Linda Villeneuve

I want to use my website to share my stories, but also to give people the opportunity to share their stories with me. It is through our stories that life progresses; we learn to cope with everything that life throws at us. We replenish and restore ourselves through the vulnerability of sharing.

The uniqueness of someone’s story can only be measured through the eyes of experience. Age defines who we are, measured against the backdrop of our experiences in life, and the lives of those closest to us. As we grow older and share experiences with more and more people outside our inner circle, we discover things that shape us, define us, and determine the kind of person we will ultimately become.

But what happens when the experiences we have from the outer edges of our memory are so tangled in confusion and pain that our mind bars those memories from surfacing? Can we ever truly discover who we are or who we were meant to be? Facing painful memories can be both liberating and terrifying. It is this tangle that I want to undo through my writing, with the ultimate goal of writing a book about my life.

I lost contact with my paternal grandparents from the age of 10 until I was 21. They had tried to stay in touch, as had my wayward father, but my mother had returned all their letters and cards over the years, something I didn’t know until years later. When I did finally meet up with my grandparents again, I remember a day when my grandfather and I were just sitting in a room enjoying one another’s company. He turned to me with his Texas drawl that I loved to hear, “Linda May (he was the ONLY person ever allowed to call me that), how did you survive all of those formative years without giving into despair? Most people would have gone to the darker side of life; drugs, alcohol, prostitution, street life, to cope with everything that you went through.” I didn’t really understand what he meant that day, probably because I had never considered my storytelling as a coping mechanism, or possibly because I didn’t recognize the struggles I had growing up, I just survived.

My grandfather also couldn’t understand why I hadn’t turned to faith, the church has always been a place where people can seek solace from their woes and gain strength through their belief in a higher power. I used stories, and my ability to make people laugh, to empathize, to share, to help others get through whatever they were facing. It is always scary to look inward, silently, singularly because that can make pain, loss, and betrayal seem more real; I never allowed it to feel real, that might have destroyed me.

I have always known that I was a storyteller. In a former life I might have been a healer and a storyteller, that is what seems to make up my inner core; I want to help people, and I want to make them laugh. Using humorous stories about myself has brought me closer to people of all ages over the years; I believe that humour opens the mind, and leaves the listener with positive, reflective thoughts.

Storytelling was particularly useful when I was in the education field, I would stop in the middle of a lecture and say to my class, “I have a story to share with you.” Being at the front of the class as the teacher allows you to have the advantage of seeing everyone in the class because they are all facing you. I always loved to watch the students’ reaction to me making that statement, they would ease themselves forward, elbows on their desk, hands cradling their chin, and look up at me with expectation in their eyes; the break from what they had to retain from the lecture relaxed for a moment as they waited for me to share another story with them, to let them see another part of me.

Little did they know that often the story I was sharing was meant to help them retain the information in my lecture. When told in a story format, laced with humour, knowledge stays with us longer it seems. I believe that sharing stories about myself and my life is a coping mechanism that I use to my advantage; releasing a story outwardly helps to push the story from the inner depths of your core where it could stay and ferment, bringing anguish, pain, or at times, great joy and thankfulness. The happier a situation makes me, the more I want to share the story. But my stories aren’t always told from the side of humour, some stories are sad, even dark, but I need to release those stories just the same, not to harm someone else but to hopefully equip them with something that will allow them to deal with a sad situation in their lives. Learning is what makes us who we are; my grandfather used to always say that, a day without learning is a day less productive.

My premise is that we all have a toolbox that we carry through life. At birth, that toolbox contains only two simple tools; the ability to cry which brings us help with our needs, and the ability to smile which endears us to our parents. As we journey through life our toolbox becomes fuller, allowing us to cope with new life situations. Through sharing, we can give tools to others for their toolbox, tools they can then use for themselves, and in-turn pass on to others.

Our toolbox also has the potential to protect us; all the gathered tools can be brought out as needed to save us from the many hurts we experience throughout our life or used as a shield to prevent hurt from getting through to our core. This takes practice of course, and a periodic inventory of the tools we have on-hand. I feel that we become better at handling situations as we age; our tool inventory keeps getting bigger allowing us to not only utilize the tools for our own purpose but also to help shield those people we treasure.

Tools are all around us, (like a video game where items hang in mid-air until our character runs past them, or picks them up as we explore a new worlds in the game); simply acknowledge the potential they can bring us; nature brings us peace and wonderment; compassion brings us empathy and healing; love brings us fulfillment and security, faith brings us forgiveness and hope; animals bring us loyalty and contentment; family brings us joy and belonging. But the negative side of life, things that my grandfather recognized that could have sent my life in a different direction, darken our ability to gather these tools all around us; our vision is clouded with self-loathing, self-indulgence, narrow mindedness, denial, the void that comes with addiction, anger, intolerance, refutation. These things and more, can make us overlook the tools that are there for the taking, if we only stretch out a hand and grab them.

Ask anyone how they feel when they walk through a beautiful forest when the sights and smells of the wilderness fill us with a sense of belonging and acceptance; we can breathe better in a forest, all of our senses are amplified, our toolbox can benefit from this experience; take what it has to offer.

Yours doesn’t have to be a beautiful forest; it can be whatever you enjoy seeing or doing; something you enjoy on your own or maybe with a special friend or cherished animal. Those moments, no matter how fleeting, change us; we walk away with something we didn’t have before we came to that moment, a new tool for our toolbox, and the ability to share the potential of that new tool with someone else.

Giving and taking, in a meaningful way, that is the secret to successful humanity in my eyes; giving requires tolerance, taking requires acceptance; no one person, culture, faith, ideology can bring 100% success, we have to accept who we are and what we have in order to be able to bring the inner depths of ourselves into the light of the world.

Are you new to my website? If so, you’ll probably want to start your journey at the beginning. After each post, look for the ‘Continue the Journey’ label at the bottom to move forward.

If you are just looking for the latest post, click the “Latest Journey” button on the menu above. If you’re not sure, the Journey Book has them all.