Autism Answer: Creating My Life With Intentional Storytelling (A Story To Start The New Year)

"Narrative and stories are thrown at people from all directions. It's easy to accept them and forget the power that they have. Yet with simple shifts Tsara Shelton suggests people can take advantage of that power by telling stories with purpose. Practicing intentional storytelling can make individuals and whole families happier and smarter." <--- That is an excerpt from this Press Release about storytelling.  The press release was written years after I had taken the time to craft and practice and live the benefits of what I first began to create for myself about twenty years ago. Following is the story of my budding new belief and how I tried to explain it to my then-boyfriend (now husband). I want to share it with you now as we step into a new year, it's a way of giving you the gift of intentional storytelling as a new understanding. In this way you can take it into the new year and create what you want out of it.  I don't know if it will do for you what it has done for me (in a word: happiness) but I hope it will give you a reminder of how powerful our personal stories are. And at the very least I hope you enjoy my telling of it. Happy almost new year, friends!!! ~Tsara

Creating My Life With Intentional Storytelling

With the sound of my boyfriend’s rusty old truck droning in my ears and the messy look of our small Texas town passing by my window I replayed his recent words in my mind, almost encouraging the annoyance to build. “It’s easier for you to be happy because your life is easier.” 

In that moment years’ worth of purposefully creating and discovering my personal beliefs about

Back in our boyfriend/girlfriend days.

happiness ignited into an uncharacteristic flame of what felt like justified anger.

“No. No it’s not,” I insisted. “My life seems easier to you because I do it well. I tell and live the story of my life happily. With intentional storytelling I am happy and I live life easier because I decide to. Not because my life is easier.” 

My boyfriend – who would soon become my husband – risked a short peek in my direction. The disbelief, almost condescending, was evident on his dark, handsome face.

As he returned his attention to the road ahead of him I heard myself lay out my proof.

“You know, I could just as easily describe my days as grueling and unfair.” A little bit crudely I affected a whiny voice. “Oh, dear me. My disabled brothers are such a burden, why must I be forced to live without the ease and freedom other sisters get to have? People stare at us, they are cruel and constantly judging us. Living with my brothers means things are always lost or broken. And me with my own problems! I was molested as a child! And I have been in an abusive relationship! I couldn’t take care of myself and went home for help. Woe is me, why must I live again with my mom? I’m such a loser!” I was almost having fun letting loose with this act and started really getting into it, holding my hand up to my forehead and closing my eyes as though all the troubles in the world were giving me a headache. “We’re poor, and I can’t even get a legitimate job because I don’t have my green card yet. And I couldn’t even work anyway because who, oh who, would take care of my babies? Besides, no matter how hard we work, and we work hard, we’re always poor. New shoes? Not in this lifetime! Oh, me oh my, the world is so cruel and my sons are treated differently. Not only because I’m a single mom but also because they are brown skinned. What a horrible hard life I have!”

As I acted out this pretend speech full of true things I was unexpectedly offered a great opportunity to solidify and make clear for myself the concrete real world power of what I was beginning to dub “intentional storytelling”. 

So, that hot afternoon in the cab of a rusty old truck driving from one small town in Texas to another small town, my much older than me black boyfriend listened as his much younger Canadian white girl girlfriend (Read: me) gave a passionate and meaningful rundown of her life and how she had made happiness a habit.

As a little girl I worked hard to be liked by others. I quickly learned that being a good listener and being mostly happy made me easy to like. Admittedly, for the longest time I was merely pretending to listen, so busy was I in my head hoping to be liked. But a degree of happiness tended to come natural to me.

Now, I am human. So I have been hurt, confused, wrong, and wronged. But with an eye on happiness I discovered (eventually) a way to learn from, understand, and disallow most of that negativity. 

Through intentional storytelling. Through the act of telling the story of my days, my life, my moments, with the intention of displaying the goodness. Whether telling it to myself or to others, always the intention was telling an authentic story that was hopeful, thoughtful, and ultimately, happy. 

At this point in my long winded argument, partly because we were almost at our destination - an Auto Parts Store - but mostly because I felt I was on the precipice of truly understanding something about myself, I spoke strong and clear.

“Do you see? My life has been, and is, just as hard as most people. But because I tell the story of my days with the intention of highlighting the happiness, the gifts, the things I’ve learned rather than the hurt, the unfairness, the things done to me, I’m actually truly happy. Sure, I talk about the hard stuff, but with the intention of finding and saying what I get out of it. Do you see?”

Pulling into the small parking lot of the store where my mechanic boyfriend was about to purchase a part for the car he’d been working on for a neighbor, he looked at me and smiled. 

“Well, two people can look at the same thing and see something different.” His go-to statement every time it was obvious we weren’t anywhere near agreeing or understanding each other.

At the time, I just shrugged. “It’s his loss,” I thought to myself, too busy being excited at my own newly concrete understanding of who I was to need validation. 

Now, happily married to that handsome mechanic for over seventeen years, co-parenting our blended family with eight colorful kids, I still share with him the value of intentional storytelling. Our happy home has benefited from it. 

But I, too, have benefitted by willingly seeing that my husband was also right. As a black man – now in his sixties – living his entire life in small town Texas with a personal history unlike anything I want to, but I do, believe, his life has always been harder and more unfair than mine. 

So now we intentionally tell our story together. And with the twining of our drastically different histories, habits, and beliefs it has become a little bit harder for me. 

But we are both happier. 

# # #

I hope you enjoyed my story! If you are interested in diving deeper into the art and power of intentional storytelling feel free to read my book, Spinning in Circles and Learning from Myself. Admittedly, the book is about me and my life, the stories are told my way and in my voice, and so the art and power of intentional storytelling is on display but not given the diversity of voice and style that is absolutely possible and necessary. As I say in my book, I hope you will do that. I hope you will discover your style of intentional storytelling and use it to enhance your life and the lives of those around you. Step into the new year with the knowledge of your power and the desire to use it well! Happy New Year, friends!! 

Hugs, smiles, and love!!

Autism Answers with Tsara shelton (Facebook)

Autism Answer: Real Beauty (Dove and Shonda Rhymes Want Our Stories)

Shonda Rhimes has partnered with Dove (the personal care brand) and they launched Real Beauty Productions. They have called for submissions and stories, from women of every type, that will help expand the definition of beauty. Stories that will help define beauty in a thoughtful healthy manner. What a valuable and necessary project! 

So, I am sharing my story with you here (yes, I also used their form to share it with Dove) in hopes that you, too, will have a story to share. And if you don't feel that you do, I encourage you to change that! Perhaps have your story now. Make a purposeful shift in how you see and imagine Real Beauty. 

Here's the link that I hope you'll use: #RealBeauty

And here's my story. Hopefully it will get you thinking about yours. 

#RealBeauty

I was a twenty-three-year-old single mom when I met my now husband of seventeen years. As I watched him fix my mom's car I was immediately attracted to him. Twice my age, rugged, and black as night I responded to his pull by swinging my hips, pinching color into my pale cheeks, and glossing my lips. However, he seemed entirely uninterested. I flirted while he avoided looking at me. I was a little bruised by the rejection but as a single mom dating wasn't easy, so I chose to pretend I was relieved.

Later, when I went into town to pay him for the work he'd done, I dropped the flirting and was comfortably myself. Animated and authentic I playfully complained about missing my sons, who were visiting my sister. The mechanic's demeanor changed and for the first time, he looked at me. "How old are you?" My answer surprised him and he admitted that he'd thought I was much younger. Well, no wonder he hadn't flirted back! But then, also, he continued to tell me more and the reasons for his lack of interest in my swinging hips proved deep and somewhat disturbing.

As a black man growing up in the south he'd learned never to look a white woman in the eye. Responding to my signals could prove dangerous for him, though unlikely dangerous for me. As he shared these things with me I found myself drawn in ever more, but quickly showed it in a new way.

I became more myself. Rather than pout my lips and fling my hair, I displayed my kindness and tossed ideas. We connected by exploring who we were, each of us encouraging the other to dive deeper and discover more. I began to feel more beautiful than I ever had. Who I was and what I did were beautiful and as I flirted with the mechanic a confidence in my beauty grew outward.

My family saw it. My friends saw it. Even I saw it.

The mechanic and I have now been married for seventeen years and we have raised four sons together. This newer understanding of beauty, as a displaying of who I am not how I look, has informed their understanding of beauty. I see it in the way they treat themselves and others.

So it turns out that discovering my own true beauty not only helped me feel gorgeous but also made me a better mom! How wonderful!

_________________________

Now, I don't know if my story will ever be shared via Real Beauty Productions. But I do know that taking the time to share it helped me feel it. Helped me know it. So, I have benefited! Also, by sharing it here with you (which may disqualify me from being featured by Dove, but that's okay) I have also imagined that maybe you will benefit. I hope so! 

Whether you share your story or not, I absolutely encourage you to take a moment or two to consider your definition of beauty. And if necessary, make a few changes. 

Whatever definition you create for yourself, be sure it recognizes your worth and your real beauty, friends. 

There's no shame in wanting to blossom further but it will be easier and more fun if you recognize your beauty now. 

Happy Saturday beautiful friends!!

Hugs, smiles, and love!!

Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton (Facebook)  

A small sampling of women in my life that are beautiful.

 

Autism Answer: A Marriage With Mosquito Bites

I wasn't a little girl who thought about marriage. My Barbie doll was a writer and nature lover who lived alone in the trees; miraculously free of mosquito bites. My Donny Osmond doll spied, took pictures, and wrote articles about how beautiful it was to see my Barbie (read: me) live naked and free and filled with love for all living creatures. A little creepy? Sure, but I liked having an audience without having to figure out how, exactly, to fit him into the picture.

As I grew older I still imagined myself living in the trees, but I included always a log style cabin and a typewriter. Dirty, happy children replaced the wildlife. Completely absent (with no backstory even invented) was a husband or father for those barefooted children.

But then one day I was a grown-up with three sons who found herself pregnant again and unable to stay in the USA; unless I married my then boyfriend. A man who was much older than me and had been married himself once before. A man who had never intended to marry again. And me, never having wanted to be married in the first place.

Well, we've been happily married now for sixteen delightfully interesting and belief shifting years.

Let me tell you right away, when I met my now husband I was a single twenty-three year old mom with three happy, dirty sons living in a small house in the woods. However, the house was my mother’s and I also lived with my four brothers and their cognitive challenges (autism, learning disabilities, even Fetal Alcohol Syndrome – my brothers are adopted – were words I had seen stamped on papers around the house while I was growing up). Also, the fathers of my sons were absent from the picture but not from our story. Though it’s true I had always wanted to be a single mother, I never told the men that they could not be part of their children’s lives. Instead, I believe, I chose well based on my deep wishes. I chose men who were not likely to step up and do the work. But when living out my imagined picture I learned that there was so much more to it. Nagging doubts and important worries. How much work should I do to make it easy for the dads to see the boys? Never would I badmouth biological fathers to my sons, but how best to tell the truth? Tiny bites of big issues were buzzing consistently; some more hungry than others.

When I met my now husband I was open to a relationship but not anywhere near considering a possible husband or father. I loved being a mom to the point of not wanting to share. I had strong parenting opinions and no interest in explaining or defending them. I was selfish and comfortable with that. My boys first belonged to themselves, and then to me. The end.

So I wasn’t surprised when the sexy black man who fixed my mom’s car became my boyfriend. Well, I was a little surprised but only because there was no way we made sense together. I’m a white travel loving hippie chick from Canada and he’s a soda drinking black mechanic who had never been outside of Texas. He watches TV while I hike in the woods, singing to myself and imagining things. He’s twenty-three years older than me. I embrace a world filled with beauty and possibilities while he watches it warily for danger and crooks.

But we are similar down, down, down deep. We love the children. He had four children from previous relationships and I had three. And he loved my children as though they were our own. I was amazed by that! I focused on that. He would show up at my mom’s house with a box of donuts and cans of pop for the kids. I would cringe and remind everyone that the snacks were unhealthy, but I would see and feel the thoughtfulness. I’d cancel a date because one of the boys was sick and my boyfriend would immediately show up, regardless of the hour, with Dollar Store drugs for children to find me diligently nursing a sick boy using organic foods. He would invite us to his trailer house where the boys could watch cartoons, and I would struggle with my distaste for television while I adored his desire to have us around, even while my “freedom” style of parenting was wreaking havoc on his wildly messy piles of car parts and tools that looked to me and my boys like fun junk.

I grew to see how being with someone who cared about us but who was also very different would expand my edges, give me and my sons more to understand and think about while making me practice focusing on the intentions. It turns out, also, that explaining my parenting choices was a wonderful way to understand them better myself and to grow more confident as a mom.

When I became pregnant again I had a habit to break. And, indeed, I wanted to break it. This time I didn’t step away from the father and chose instead to see how we could be mom and dad together. Yet marriage still never occurred to me.

Until I got stuck in Canada on a visit to family and wasn’t allowed back in the USA. Suddenly the thought of marriage made tangible (if unromantic) sense.

The romantic part, I think, is how easily we understood that we wanted to be together, so

marriage was a no-brainer. We didn’t have a big wedding or ceremony; in fact, we met at the courthouse between separate appointments. He was fixing a car, I had an ultrasound scheduled.

We have spent the past sixteen years designing our marriage our way. I lived for a long time in my mom’s house in the woods, long after my mom and brothers had moved away. My husband, however, stayed in his trailer house in town. Our son was born at a cabin in Missouri while my husband was still in Texas. I lived with all four of our boys in California for a couple of years, helping my mom and my autistic brother when mom first started Brain & Body (my mom is international mental health expert Lynette Louise, aka The Brain Broad). Eventually, my mom sold her little house in the woods and the boys and I moved in with my husband in his trailer house in town. It was perfectly timed, two of our sons had already moved away to California and our youngest son spends huge amounts of time at the school in marching band, theater and leadership; so it’s convenient to be in town. My hubby watches TV while I sing to myself in the tiny patch of wooded area behind our house. Well, sometimes it’s too hot outside – okay, a lot of the time! --in which case I read and read and read in a room away from the television. Sometimes we snuggle together and watch a movie.

The diversity and uniqueness of my family couldn’t possibly be more impressive if written as propaganda advocating diversity. We are an almost ridiculous mix of colors, sexual identities, shapes and sizes, cognitive abilities, political opinions, and financial stabilities. I’ve grown accustomed to the confused stares of strangers when my older than me black step-daughter calls me “mom” at the grocery store. My oldest sons have tricks in their back pockets for looking less Middle Eastern in times of intense tension, and my gay son and gay step-daughter have revealed for me LGBT issues I had otherwise been unaware of. When my autistic brother screams with joy while jumping on the trampoline and the air smells deliciously of my best friend’s authentic Mexican cuisine and my youngest bi-racial son is dancing down the driveway, I know my family couldn’t have existed as it does once-upon-a- time in frighteningly recent history.

I’m lucky and I love this life. Yet there are certainly challenges I hadn’t imagined or anticipated in any of my fantasies of adulthood. My husband and I get equal parts disapproving glares and condescending “good for you” pats on the back. I am forced to see that our culture is prejudice in ways that seem almost never-ending; nearly invisible and easily ignored for those who choose not to see, but never ever not affecting us.

When I remember the Barbie life I imagined for myself it’s surprising just how well I knew (or created) my future life. I lived in the woods, my children were certainly dirty and happy, the diversity and value of wildlife is a gorgeous way to represent my unique family, and the husband I never imagined made it all possible.

He watches us. He gives to us. He loves us. He is one of the biggest parts of our stories although you’ll rarely see him in the picture. He’s a private person, but that’s only part of the reason. Largely it’s because when he was a little boy imagining his future, he imagined giving to a wife and children. He imagined giving them a home and love. They were a picture he painted but wasn’t in. And though his imaginary family didn’t look like us; they were us.

That’s the thing, though. When I imagined my life in the trees surrounded by wild cats, I never included the mosquitoes. The things that bite and make you move. Naked beauty comes with itchy bumps. The bits and pieces of a real life that can be dangerous but are mostly just annoyances. The mosquito bites are real. They are many, and they are real.

My marriage and my life are beautiful and real.

It’s a marriage with mosquito bites. 

_________________________

 Author's note: I submitted this piece to Hitched Magazine the other day, in honor of my husband and I and our wedding anniversary this month. I wanted to celebrate seventeen years of marriage with volume! I'm honored that they accepted and published it. Now, I just have to find a way to tell my private husband that thousands of strangers are celebrating our marriage with us. tee hee! Thank you for being here, friends!! 

Happy anniversary to my magnificent husband and our lovely family!!

Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton (Facebook)