What’s Your Story?

What’s Your Story? A Journal For Everyday Evolution

by Rebecca Walker and Lily Diamond

What’s Your Story Morning Glory? This question was one of many questions/expressions my father would ask me in my childhood. Since the pandemic, I find myself in self-reflection, which leads to the questions: What is my story? Who am I really? What and who do I want to be when I grow up? Yes, I am grown, but how do I want to continue to grow and how do evolve into my complete self? These questions and so many more in-depth questions are the core of Rebecca Walker and Lily Diamond’s self-help book/journal, What’s Your Story, A Journal For Everyday Evolution. This year, I have purchased journals and all kinds of planners, but this is something different; it is for healing and I mean deep healing. If you are ready to go down the rabbit hole, step into your Queendom or Kingdom and never lose your crown, start where you are and answer the hard questions so that we can heal from within and blossom into our beautiful, wonderful selves!

“You are your own stories, and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth. What it feels like to be human without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you, without rotating, rehearsing, and reinventing the hatreds you learned in the sandbox. The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who you are and what you mean.”-Toni Morrison, from What’s Your Story, A Journal For Everyday Evolution

Everybody has a personal story, we may share similar stories, but each of us has our own unique story. Oftentimes, the hustle and bustle of life do not leave the time or energy for a spa day at home or some other guilty, but necessary pleasure. My father’s question never meant much to me then, except that it brought a wide smile to my face, but now I find myself asking myself that question now more than ever (I later found out that the question is the title of an Ella Fitzgerald song). As I think about the real answers to that question, I feel something in the pit of my stomach. Perhaps it is fear of what my story will reveal, but I am ready to face those fears and for the first time in many moons enjoy all aspects of my life and be free!

“Agency starts with our awareness of our subtle sensory, body-based feelings: the greater that awareness, the greater our potential to control our lives. Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way. If we are aware of the constant changes in our inner and outer environment, we can mobilize to manage them.”-Bessel Van Der Kolk from What’s Your Story, A Journal For Everyday Evolution

The journal has thirteen chapters, which start with “Ready” and ends with “Letting Go.” At the beginning of every chapter is a quote from people like Michelle Obama to His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama that is specific to the cycle that unearths the truth that leads to freedom. For example, “Ready” begins with a James Baldwin quote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Each cycle contains questions with space to write your answers. This step by step process allows the reader to write their own story. In the process of writing your own story, the authors have included five thematic tracks: Creativity, Self-Care, Activism, Spirituality and Grief, Loss, And The Work Of Healing. I especially like these themes and if you do not want to start at the beginning at first, you can focus on one of the themes and go from there. Remember you are writing your own story. The last thirteen pages are lined so that you can begin to write your own story. If you have a new journal that you have not started or even if you have, use the rest of those empty pages to write your freedom story!