Ask the Author: Sarah Conover
Answered Questions (9)
Sarah Conover
The Unstory Corps! Here we go: I believe that all contention, interpersonal and intrapersonal, is the bitter fruit of storying one another. Although there’s a current zeitgeist of narrative therapy—change your story for the better and change your life for the better—that’s not exactly the lens. I’m suggesting a vision beyond the centrality of narrative in relationships.
My memoir adds up the cumulative cost of storying oneself and one another—judgments and assumptions that we believe and act upon. Stories keep us orphaned from challenging family members, peers and neighbors. Stories can fuel contempt for our partners. Stories separate us into political silos. Our own self-story, Buddhist psychologist Tara Brach notes, is all too often a “trance of unworthiness” that robs us of joy.
Can we check ourselves when we divide the world into Self and Other through stories? Frank Osteseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, claims we either have stories about one another or we have intimacy. We’ve all experienced being so utterly present with another person that boundaries and stories vanish. What irretrievable opportunities for connection to friends and kin have been missed from your assumptions? What would you need to do and ask of someone who is an "Other" politically to see their humanity? How can empathy and unstorying heal our separateness?
My memoir adds up the cumulative cost of storying oneself and one another—judgments and assumptions that we believe and act upon. Stories keep us orphaned from challenging family members, peers and neighbors. Stories can fuel contempt for our partners. Stories separate us into political silos. Our own self-story, Buddhist psychologist Tara Brach notes, is all too often a “trance of unworthiness” that robs us of joy.
Can we check ourselves when we divide the world into Self and Other through stories? Frank Osteseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, claims we either have stories about one another or we have intimacy. We’ve all experienced being so utterly present with another person that boundaries and stories vanish. What irretrievable opportunities for connection to friends and kin have been missed from your assumptions? What would you need to do and ask of someone who is an "Other" politically to see their humanity? How can empathy and unstorying heal our separateness?
Sarah Conover
The Unstory Corps! Here we go: I believe that all contention, interpersonal and intrapersonal, is the bitter fruit of storying one another. Although there’s a current zeitgeist of narrative therapy—change your story for the better and change your life for the better—that’s not exactly the lens. I’m suggesting a vision beyond the centrality of narrative in relationships.
My memoir adds up the cumulative cost of storying oneself and one another—judgments and assumptions that we believe and act upon. Stories keep us orphaned from challenging family members, peers and neighbors. Stories can fuel contempt for our partners. Stories separate us into political silos. Our own self-story, Buddhist psychologist Tara Brach notes, is all too often a “trance of unworthiness” that robs us of joy.
Can we check ourselves when we divide the world into Self and Other through stories? Frank Osteseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, claims we either have stories about one another or we have intimacy. We’ve all experienced being so utterly present with another person that boundaries and stories vanish. What irretrievable opportunities for connection to friends and kin have been missed from your assumptions? What would you need to do and ask of someone who is an "Other" politically to see their humanity? How can empathy and unstorying heal our separateness?
My memoir adds up the cumulative cost of storying oneself and one another—judgments and assumptions that we believe and act upon. Stories keep us orphaned from challenging family members, peers and neighbors. Stories can fuel contempt for our partners. Stories separate us into political silos. Our own self-story, Buddhist psychologist Tara Brach notes, is all too often a “trance of unworthiness” that robs us of joy.
Can we check ourselves when we divide the world into Self and Other through stories? Frank Osteseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, claims we either have stories about one another or we have intimacy. We’ve all experienced being so utterly present with another person that boundaries and stories vanish. What irretrievable opportunities for connection to friends and kin have been missed from your assumptions? What would you need to do and ask of someone who is an "Other" politically to see their humanity? How can empathy and unstorying heal our separateness?
Sarah Conover
My forthcoming book, Set Adrift: My Family's Disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle, a Mystery and a Memoir, seems to be the story of the grand mystery of my life!
Sarah Conover
1) I choose random beautiful words from poets I like and listen for their associations with one another and off I go into a freewrite 2) Research into anything. I once challenged a writing student that he could find enough interesting things about spoons to write a piece on it. Soon enough, he found someone who'd actually written a Ph.D. on spoon design, and off he went into a rich exploration.
Sarah Conover
Discovery and wonder and (ironically) a way to shed the Self for a time.
Sarah Conover
1) Momentum is 80% of becoming a writer. Keep exercising those muscles every day, even if only for a short while. Can you play an instrument well without practicing? Nope. Just because we use language every day doesn't mean it translates meaningfully into the written word. 2) Revision is 80% of becoming a writer, too. 3) Grace and the muse make up the rest.
Sarah Conover
I'm working on a collection of wonderful short talks from Sravasti Abbey entitled, How to Love a Stranger and Other Reflections from Sravasti Monastics. I'm also working on some short and longer essays on 1) writing craft and 2) "unstorying," what I consider the most important skill in interpersonal and intrapersonal relationship.
Sarah Conover
A life lived! Decades in the understanding of compassion that can only come from loss and suffering, beauty as well as joy.
Sarah Conover
I'm one of those people who finds that she HAS to write. It's my path to discovery and wonder and sanity. My rule when I sit down to write nearly every day: write until I'm surprised. I often don't know what I think until I see what I say. My writerly self is much wiser than my speedy self away from the desk.
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