Stopping holding on

How life reveals new layers for storytelling

Recently, just two days after my my mother-in-law’s funeral, the long-term accommodation option my husband and I had in place to move into fell through. We found ourselves homeless. This is not the first time this has happened. When you live outside the conventional job and house-buying/renting world, you learn, eventually, to take things like this in your stride. It was a little bit harder to do this time as emotions were heightened and raw with grief.

Luckily, some friends who have a holiday home in Greece said we could stay there as it was empty until they come here in late July. So four days later we found ourselves in Greece and on the morning after we arrived when I read my daily Tao chapter on an app on my phone that randomises them for me, it was this one that came up:

If you realize that all things change,

there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

If you aren't afraid of dying,

there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future

is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.

When you handle the master carpenter's tools, chances are that you'll cut your hand.

I realised I had been holding onto this idea of finding a “home”, after almost a decade of not having one and moving around regularly. I had become fixed in my mind that being still somewhere was what needed to happen for us. Had to happen. Then my hand was cut from trying to make this happen and the universe sent me spinning off elsewhere. As soon as we arrived, I realised this was a much better place for us to be right now. It is close to nature. The sea is literally on the doorstep. There is space to breath and let things go. We have no obligations to be fulfilled in order to be here and we don’t have to invest energy we don’t have right now in building new relationships.

This unexpected trip to Greece has also revealed a new insight into our life as nomads. We don’t always have to be thinking longer-term when we look for opportunities. Sometimes, being somewhere just for a short while is just what we need. Maybe all we need to do is carry on letting things be and see what unfolds.

After not being able to think about stories, the space in my mind afforded by being here made me see that this holding onto ideas and trying to control things, is at the heart of the conflicts we write for our characters. The cutting of the hand is the inciting incident of the story that sets it all in motion and the character arc is driven by coming to the realisation that something has to change and an old way of being has to be let go.

It’s made me realise that I have to take a different approach to my characters and how I get to understand them and the story they want to tell through me. I have to figure out what they need to let go of, what needs to change, and why it’s important that it happens now. I love that the writing of fiction is a constant learning practice. That life always shows me new ways to develop my craft.

We are staying here until mid-June and I’m hoping that this new space, and understanding, in my mind will bring back my fiction words. That I’ll be able to edit some of the stories patiently waiting for me with this new insight to guide me. But I’m not going to hold onto that hope too tightly, I’ll just wait and let what will be, be.

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Storytelling with the Tao

This 12-week online course uses chapters of the Tao Te Ching to inspire stories that explore what it means to be human, living now in our times. There are 6 workshops released every 2 weeks featuring a chapter of the Tao, along with associated discussion content linking the chapter to our world today, a short story reading, craft development section, and a writing prompt. It runs on the Retreat West community site and includes a private forum to share work for feedback. Start date: 31st July 2023.

Mindful Fiction Course

My 6-week Mindful Fiction Course can help us to transform the stories we tell ourselves about being human so we tell stories of love and connection rather than of division and difference. It’s pay what you can afford from £20 to £50 to receive the course via email to work through in your own time, at your own pace. Or become a Founding Member of my Substack and have this included.

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