All Stories Teach

I had a story to tell, I was living an ordinary life by all standards and then one fateful day I was thrust into a big new scary world.  It was a world where you didn’t know if you would survive to see another year let alone the “golden years”.   I decided instead of keeping the story to myself, I would share it with whoever was interested in reading it, and thus the blog was born.

This past year’s journey has provided many moments and stories for me to share and reflect on.  Recently I have had a tough time coming up with new material to write about.  It seemed like a quite a dilemma, how do you write about reflections on a leukemia journey when you don’t technically have leukemia any longer.  That is when I came across this quote by Philip Pullman.

"All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions".

It got me thinking, my story was more than just the leukemia.  The leukemia was just a chapter in my story; the real story was my life in its entirety.  Although, the leukemia chapter has come to an end, I still have a few more stories and reflections to share from it but I knew I needed to shift the way I looked at my story. 

Originally I wasn’t sure about including photos on the blog because I thought it might confuse people on the direction of the blog.  I didn’t want to upset any of my readership, who might have certain expectations of the content for the blog.  But then I realized that you are not here to just hear about cancer and leukemia but rather to enjoy my thoughts and reflections about the journey through it.   

Again I came back to the quote; if all stories could teach then I was sure I could find the inspirations to write about in my present chapter.  I started to wonder, could my journey with photography give some of the same types of reflections as my journey with leukemia.  I had already started sharing some of my photographs and everyone seemed to really enjoy them.  But I wanted photography to play a larger role in my blog than just photo sharing because it was an integral character in my current chapter.  I knew if I looked hard enough I would find lessons it was trying to teach me just as my leukemia did.

And so we will continue through my recovery chapter of my story.  I didn’t take up photography with the intention of writing about it, but then again this blog started with a different direction than it has today.  That is the beautiful thing about a blog like this I guess, as my story changes so too can the blog.  This blog isn’t turning into a photography blog, so don’t worry.  It will keep it core essence; just the inspiration for reflections and insights will be coming from different places.

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