The Stories We Carry, with Jane Clark
We can make so much meaning in our lives by telling the stories that live within our bodies and within the land that we inhabit. In this conversation with author Jane Clark, we explore what it means to be what she calls a “story carrier,” and how telling our stories is a way to root ourselves firmly in the midst of collective change and capitalist pressures.
About Jane Clark:
Jane Clark is an author, retired writing professor and former journalist who lives close to the land near the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. She leads writing workshops focused on giving life to our stories as a form of currency in a capitalistic system that defines us as workers/producers and separates us from ourselves. She loves to help writers bring their stories to life as a way to reclaim identity and agency as story carriers. Much of her work is an attempt to ground writers in the land, in nature, to help them see the stories that surround all of us, including those stories held in the land and beyond those told by this system.
To connect with Jane, visit:
Web: https://www.storycarriers.com/
Amazon: https://a.co/d/bgp0w4f
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeclarkauthor/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552393023737
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Megan Leatherman: Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work, and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today.
Hi friend and welcome. Thank you for being here today. I'm so glad to be here with you in this way. We are here in the height of the summer season. The sun is in the sign of Leo. We're right in the middle of this journey through fire and heat and the sun and blooming.
And I hope that you're taking really good care in the midst of all of this. Just like we have to be kind of judicious with our resources and mindful of our energy in the winter season when things get cold and icy and are risky in a different way, we need to bring the same wisdom into the summer season and just be mindful of how much we're doing, how much water we need or are using and just be careful, um, and thoughtful about how the season is moving through us and how we are expressions of it.
And can we balance out some of the excess heat with extra water or extra stillness and silence and solitude? These are certainly themes that I'm thinking about a lot as I move through the summer season. It's a very full time with family stuff and, you know, doing more, spending more time with my kids and trips and so many fun things that I agreed to, all of them.
But I definitely stacked our calendar a little too tight and I feel some days like I'm just strapped to the front of a freight train that I can't get off or stop. And, um, I'm just trying to flow with it and see what, you is available and what's beautiful about this time, and I hope that you're finding and using the tools that you need to as well.
Yeah, communicating with the earth, which is our theme for the summer season of the show, has been a really rooting, grounding, um, theme for me personally as well. Just, it helps me not miss the magic of this season, even in all of the busyness and activity, you know, really slowing down to feel into my relationship with this land and the beings that are blooming or really active right now.
I don't want to miss that magic. And so I hope you don't miss it either and can sort of savor the extra, you know, 10 seconds spent enjoying a rose or a Queen Anne's lace or watching a hummingbird flit in and out. You know, those little moments are really important.
Jane Clark is my guest today, and Jane wrote a memoir that felt very rooted to me, rooted into the land, and the way that she talks about the stories that live in us through our heritage is really compelling. I think it's really embodied. She talks about how the stories want to be told one way or another, and the land has stories of its own, too.
And I think you're going to really enjoy this episode. I hope it helps you to see yourself and the stories that you were born with in a new light. So I'll just introduce Jane to you more formally. Jane Clark is an author, retired writing professor, and former journalist who lives close to the land near the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. She leads writing workshops focused on giving life to our stories as a form of currency in a capitalistic system that defines us as workers and producers and separates us from ourselves. She loves to help writers bring their stories to life as a way to reclaim identity and agency as story carriers. Much of her work is an attempt to ground writers in the land, in nature, to help them see the stories that surround all of us, including those stories held in the land and beyond those told by this system. You can learn more about Jane and her work at StoryCarriers. com
Well, before I transition into our interview with Jane, I want to share just three announcements.
The first is that my class on the origins of capitalism, Eating Capitalism, is coming back around this fall, and it's undergone a little name change. So after teaching the class two times and getting some good feedback from participants and from some of my mentors. Especially my friend, old school Nate, it felt like a truer representation of the class and the work that we do in there to name it Composting Capitalism instead, because what I learned in working with people and moving through this material is that people don't want to just learn about the origins of capitalism in an intellectual way, they want to live it into their lives and make something new with it here, right now. And that was always an intention with the class, but I feel like the, you know, shifting the name a bit and the frame, I've also extended it to eight weeks so that we can move through the material in a less rushed way, um, and we're also going to be moving through three big themes of practical application.
So some of the major antidotes to capitalism are land reconnection, folk magic, and generous exchange. So we'll be weaving in those as well in terms of how we practically apply this to our lives. Today in this modern context, so we'll still be moving through Silvia Federici's incredible book, Caliban and the Witch, but we're going to be, it'll be a little bit more robust of an experience, and I think it's going to be great.
I'm also going to add a WhatsApp channel where people can connect in real time, not just to me, but to one another as they work through the material in their own lives. And I think I may also offer some calls. on weeknights or potentially a weekend for those of you who may not be able to join us during the workday.
So I think it's going to be lovely. This class has been a joy to teach the last two rounds and it's going to start October 2nd and you can learn more at a while new work. com or at the link in the show notes and there's a wait list that you can put your name on if you'd like me to reach out once registration has opened.
My next announcement is that our gatherings on the land called Rise Up Rooted, which I've been doing with my friends, Megan Hayne and Heather Dorfman, we are coming to our final part in the series where we're doing an overnight camp out. It's going to be out in the forest and the focus is really on stepping into our role as mother trees in this land.
How can we come into greater sturdiness for ourselves and for others that we live with and for the land? And so we'll be doing a lot of ritual, we'll be integrating all of the major stages of life thus far, and sort of going through those, um, one by one to sort of mark the process that we've been doing together, but also start a new process.
If folks join us who haven't been to any gatherings so far, there's going to be a lot of support from Megan, Heather, and I, solo time on the land, group work, and just time to recharge in the woods. So we'd love to have you, if you feel this call, to be out on the land in an intentional way and step a new version of yourself and your life that feels deeply rooted and sturdy, where you can draw up some more of the abundance you need and offer it to the village and offer your gifts to this world that so desperately needs it. It's going to be the weekend of August 17th and 18th. We're asking for four hundred dollars, but there are discount codes available if you need them, and that Registration fee includes your campsite, food, all the materials you will need, um, basically everything except, you know, your tent and camping chair. So yeah, the link for that is in the show notes. You can also go to awildnewwork. com slash rise dash up dash rooted.
Finally, I just want to say thank you so much to those of you who are supporting the show financially. Whether you've chipped in once or you're a monthly subscriber, thank you so much. It really means a lot to me and helps make this work sustainable. If you enjoy the show or get something out of it and you have the means to chip in a few dollars here and there, or once a month, I would be so grateful. And you can do that at buymeacoffee. com slash Megan Leatherman. And I'll put that link in the show notes as well.
Okay, so let's shift into our opening invocation before we bring on this conversation with Jane. So wherever you are, just noticing your body and time and space, you might look around you and see if you notice any other living beings. What is alive around you? What might have its own intelligence to offer you at this time?
And can you just send them a little bit of love, or affirmation, or just acknowledgement that they are here, that they are also alive, and that they have their own wisdom to bring. May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors, known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
All right, well, Jane, thank you so much for being here today.
Jane Clark: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to speak with you and I'm just so excited about the work you're doing.
Megan Leatherman: Oh, thank you. So your memoir, Story Carrier: a collection of tales of the disappeared begins in, and you weave this all throughout the book, but it begins in this scene in the landscape of West Texas.
And I really love how you describe this place throughout the book. And I was wondering if you could. Start by sort of orienting us to that landscape and how it became kind of the context for your early childhood experiences.
Jane Clark: Sure. Um, that's interesting. It's a very unique setting if you have never lived in that part of the country.
It's a very, uh, difficult, demanding environment and nobody decides easily to move to West Texas because it's, it's extremely dry. There are very, very high winds. The precipitation in the area I was born in is the lowest in the country. So, um, you know, you really have to be prepared for hot, dry temperatures to be very aware of your environment.
And it's, it's also very rugged. It has over the years gone through dramatic geological changes that have created all kinds of different land formations and the area I was born in, I was a little tiny town by the name of IRA and. It was a little oil boom town, uh, organized in the early 1900s after a large oil boom was discovered at one of the local ranchers ranch.
And so, See if I can paint a picture for you, huge overbearing sky, flat land, so no trees or buildings to really block anything, the wind, no trees to block the sun, um, you're very exposed and it's very overwhelming to a young child, um, cactus, some small shrubbery and grasses. Lots of blackbarked mesquite trees, which are beautiful, but considered invasive at this point.
The wind, actually, some people in West Texas refer to the wind as the fifth season of the year. It's that powerful. And, uh, I remember traveling as an adult back to visit my mother in West Texas and going outside to plant flowers for her and having her say, Oh, no, no, the wind will destroy them. And sure enough, it's very, very powerful.
So very difficult to, you know, you plan things like as a child, we didn't go anywhere without water. Containers of water traveled with sunscreen hats. Everybody wore a hat or a scarf, and you really, really have to be cautious. And people tend to be kind of rugged. It takes a rugged spirit to live in the area, so it's very, you know, and it just, that kind of setting, I think, invites a sort of, uh, fiery folk tales and folklore that you hear about West Texas, and the people are just like the tales.
Megan Leatherman: Hmm, I can imagine. Yeah, I didn't realize the wind was such a heavy presence there. Could you talk a little bit about your early childhood experiences in this context? And I think your family was, you know, related to the oil industry and, you know, working in that and that you had, you know, experience or exposure to that. Could you just tell us a little bit about where you came from?
Jane Clark: Sure. My, um, my grandparents came into West Texas from Oklahoma to follow the oil boom. Um, as did a lot. Thousands of people moved into West Texas for that reason. There were several historic discoveries right around the area where I was born.
I mean, very large discoveries of oil. And people would pack up their, their families and cars, pack up their belongings and just rush to the site. It was a little bit like the gold rush in California, so there were a lot of people coming into the state traveling to live there, and towns were built up, uh, around little, there were tent cities.
For a while, because there was no housing until really the, the big oil industries came in and started to build housing and schools and so forth. So my grandfather had a highway construction business. And of course, he built highways leading out of the area for the big oil tankers to transport oil and petroleum out of the area.
And when I was born, it was actually into really, I think of it as a sad family. I had a very young mother with an older sister who had been diagnosed with leukemia. And she was only expected to live about three or four months after my birth. As it turned out, uh, she lived almost two years after I was born.
And she really kind of became my caretaker, somebody I identified with as a very young child. And her death was very, very sudden to me. You can imagine a two year old trying to cope with just literally a disappearance of a sibling overnight. Nobody really understood the impact of that in those times.
They didn't understand childhood grief. Um, there was really no chemotherapy, so there was no real treatment to save her. Um, but, after that point, she died, within months my father left, everybody sort of disappeared. Within maybe six months of that, my mother remarried and we moved deeper into the desert with my stepfather.
It became, for me as a little girl, I, you know, you're always looking for some reason to explain as a child. You know, what is causing all of this? And I look to my immediate environment. I figured it had to be the wind. Had to be the wind. You know, a child will look for anything to explain. And, um, Yeah, it was, so when I sat down to write this memoir, um, I'm looking back many years trying to recall some of the, the details in the events, and I not only used West Texas, because it was the beginning of my story, I felt like the land held on to my stories.
It had been part of my life. It's what had happened in my life. It had been part of what happened in the lives of many families who traveled with the oil industry. And I, I'd love to see more authors really give credit to the idea that stories are sometimes so heavy to carry that the land holds them for us.
We think of it as history. I think of it as story.
Megan Leatherman: I love that idea that the land can hold it and the land is sort of a more active participant in what's happening than just this, you know, backdrop on a stage or something. Could you talk a little bit about how you began to unpack or untangle the threads of, Disappearance in your family lineage and what that process was like and what you uncovered and how you, your own experience as a child was part of a larger story around disappearance and loss.
Jane Clark: Yeah, sure. Thank you for that question. Um, I worked for many years as a college English teacher teaching writing, and I worked with teachers as well, teaching them to teach writing. And everyone, all of us has a story, and we all want to write our memoir. We all have major stories we're carrying. And I had seen so many memoirs written in the form of, this is what happened to me.
That kind of parentheses around their lives and I thought, well, this is what happened to me in this context. And it was a historical context. It was an environmental context. And it was a context of a larger family story. I didn't know that when I started to write the book. But as I started to research some of the stories.
I discovered that even though the title of the book, uh, Story Carrier, a collection of tales of the disappeared, was about me, the word disappeared described something that happened to almost every woman in my family. And it was very eye opening, very enlightening. So it placed my life in context with my mother's life, her mother's life, her grandmother's life.
So we, we actually have like kind of a, an environmental setup of mothering. And it really demanded that I take a really hard look at mothering because when I first started, I thought, well, I'm going to write a book that will really make people think more carefully about mothering. And, uh, at the time I was finished, I thought, no, I wrote a book that taught me to think more carefully about mothering. And to, to look at it as a, a cultural experience, a culturally defined experience with very heavy expectations, almost unreachable demands on the mothers. And at the same time, because of the way it was set up in my family, the women who had had disappearances or instances of abandonment were told to remain silent.
They were not able to really pass along the wisdom, uh, to the next generation that this is a theme that runs through the family. And I think it was, it was difficult, made it difficult for us.
Megan Leatherman: Yeah, I remember reading about how you would sort of come across these surprises and these like themes that kept coming up or resonating that you had never been told about directly, but that you had to sort of stumble upon or discover.
And um, yeah, I think that's, I love the way that you put it, how you wrote a book that actually taught you a thing, um, which is always the case, isn't it? I would love to hear how your perspective. either shifted or what it is right now on how stories sort of live in us. And even if, you know, even though you weren't aware of a lineage around abandonment or disappearance, it did show up in your life.
So can you talk a little bit about how these stories inform our own lives, even if we're not aware of them?
Jane Clark: Yes, I would love to talk about that. I remember 20 or so years ago standing before my dissertation committee saying to them, um, I did a PhD in English with a specialty in narrative theory and for my defense, I talked to them about the fact that I believe that story is an energy. We have a linguistic description for it called story or narrative. But I think what we're doing is creating a structure that describes what story does. That story, I think, is more and a form of energy that lives in us. And it travels, it will travel from one generation to the next. And it will always, always tell itself.
So that, for example, in my family, because the women were not able to tell the, their daughters about, uh, abandonment, the daughters lived it, so the story repeated. And I firmly believe the story will always tell itself. So we need to be the ones inviting the story in, so we can place it in this container.
And it's more easy to, more easily managed. We can learn from it, we can understand it. There's a, there's a, really interesting book that came out about a year and a half ago by a psychiatrist called emotional inheritance, and she writes about her psychiatric patients who came in for treatment of trauma, and several of them. She describes them in the book. They were acting out behavior that seemed to be completely unconnected from any event in their lives. So, after doing some research with the patients, she discovered that they were actually responding to events that occurred in grandmothers lives, or great grandmothers lives.
One man, I think, who lived, had a very normal life, but for some reason had to have a packed suitcase near his front door all the time. And he didn't understand this. And in doing some of his family research, he discovered that his grandparents, uh, lived in Poland. And during World War II, they were, their home was invaded one night and they were taken away.
And I know it really, it still gives me chills when I think about the way these stories will travel. What, if you follow epigenetics, the science of epigenetics at all, which says that when we have either traumatic or really very highly charged experiences in life, this, the experience will alter our genes in some way. And this gene alteration is expressed and carried to the next generation. So the next generation kind of inherits this residue of something they're not able to name. And I think that happens to artists a lot, artists and writers. Um, who are, you know, we may all in fact, you know, you wake up one day and think, Oh, I really don't feel happy or I, I feel a little sad and I have no reason to feel that way.
You may be carrying, probably are carrying some sort of residue of an experience that was, um, took place in the life of another ancestor. I think that's why writers write. We're always looking for a way to contain and describe something that's almost ineffable. I think that's why artists paint, sculptors sculpt.
We were carrying too much and it leaves us in this sort of state of liminality where we're not sure how we feel and we don't really have the history or the words to describe it. It's very uncomfortable. And when you're living in a world that's already pretty chaotic, it becomes so crucial to have a sense of grounding in your life. And I, I believe that's what stories do.
Megan Leatherman: Oh, I love that. I've never thought of epigenetics as sort of also a story telling itself out of necessity or finding like an energy that has to come through regardless of whether we want it to or not. I think that's a really powerful Idea and framework, and it makes me think about how necessary this is for each of us individually, but also how important it is to tell the true story of our collective history in terms of capitalism and civilization and colonization, all of these things that have happened that don't really, like, we might know the history of them, but they don't live as, like, alive.
Thank you. Stories that teach us things and help us relate to them differently. It seems like from what I know. Other cultures around the world or in the past have done a better job at tending to their collective myths and using those and as teaching tools and ways to process grief. And, uh, you know, I personally, as someone with European heritage and the descendant of settlers here, I didn't hear hardly any family stories, and I certainly never heard the story of how, you know, civilization became capitalism, became the United States. It's just not, it's totally absent. So, there's so many directions I want to go. Um, It, let's say someone doesn't write or doesn't feel called to write a memoir, but does want to, does want to give the story a container so that it doesn't continue repeating itself unconsciously.
Where do you recommend people start? Is it looking into their own lineage a few generations back? Is it starting with your own patterns? Like where, how could someone start to work with their own story?
Jane Clark: Yes, that is so important. I'm so grateful for that question because I, I think people do tend to say, I'm not a writer, I can't do this.
And yet it's so, it's so healthy. I facilitate writing groups for people who are not writers. One of the things that we do, though, is a lot of, um, gathering up of legacy items from our families, maybe a button collection, it may be, in fact, we had some friends in our home Saturday evening for dinner, and one of the women brought a little tiny postcard collection that her grandmother had given her.
And as she started going through them, the stories just rolled. Just rolled out of her and we have so many things that belong to us seem like they're unimportant, but these little items carry the energy of the stories and I often start with that often start my classes with bring in something that is important to you and we'll sit and write about it or we'll sit and hold it, work with it in our hands because that energy is there.
It's stimulated and it needs to go somewhere, beginning with something like a list, a list of legacy items, a list of recipes. I did one semester with my freshman, I did a freshman writing class on family recipes. And the stories they brought in were just incredible. Family vacations, I mean there were just so many little things.
So it does not matter whether the person is a writer, because they are a story carrier. We are all story carriers. And the writing is just the mechanics of what has to get done. So, that's one of the things I recommend. Sitting around with your family or your friends, bring an item with you and talk about why it's important.
Whether it's postcards, recipes, anything. If it's important, it's a story and it's carrying a story.
Megan Leatherman: Yeah, thank you. It sounds like using items or those are excellent starting points for beginning to weave together or tell the stories. And do they need to be told out loud or written down like what's the, you Is it a matter of like, do you imagine yourself like they're transforming in your own consciousness and then they take a different shape when you tell or write them, do we take some of the heat out of them in that way?
What's happening when we're telling or writing them?
Jane Clark: Yes. Um, that's an interesting thing that happens, you know, again, I think it's energy. One of the things that I do with, uh, and I've done for years with freshmen in writing classes is that, um, I always, freshmen I have always had a real soft spot for because I think they come into college feeling like nobody cares what I have to say.
I don't have anything to say and I'm afraid I'm going to get in trouble for what to say. So they, they're really, it's a really difficult place for them to be and I'm. Wanting to help them be comfortable. I want to introduce them to writing in a way that helps them feel like they're in control. So I always start off with a narrative and the writing prompt I give them is write me a story you're dying to tell.
And I start with that because dying to tell gives it some immediacy. Write me a story means you're the expert, you're in control. You're the authority over your life. I can't, I can't tell you anything probably that you don't already know. So it, in a way, allows me to help the students begin to build some agency, some autonomy, which I think they've lost in the current education system.
They lose their voices. They lose their identity. And I want to restore that and I think that stories become that kind of a currency for doing that. They do need to be told out loud. A writing workshop that I'm doing currently begins with how to be a good listener. How to, how to listen another person into story.
But I spend a couple of hours where we practice listening, deep listening. The story actually, if the person is unable to write it, the community becomes the container and becomes the witness for the story carrier. And I think we have an obligation to one another to do that. So, for example, I may tell, I may tell you about an event that occurred with me.
And it may not sound like a story to me. Something is pushing me to tell you, and as soon as I tell you, I hear it differently. And you might say, wow, that's really interesting. And I might think, oh, maybe I have a story. So yes, the story becomes a story. As it's told out loud, it's a very important part of writing process and I never tell writers this is what you're doing.
I say we're learning to witness. We're going to listen one another into story. It's actually a form of the writing process though. Very important.
Megan Leatherman: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious how this fits in with mothering. Like you mentioned earlier, I have two small kids and you know, I'm thinking about the stories that I carry through my lineage and curious what you would say about how I could transmute or tell my children the stories that they've inherited in a way that's not traumatizing, but that is being a good steward of the lineage that they have. Does that make sense?
Jane Clark: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And children, I will say, you know, as a, an English teacher, the thing that's really interesting about children is that they understand the grammar of storytelling before they know the rules. So they understand storytelling.
They know it. And I used to just invite mine, you tell me the story. And they would say, well, I don't know. I don't know. And I'd say, no, you just tell me what your story is. And, um, sometimes children in particular are so tuned in to kind of the, the energy and the atmosphere and in the environment, they'll pick up on stories.
That you don't know they know they will literally pick it up and you might be surprised at what they've already picked up either through their imagination, which I think is more intuition. Or they may have heard just a bit or a piece of a story. They might have heard the adults talking about grandma needs a cane.
So they might add to that or pose some questions about it. And I think it's really the way to do it is to invite them into the process, invite them in to tell the story to begin with. And then when you know what they know, you have a better sense. Of how much more to share with them. They know they really, children are, they are story carriers from the beginning.
They really are. I think it's really funny that children will come and tell stories to people who listen that their adult, their parents don't know, or they, the parents think that the children don't know. And, and they'll put a twist on it or, you know, it's very funny. It's very, and it's, it's very, it's wonderful.
It's, it's encouraging to adults. They, they lose that as they go through the school system, unfortunately, um, because there's such a, an emphasis put on linear thought and they lose that ability to imagine. And I think it's, it really does children a disservice and then we get people like you and I who struggle to tell our stories because we've lost that connection to the energy of story by the time we're adults.
Megan Leatherman: Yeah, that's so true. So what does it mean, you sort of alluded to it already, but what does it mean to you to be a story carrier? And what is the responsibility of a story carrier in this context today? Yeah.
Jane Clark: I think that it's such an important distinction and, and actually, as you know, that drove my book, I think there's a difference between being a story carrier and a storyteller.
And for me, the difference is that as a carrier, I understand that, although I may write some stories, I'm, I was born into stories. For example, I was born into a family with a sister who was dying. That was a story that literally defined my life. Um, and it continued, it continued in many ways. So I know that more than inventing the stories, the stories are kind of inventing me.
They will create who I am. The story will lead me to become the person I'm going to become. And I learned to, as a story carrier, I learned to honor that, to pay tribute to it, to give it the space, to invite the story in, and give it the love it needs to really unfold. So it's a matter of kind of standing in the world in a certain way and inviting certain stories.
And it's funny, the older I get, the more particular I'm getting about the kind of stories I'll even allow in my space. Okay. And as a former journalist, I'm really careful about, I don't really want that story. I don't want to hear that story right now because it carries with it such a really tragic and terrible energy.
And yet, on the other hand, there will be stories like children suffering during a war that I feel like I have to witness. I have an obligation to witness. So it's really a matter of. Um, uh, your attitude, taking an approach to story carrying and being a good steward to the story.
Megan Leatherman: And what does that mean, being a good steward to it?
Is it witnessing with presence or retelling it? Yeah. Could you expand on that a little?
Jane Clark: Yes, I think it is retelling it. I'm witnessing with presence. Understanding that the story, uh, that you tell or I tell is mine, belongs to me. And, you know, you've been, everybody's had the experience where you're at the dinner table at Thanksgiving and someone will say, Do you remember last year when the turkey was undercooked and dad couldn't carve it?
And everyone will have a different version of that story. So it's understanding that each person has his or her or their own experience in the world and that's their story to carry. And it's honoring that. Um, I think also in terms of land, it's understanding that we simply because we have language, which is a, a human invention, we invented language so we could communicate.
We are not the only story carriers as human beings. We live in a world that is carrying its own narrative. And we try to impose, you know, what we think is happening to the, uh, environment, to the universe, and invariably we're wrong. I mean, we, we cannot, we can try to predict one of, uh, the things I say to my husband all the time is, as a former journalist, if I had been a forecaster, how many people do you know who can be so wrong at their jobs and still have a job?
Because this earth is telling its own story. And we're trying to tell a story that's in conjunction, we're trying to cooperate and collaborate with the earth, but we are not the primary story carriers here. If you look at like the forest. The, who is it the Canadian biologist Suzanne Simard who writes about the mother tree forest has its own communication system.
These mother trees are passing stories of survival, of nutrition, of, of how to break down the soil, how to create more nutrients for the ground to feed other trees and bushes and shrubs. That's a form of story carrying. And just because we carry a story that makes us the hero does not mean it's the only legitimate story that exists.
We are not the primary storytellers. And I think part of being a good steward is recognizing that, that just like the African proverb says, I'll probably get this wrong, but the hunter is the one who tells the story about the hunt. The victor. The one in charge, the one who survives, usually tells the story, but in fact, there are millions of stories going on.
There are millions of people carrying stories, and, um, you know, I think part of learning to revere and honor the story, Is to also honor the carriers of the story.
Megan Leatherman: Yeah, I think it's really compelling. This idea, this question you pose, what is the story that I've been born into that you are born into a particular landscape that has its own story and a family lineage with its own story that you.
Like you said, we're born into, and I don't know if you feel like fate or destiny and story sort of overlap here, but to me they have similar threads. Um, and I can see it being really powerful if you knew the story that you were born into earlier on and then could respond, you know, sooner than, you know, you know, adulthood, like us, like me trying to unpack and reweave and, um, yeah.
Jane Clark: I think we will always do that. We will always be unpacking. I think that's part of the so called work we do all of the time, but I think it can be much more pleasant if we approach it this way. And one of the things that I say that because if it sounds a little judgmental, um, it's intentional because I think that, um, a lot of people, what I get in the writing workshops For instance, on the first evening of classes, people come in and they will introduce themselves and identify themselves, and they will often identify themselves through their profession, or sometimes they will identify themselves through a diagnosis, which is really interesting.
And I'm, I think that to me that's because we tend to pathologize big heavy feelings that we don't understand and that's fine. There's a whole industry devoted to that. I tend to say, okay, do that if you want to, but let's also take a look at sort of the beauty of the story that's contained within those emotions and leave the pathologizing to someone.
Megan Leatherman: Yeah, I thought the way that you talked about Story and your own diagnosis of osteoporosis was really beautiful. How you, yeah, I would, I don't want to spoil it, but you talked about like the porousness of your bones and like the ability to carry for this, like the story could live in those almost. Could you tell the listeners a little bit about that?
You end the book in that way of sort of becoming more comfortable with the lack of resolution and just being with what is here.
Jane Clark: Yeah, and I, I think wanting, loving the story came from being a journalist as well, but being a journalist, you know, I think all of us tend to see our lives through the lens of the jobs we do.
And as a journalist, I wanted the story. I always wanted the story and I wanted to know the full story. And that was one of the big frustrations of writing this book. I couldn't get the why of some of these things. Stories. I was, and I realized at some point I was going to have to come to terms with not knowing why some of these things had happened.
And one of the things that taught me how to cope with that was this diagnosis of osteoporosis, where I was told, Oh, your bones are really bad. We're going to start you on these shots and so forth. And I looked at the lab reports that were done and discovered there was no medical reason for me to have osteoporosis.
And I thought, oh my goodness, okay, how do I, how do I wrap that story up? How do I make that make sense? And the way I did it was to say, these bones are porous because I needed space to carry the stories in my body. And it may be very unscientific, it may not be true, but it makes a great story.
Megan Leatherman: Yeah, it makes intuitive sense, for sure.
So what is at the forefront for you right now with this work in terms of story and supporting people telling their own, what's, you know, what's, what are you working on or what's happening in your world in this regard?
Jane Clark: Well, right now, and thank you for asking, because I always forget to talk about this, but right now I'm, I'm working on a second book.
This is a, a workbook called Unsilencing, a workbook for story carriers. And it will be primarily a workbook for women writers who feel that in many ways in their lives, in very subtle ways, they have been silenced or dismissed or erased or discounted. And it can include things as basic as sitting in a, at the dining table with your husband, having a meeting over how the labor's going to get divided in the home, or it can be a trip to the doctor in which a woman says, well, I don't know, I have these kind of headaches.
I don't know. How, what they're connected to and having the doctor sort of, um, be very a little bit patronizing, maybe a little solicitous and calling you dear, which is a form of silencing a woman and at the same time minimizing or dismissing. The symptoms, or maybe not giving them as much weight as it would be given to a male patient.
So this, this occurs over and over and over again to women. And it's what this workbook will do is include chapters that divide this up between workplace, home, health, mental health, emotional relationships, family relationships, and then I'll have writing prompts. for each chapter. So I'm really excited about it.
Very excited about it. I have, my real life's work has been on women in silence and I had some very, very important interest for me. Very important.
Megan Leatherman: Oh, that's cool. Thank you. It sounds, yeah, really helpful. Is there anything else about your book or story being a story carrier that we haven't touched on that you want to make sure to
Jane Clark: Well, one thing I, I think because of some of the work that you're doing, um, to provide options or ways to discuss how to respond to living in a capitalistic world.
You know, as a writer, I always thought my entire life, oh, what freedom. But in fact, I wrote for the Associated Press and I had very strict guidelines and rules I had to follow. When I taught English, I taught for a big university. So I couldn't really speak out. I had to speak for the university. I worked for another writing organization, a national writing organization.
Somebody else, my employer, was always in charge of my voice and I think. That what happens to us in an economy where we're defined by our occupation and how much we contribute to the economy, which we are, we are so heavily defined by that we almost can't have conversations without talking about our professions.
We begin to lose agency. We begin to lose our autonomy. We are identified as worker producers. And this is particularly important for women right now as we discuss reproductive justice. Hugely important. It's hugely important for single mothers who struggle terribly and feel as if they're defined by having to live paycheck to paycheck and not able to pay the rent on time certain months it, you know, this kind of, um, kind of lifestyle creates sort of an impoverishment of the spirit, of the soul.
And I think of story as a way to build currency. And I think of, for example, families writing stories together as a way of building generational wealth. So the story becomes a way to restore one's sense of identity, independent of the jobs that we're paid to do. And I just think it makes us feel like we're whole again.
And I think capitalism tends to need people not to feel whole. Stories make us feel whole.
Megan Leatherman: That's beautifully put. Thank you. Yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think, yeah, I can see how without knowing your story or knowing what story you've been born into, it's so much easier to get caught up in the whims of dominant culture and find identity in places that don't actually fit.
So yes, I can absolutely see the connection between story and identity. Anti capitalism. Makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. So where can listeners find you on the internet? Um, I'll put a link, of course, to your book and your website, but if you don't mind just saying where folks can find you, that'd be great.
Jane Clark: Sure. Sure. I have a website and it's at storycarriers. com. And I actually call it a movement. It's, I'm really into, uh, having a cultural movement of reclaiming our stories. I'm also on Instagram. I write on Substack, and you can find me under Story Carrier on Substack, and I share more about unraveling the stories of my life on Substack and what it feels like to do it.
I'm also on Facebook. I'm all over Facebook. Um, have I forgotten anybody? I think I am on Twitter on occasion. I just, I hate to give any energy to A millionaire.
Megan Leatherman: That's fair. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll put all those links in the show notes so people have them, but thank you. This has been a really rich conversation.
I'm taking a lot with me, so thank you very much.
Jane Clark: Oh, wonderful. Thank you.
Megan Leatherman: Okay, my friend. I hope you really enjoyed that conversation. I encourage you to follow along with Jane and pick up her book or check out her sub stack. She's a really talented writer and I think has. Really important things to teach us.
Thank you again to those of you supporting the show. If it's in your budget to chip in and help keep this work going, I would so appreciate it and you can do that at buymeacoffee. com slash Megan Leatherman. I'll be back with you in two weeks with another interview to round out our shorter season on communicating with the earth, and I hope that you will continue in your own ways to have conversations with the land and just go for a walk and see who's there and speak some of your concerns or joys aloud and just see what happens.
It can't hurt. I hope you take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.