Stealth spy skills of my childhood

and what they taught me

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The black phone hung on the wall between the stove and the doorway. With its rotary dial and short cord, we had to stand beside the phone to use it, so privacy didn’t exist in our farmhouse. Two short rings in a row meant a call for us, one ring was for the family down the road. Back in the day this was called a party line which meant there were no secrets and all of this was less confusing than it sounds!

I wanted a pic of an old phone but that was, surprisingly, hard to find so instead we have another farm pic. We had a tractor made by Massey Ferguson that was very similar to this one. You get the idea, it was different times. 📸by Kelsey Todd on Unsplash

We could stealthily pick up the phone, being careful not to give ourselves away by breathing into the mouthpiece, and listen to the calls that came in for the family down the road. (This would have been more fun if my cousins were close enough to be part of our party, but their farm was just far enough away to be on a different line.)

Of course, it was forbidden for us to do this.

I never once saw my parents pick up that receiver if it wasn’t meant for them, but as kids, we tried to be sneaky. I expected confessions and revelations – I wanted their stories - but what I got was the grocery list, weather report and an update on the latest farm injuries. The everydayness of farm life drowned out anything deeper.

I’ve always been drawn to people’s stories, the ones they share and the those they hold quietly within. For a long time, I thought a person was their story just as I thought my own narrative was me. It took a lot of unravelling to realize that my history and the story that goes with it is not who I AM.

The tricky thing is that we are tangled in our own interpretation because it’s like a safety net so it becomes hard to tell what’s truly us and what’s the story we believe about ourselves.

But all we need is a loose thread and once we start to tug on it the whole thing begins to unravel.

Now Honeybun, in case you’re thinking “Whoa, I don’t want to unravel anything!” I’m not talking about a dramatic transformation but a subtle turning towards ourselves instead of away. It’s about making room for what’s waiting underneath our conditioning so we start to recognize the raw material of who we are.

We might know we are beginning to separate from our story when:

1. We get an internal twinge that we pay attention to instead of shoving it below the surface;

2. We start watching the story unfold rather than being right inside of it (another way of saying we stop participating in drama);

3. We question if our thoughts and beliefs are a hundred percent true and, when they’re not, we allow a softening around them;

4. We realize this story/belief about ourselves is draining rather than fulfilling;

5. We feel the urge to pause rather than reacting on autopilot like usual;

6. We begin to recognize that two things can be true at the same time;

7. We listen to ourselves and start to say “no that’s not for me” or” yes, that is for me”;

8. We allow our imperfections to be seen;

9. We catch ourselves if we’re judging others and stop talking about them because we realize we have no idea what’s truly going on;

10. We realize that emotions and thoughts simply come and go like eddies in a stream, so we don’t have to cling to them.

Neuroscience shows identity is fluid which means we can decide who we want to be, and how we want to show up, instead of sticking to a narrative that lets the past define us. We can do this with goal-setting plans and measurable benchmarks if we want, or we can simply soften our edges enough that the light shines in the cracks of our foundation.

Thanks so much for being here. Stay open, my friend, stay open.

xoxo Donna