In fact, for most of history, they avoided luxuries, didn’t waste food, and repaired their clothes rather than buy new ones. 

Prior to the retail therapy mantra, scarcity was the belief system—and the reality—by the lower classes. It was also morally ethical. (Think the Puritans.) For the upper class, writes Harari, it was a different story. They could afford such luxuries, and they did and flaunted those luxuries. 

Then, the Story Changed

Centuries later, when the Upper Class invested in the Industrial Revolution and goods were produced at breakneck speed, those in industry faced a market challenge, writes Harari. The challenge: who will buy all the goods produced so we can continue to grow economically? Enter shopping and its stepchild, retail therapy. It was a simple solution to a market problem. 

This solution demanded a flip-flop in the social story and its underlying belief. The old belief was that scarcity was a fact of life (except for the rich) and that frugality was not only socially responsible but also ethically moral. The new belief, and story, was its opposite. 

But It’s Still the Same Game 

The problem with the new story is that it’s a con. It’s still the old story (of oppression) with an old belief (“we—the rich—dictate the game and the rules”) but with a modern narrative (shopping and retail therapy are good for you).

And like all good narratives of oppression, refined over time and threaded into a culture, its tentacles become our beliefs and our story. “I deserve this, after all, we say,” even as we are doing little more than lip-syncing the cultural story.

How to Change the Game

If you’re caught in the loop of retail therapy this season, do what Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, suggests. Redefine shopping to include the social and environmental value of things. 

Indeed, when I purchase something that is “Oregon made,” or talk with the owner of my favorite local restaurant, I feel a “retail therapy” buzz down to my toes. And that buzz outlasts any mindless retail therapy at a big box store.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a mouthful. But if there ever was a magic wand for unsticking old stories (and unhealthy patterns), this may be it. Here’s the scoop.

Trauma lodges in the “fight or flight” folds of the body we cannot get to consciously, note trauma experts. So it must be derailed in surreptitious ways. Enter EMDR and its stepchild, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), also called “tapping.” They get below the storyline where the belief is anchored. 

These modalities work. Indeed, numerous scientific studies, including a 2011 study and a 2014 study by the National Institutes of Health, speak to the efficacy of EMDR. 

How EMDR Works

EMDR employs bi-lateral stimulation, such as tapping opposite arms, to reprogram the brain. The brain then sends new direction, and beliefs, to all the places in the body where trauma stubbornly holds onto the old story.

Bruce Lipton, MD and author of The Biology of Belief, defines this circuitry. The mind controls the body through the nervous system laced throughout the body, notes Lipton. 

When the nervous system perceives a threat, real or imagined, it puts the body on alert. The body, then, responds with a “flight or flight” readiness. (When I was younger, my body would break out in a sweat whenever I confronted someone like my dad.) EMDR short-circuits that alert system. Then, it reprograms it

What EMDR Looks Like in Action

“Tap your arms like so,” my therapist says, over Zoom. She hugs herself and taps her upper arms. I embrace myself and mimic her example.

“Now, close your eyes and sink into that memory. Remember what it felt like to hear your dad’s voice and his anger.” 

I do as I am told, and suddenly I am five years old and trying so hard to be good. But the shame—of not being good enough, and later pretty enough or smart enough or thin enough—fills every pore. The tears catch me off-guard. I am surprised how quickly they come, even now, after all these years.

But this is how the old stories and their outdated belief systems work. They get under your skin, literally, and hold on for dear life until new programs, such as EMDR, replace them.

But EMDR is not a panacea alone. It also demands that you go out in the world and enliven the new belief with behaviors. You book the massage. You end an unhealthy relationship. You speak up for yourself. In these acts, you begin to live your way into the new story. 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

Childhood trauma shapes our lives in ways both obvious and subtle. It also, often, offers the perfect conditions for finding our work in the world, if we are brave enough to face it. So it was for expressionist artist Clyfford Still.

Still’s childhood trauma began in the wheat fields of Canada, where his father used him as slave labor, cutting wheat. It was backbreaking work that often left his hands bloody, notes a documentary on his life and life’s work.

At one point, Still’s father dug for a well. To see if he had hit water yet, he tied a rope to his son’s ankle and lowered him down the well, head first. As you might guess, this early childhood trauma followed Still the rest of his life. It is evident in his artwork, which invariably includes a long, light-colored or red-colored, vertical line that runs down the middle of a dark background.

I don’t know what Still was feeling when he created such art, but I can’t help but think that each time he picked up a paintbrush, he confronted that early childhood trauma, and re-storied some part of it and his own fears.

Still was a nonconformist. He held himself to high standards creatively, and used his art, as most artists and writers do, to work through emotional entanglements and the childhood trauma that invariably is part of that. Today, his work stands out. There is even a museum dedicated to him, located in Denver.

Childhood trauma offers us two paths for working with it. We can see it as a burden, a heavy stone to drag around. But we can also choose to face it and re-story it. In that act, the pathology becomes a mythology, the victim a hero. 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

If you’ve ever worked in a cubicle, you know how it feels. Not good. Luckily, we got out of that prison during Covid and many of us thought the cubicle was dying. Not quite, as many workers return to the office. But we got a taste of what was to come: the death of an antiquated power structure, despite what those in power preach. 

Early in my writing career, I worked day jobs, invariably in a cubicle, or worse, in its precursor, a bullpen, that is, an area where junior employees were grouped together. Granted, the cubicle was an improvement, but it didn’t change how I felt: watched and judged.

Little did I know then that the cubicle evolved to do just that. 

The Cubicle as Symbol of Power

The height of your cubicle’s wall—they come in short, medium and tall—may be an indication of your company’s need to watch you and make sure you’re doing your job. 

That’s because, “…space in an office often reflects the way power operates in a workplace,” Nikel Salvo, author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, said in a 2014 Atlantic interview. “Design expresses…relationships of hierarchy, control, and authority.” So it goes with the cubicle.

But that wasn’t its original intention. 

The Cubicle as Peaceful Oasis

The first cubicle design appeared in 1964. It was envisioned as a “…mind-oriented living space,” with style, quality materials, color, openness and lots of space, writes Rodd Wagner in Forbes a May 3, 2020 article.

The cubicle went downhill almost immediately, driven by, of course, the bottom line. “Things got progressively claustrophobic from there,” writes Wagner. 

This devolution of the cubicle design was not meant to be comfortable. It was meant to control. 

The Cubicle as Prison Cell

In 1791, Jeremy Bentham published an architectural design that enabled a boss to observe those in his care, reported Thomas McMullan in The Guardian on July 23, 2015. That (cubicle) design was first used in the National Penitentiary in England.

Nearly 200 years later, French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault nailed what’s really going on. The design and all its fractal echoes—in a society, in a prison, in an office cubicle—is used to subjugate its citizens. 

It creates a vigilance in the prisoner or the citizen to “be good” because you never know when the guard—or boss—is watching. You become, in effect, your own internal watchdog. (This is, in fact, the most sophisticated form of oppression.)

In a cubicle, the walls are short. You never know who will walk by. You never know when the boss or a snoopy co-worker is watching you, so you don’t have long personal phone calls. You don’t pick your nose. You don’t play solitaire. You certainly don’t fart.

All that is changing, thanks to the shifting sands of business. And even if those in power don’t like it, eventually, the cubicle walls will fall down completely and with them, the hierarchical design of society itself.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

The “spiritual but not religious” market segment now makes up 27 percent of the U.S. population. That’s up 8 percentage points in the last five years, according to Pew Research. If this is your market, or the place where your peeps hang out, it just got easier to find them.

The spiritual but not religious are also called “nones” by sociologists—yes, really!—because they check the “none” box on all the applications of life. And they share some common characteristics, according to Pew.

The spiritual but not religious: 

• Are more highly educated than the general public

• Have attended some college (a third of them have college degrees)

• Identify as Democratic (52%) vs. Republican (39%).

Do the Spiritual But Not Religious Really Turn Away From Religion? 

Yes and no. 

What could be happening, according to Linda A. Mercadente, author of Belief Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious, is the “…conceptual amputation of spirituality from religion.” The result is a freedom from religious traditions, authorities and constraints. 

In other words, the spiritual but not religious retained the same core beliefs. They just repackaged them. 

What’s Inside the Spiritual But Not Religious Packaging

Both religion and spirituality share four basic components, according to Mercadente:

• Belief in a larger and more transcendent reality 

• A desire to connect with that larger reality

• Rituals and practices to aid that connection

• Behaviors that show that connection, e.g., yoga, meditation, etc. 

What all of this information provides is a clearer way to identify the spiritual but not religious demographic—to find your peeps, to market to them, to create a groundswell of social change. And story may be a large part of that.

Are the Spiritual But Not Religious Merely Mythologists-in-Waiting?

The spiritual but not religious have been with us for a long time, suggests Karen Armstrong, a leading world thinker on human belief systems. In her excellent little book, A Short History of Myth, Armstrong succinctly traces the core beliefs of the spiritual but not religious (although she doesn’t name this group specifically).

This need to connect with something greater, notes Armstrong, has been with us since our first ancestors walked the earth. They are our spiritual but not religious forefathers, you might say. In pre-modern cultures, mythology was not just the stories you told yourself to get through a hard day and a hard life. Mythology was also a form of psychology; it helped people find their way and place in the world. 

So perhaps the growth in the spiritual but not religious demographic speaks to a deeper and more ancient yearning the world has always been hungry to satiate. 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

Compassion fatigue emerges without warning—when you hear a news story, or talk with a friend, or see an elderly woman who reminds you of your mother struggling, pushing her walker down a busy street. You want to help. You don’t know how. You do nothing.

These are the images that wake me regularly. With them often comes a sense of helplessness and self-loathing—for driving on, turning off the news, not calling the friend more often. But as this monster visits me more frequently, I’ve learned to name it for what it is—compassion fatigue—and, if not tame it, at least manage it. 

What is Compassion Fatigue?

“Compassion fatigue” is a state of exhaustion and dysfunction—biological, psychological and social—from prolonged exposure to the suffering of others, note psychologists. 

First identified in the 1950s in nurses, and later explored as the fall out of being in a “first responder” job, compassion fatigue was studied in-depth by psychologist and family therapist Charles R. Figley, PhD. It is the shadow side of compassion, the Achilles’ heel of all those who work in caregiving professions, be they nurses, therapists, firefighters and more.

Since the coronavirus, however, compassion fatigue, like the virus itself, has spread into the entire population. Those who are most susceptible are also, often, the most compassionate and because of that, feel the sting of compassion fatigue most acutely.

How to Reduce the Sting of Compassion Fatigue

For those of us who are more prone to feeling the pain of others, there are several ways to deal with compassion fatigue: 

• You can keep busy so that you don’t feel the suffering of others, but the result is a life—and world—without compassion. 

• You can allow the suffering of others to break you down emotionally, but this is personally debilitating and does little to enable the loving work of compassion. 

• You can identify what counters compassion fatigue—compassion satisfaction—and implement acts of self-care to bring light into the darkness. 

Compassion fatigue expert Beth Hudnall Stamm, Ph.D. (retired) offers self-care tools to alleviate compassion fatigue especially during Covid. 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

I was a child of patriarchy, aka a good little Catholic girl, until I wasn’t. And despite the Confessional, a 16th century invention that offered a divine intercessor—a man, of course—who could pardon you with the wave of his patriarchal wand, my sins haunted me for many years. 

During my formative years, I had two choices as a good little Catholic girl. I could grow up to be: 

• The virgin (think the Virgin Mary), or

• The whore (think Mary Magdalene).

If I failed to conform to the proper role patriarchy dictated—guess which one that was?—the price of admission was guilt.

Mea Culpa

Up until my fifties, guilt was my constant companion. Little did I know then that this very personal feeling was a psychological tool used by a society, in this case patriarchy, to keep its subjects in check. Freud believed this and had no use for religion noted religious studies professor Robert C. Fuller in Wonder: From Emotion to Spirituality. 

It took seven years of deep therapy, and a graduate program that included patriarchy’s opposite—feminist theory and women’s prehistory—to show me this. That was when I saw how the beliefs of patriarchy had been mainlined into my personal belief system through the Catholic Church. 

The Sins of the Fathers

What I never quite understood was why my Catholic upbringing had such an impact on my life and why the guilt never quite left. Then I read James Carroll’s The Truth At the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul, and understood why.

Carroll, a former Catholic priest and op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe, shows where the teachings of Jesus got off track. He also labels the Catholic Church for what it became: a power structure of patriarchy designed specifically to encourage misogyny and male supremacy. 

The Catholic Church is one of patriarchy’s most powerful tools. That is because, notes Carroll, “…it claims nothing less than divine authority for itself.” 

It wasn’t always like that, notes Carroll. The true teachings of Jesus related to love, compassion and healthy erotic pleasure. But when patriarchy’s power took over the pen, 1,000 years after Jesus’ death, the story was rewritten to include judgment, sin and sex as evil (and women the evilest of all). Hence, the Confessional.

But today, as even church leaders call out the patriarchy, a subtle shift is occurring in the larger narrative. Our task is to examine our own stories, and more so, the beliefs that anchor them, to be sure the only story we’re living is our own.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

What is your calling? If you know, you’re one of the lucky ones. I was not, or so I thought. But the life stories of people such as Oliver Sachs, neurologist, author and pioneer in narrative medicine, helped me “see” what was there all along. 

Sachs’ calling was showcased in the story shared in Awakenings, a movie starring Robin Williams about patients momentarily brought out of their catatonic states after being given a drug. As in his other books, Sachs documented the “inner landscape” of medical conditions, and made them accessible to a general audience. 

“I storied them back into the world,” said Sachs in the PBS documentary Oliver Sachs: His Own Life. He gave them a narrative about their lives, he said, that provided meaning and purpose. In those acts, he claimed his calling even if he couldn’t see it at the time.

Sachs did not come to his calling easily. He was a closet gay man during a time when admitting that would land you in jail. That, coupled with the medical community’s lack of acceptance and respect for his work, led Sachs down a self-destructive, drug-riddled path early in his life. Lucky for us, he course-corrected.

In his seventies, when he started publishing, Sachs’ calling blossomed. He finally won the respect he had longed for, both in the medical community and the larger world. (Indeed, his way of interacting with patients is now the focus of programs such as Columbia University’s narrative medicine program). Sachs also found, quite by accident, the romantic partner that would be with him until his death at 82.

Sachs’ story reminds me that there is an inherent and intuitive design that guides our own stories and enables us to live our callings, even if we can’t see that design at the time. Yes, naming is claiming. But sometimes, the pull toward something you love—that intrigues you, excites you, impassions you, and insistently demands your attention—is all you need recognize.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

Every society has a grand narrative that dictates the culture’s norms, note narrative therapists Alan Parry and Robert E. Doan in Story Re-Visions: Narrative Therapy in the Post-Modern World. That grand narrative also dictates the role you play in your personal story—until you challenge and change it. 

I remember the scene distinctly: I was sitting at my kitchen table and all the walls were decorated with flip chart paper. As part of my graduate studies, I had begun charting the laws, or morals, of the grand narratives of two major types of societies.

I had read the work of Riane Eisler, a cultural theorist, several years prior. In The Chalice and the Blade, Eisler had identified two designs a society could choose from for its grand narrative: dominator and partnership. The former was hierarchical; the latter was a network of relationships. 

I decided to map the design of those grand narratives, informed in part by my studies in Jungian psychology and feminist theory.

Choose Your Adventure

A top-of-the-head activity, I documented the designs of two grand narratives, each of which fell roughly into masculine and feminine ways of being and leading.

Choice 1: A Patriarchal/Masculine Design

I began with the grand narrative for the American culture I’d been born into, in large part to understand why I had such a negative self-image. This grand narrative’s morals, or beliefs, leaned toward the masculine and, in their aberrant forms, patriarchal.

These morals, or beliefs, included:

• Life is dualistic (either/or)

• Reason and analysis rule

• Human beings are imperfect/sinners

• Hierarchy/power over ensures survival 

Choice 2: A Matriarchal-Matrilineal/Feminine Design

At the time I was also studying feminist theory and women’s prehistory, so I also mapped the grand narrative, and related beliefs or morals, for societies whose orientation was more feminine.

These included beliefs such as: 

• Paradox is part of life

• Intuition and emotions give us information

• Human beings are magical/spiritual beings

• Symbiosis and systems thinking ensure survival.

Fictional Bones

As I sat in my kitchen, and stared at the my handiwork, I suddenly saw the fiction of beliefs. I was tangentially aware of this when creating stories for corporate training. But I had never seen that fiction in my culture’s grand narrative, nor been aware of how those beliefs my own story to my detriment.

Why, I was a pawn in a larger social game, I realized. So was my dad, whom I had blamed much of my life for my issues with men and power. The grand narrative was manipulating us both. 

As I stared at the pages that littered those walls, it dawned on me: If it’s all stories anyway, I could choose the one I liked. I could play out the role of the sinner, as my patriarchal religious upbringing demanded I do. But I could also choose the role of a magical being, as matriarchal/matrilineal cultures suggested as an option.

Guess which role, and story, I chose? 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

The happily-ever-after myth was anchored in my psyche when I was a kid, in the tale of Cinderella. All the Hallmark movies that came later only reinforced it. But in my mid-forties, I saw the myth perpetrated on me for the half-truth it was. 

Prior to that, I bought into the happily-ever-after myth. I spent my twenties and thirties looking for the prince. When I was thirty-five, I thought I found him. I married him. We moved to the castle. We did not live happily ever after. 

I wanted to know why. 

The Spiral Path to “Happily Ever After” 

 I told myself if I could define the stages to “happily ever after,” I could have it. So I read about: 

• Women’s history, buried below men’s history, in prehistory 

• Women’s psychological development, different than men’s

• Women’s spirituality, including ancient and intuitive practices. 

From this research, I developed my first crude “happily ever after” map. I shared it in workshops. I traveled through it personally. I began to reclaim parts of myself. Several years later, in graduate school, I translated its “happily ever after” stages into the language of story—personal, ancestral and cultural. Again, I traveled through it, this time in a deeper and more embodied way. 

What You See Is Not What You Get 

Personal and cultural myths such as “happily ever after” are not what they appear to be, I learned. They are symbolic and metaphoric portals to the soul’s deeper narrative, buried below the ego’s storyline. 

Whether it is a fictional prince like the one in Cinderella, or a real one, such as my ex or the partner who came after him, each reflected the part of myself I didn’t own or couldn’t see or didn’t want to see.  

Indeed, the characters in the happily-ever-after tale of Cinderella—the protective mother, the magical godmother, the victimized child, and the wicked stepsister—were all parts of myself. Alas, so, too was the prince. He would not save me. I had to save myself. 

Or, as writer Pam Houston said, “I had to learn how to be my own cowboy.” 

I am still learning. It has not been an easy happily-ever-after trail ride. 

The Spiral Continues

But it has been a rich one. And as I think about dating once again, after one too many trail rides and a backside sore from the saddle, I have to wonder. What psychic footing will the next prince offer in my journey to “happily ever after”? 

What does your prince—past, present or future—offer you? 

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

Symbols such as plants, animals and colors, bring messages to us from the unconscious, writes Jolande Jacobi, an associate of Carl Jung’s, in Complex/Archetype/Symbol in the Psychology of C.G. Jung. But first, you have to know how to decode them. 

I was reminded of this when Covid was raging. I walk daily for exercise, to think, and to decode nature’s symbols. But that first year of the pandemic, when the rainy season in Portland was over, everyone in my ‘hood was outside. I met many of them, including one neighbor in particular, a man near my age and divorced, who lived several doors down. 

As we got to know each other, this neighbor—I’ll call him Jack—gave me the gift of vegetables all summer and more so, the gift of these symbols and their subtle messages. 

How Symbols Guide Us

In June, Jack invited me to see his vegetable garden and offered me an artichoke from his artichoke bush. Several artichokes came after that. When the artichoke season was nearing its end, he snipped a bloom and gave it to me. 

When I looked up the symbolic meaning of the artichoke, just for fun, I was stunned by how accurate, and personally relevant, it was. 

The artichoke, as a universal symbol, invites us to work with the heart chakra according to Anthony William, a medical intuitive, in Life-Changing Foods. It asks us to:

• Break down the protective armor around the heart

• Open up the soft, vulnerable center so we can give and receive. 

When Jack first offered his friendship, I pulled away, a knee-jerk reaction as a result of my history with men. The symbol of the artichoke showed me how that behavior was closing me off to what I longed for—relationships and community. It also showed me what I could do to change. 

 Symbols as Cosmic Nods

In the past year, I’ve gotten to know Jack better. He’s helped me with some “handyman” tasks. I’ve shared some of the bounty from my kitchen. He checks on me occasionally when a holiday rolls around, and I do the same. 

This summer, Jack’s artichoke bush once again bloomed. But this time, my heart was more open, thanks to a year of insights and deeper work triggered by the artichoke symbol. Indeed, when Jack and I recently went out to lunch, something we do occasionally now, he presented me with the artichoke’s bloom. Knowing the symbolic meaning of this beautiful blossom now, I smiled at the cosmic acknowledgement about my progress.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

The rosy job outlook for social artists is hinted at in a recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report. And although it quantifies more traditional mental health professions, “…a rose by any other name…,” to quote Mr. Shakespeare. 

The mental health industry is expected to grow by 25 percent between 2019 and 2029, according to the BLS. But for all of us whose work is about emotional wellbeing, those numbers are applicable. Indeed, together, we are in the meta-industry of Social Artists.

What is a Social Artist? 

Jean Houston, a mythologist and scholar, defined the term “Social Artist” years ago: an individual focused on personal and planetary evolution. 

Increasingly, Houston’s definition included heads of state and world leaders. But Social Artists also work locally and in small groups, and one-on-one. His/her/their work is defined not by context but by a way of being, seeing and working.

Implied in Houston’s definition of Social Artist is a high level of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), a term popularized by psychologist Dan Goleman 25 years ago. (In a nutshell, EQ is the ability to “intuit” feelings, motives and concerns in oneself and others.)

Are You a Social Artist?

Social Artists are in many professions, notes Houston. They work as:

• Therapists

• Coaches

• Spiritual companions

• Educators

• Artists

• Consultants

The above list is not inclusive. Many Social Artists transcend categories, or create new ones altogether. They also use the skills of the Social Artist in nonprofessional contexts. 

Why It’s Important to Know You’re a Social Artist

For many years, I thought I was odd, and the work I did an anomaly. But when I enrolled in a graduate program in Transformative Language Arts, I found my way home. 

This is what naming does and why it is powerful. It locates us in the larger story. It allows us to find our peeps. It gives us language to say who we are and what we do. It also places our story in a larger context.

There is also a social boon to the creation of a broader umbrella of “Social Artist.” We help to melt the silos and transform the larger social model itself. 

The Collective Call for Social Artists 

After the storming of the U.S. capitol on January 6, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi invoked the Song of St. Francis. As she asked her colleagues to be a “channel for peace,” I noticed golden angel wings behind her, framing her body. 

Of course, they weren’t angel wings (were they?), but that momentary shift in reality reminded me that Forces of the Light—and Darkness—are all around us, coaxing-coaching-commanding us to birth a new story and mythology. 

Are you a Social Artist? If so, perhaps it’s time to rally your circle of peers, and build the energy, skills and inspiration required for planetary evolution. It’s time for me to.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com

When a society is in transition, it reviews its mythology, that is, the collection of stories that define it, to see if they are still accurate, notes Karen Armstrong in A Short History of Myth.  And baby, are we transitioning. 

Signs our mythology is up for grabs are everywhere: 

• The (over)use of the word “narrative,” by politicians, journalists, writers, activists, media personnel, and others

• The choices of stories before us, be it fake news, counter narratives, hidden narratives, and untold narratives 

• The liminal space between narratives as the old, dominant (white, male) narrative breaks down and a new mythology has yet to emerge.

The pimping of narrative has been bubbling up for some time though—in corporate training rooms, online gaming, and consumer marketing programs—to control players’ behaviors. Now, that “sticky” tool is expanding its reach to control the society’s mythology and, by extension, our own.

We have two choices in this collective mythic quest: to keep the old mythology even if it is becoming increasingly inaccurate, or to envision a new and more authentic one. 

We’ve Been Here Before

It’s an old story, two thousand years old to be exact. That’s when society last revised its mythology and patriarchy seized it, noted Riane Eisler, a cultural theorist, in The Chalice and the Blade. Then, as now, the manipulation of story was pivotal in this shift.

Then: Leaders of the new, hierarchical power structure had their court scribes pen stories that were performed in town squares to teach the new code of conduct and expected behavior, noted Eisler.

Now: We’re more sophisticated. Competing narratives are being pushed through media multiple outlets—religious, economic, physical, social, educational, and more—to anchor the beliefs their mythology is marketing. 

Your Role in Birthing a New Mythology

All our lives, our parents, ancestors and the culture itself tell us stories about what is “moral,” that is, right and true and good. But morals, like the stories they are attached to, are fictions, created by those in power with very specific agendas. 

The task then, is to untangle your beliefs, embodied over a lifetime, from those of the culture’s so you can claim and author your own, authentic ones.

This is hard work. It is deep work. It is, in fact, the work of the hero. 

It is also what is required to birth a new mythology personally and socially.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, consults and writes about narrative in our lives and world, the inextricable link between the two, and the critical role of self-awareness in transforming both. www.mcarolynmiller.com