Summary: Whenever I talk to my writing students about their work, I often introduce the topic of threads, or themes and recurring images that run throughout their stories, hold them together, and propel their narratives forward. We also talk about how well or poorly they flow as a result. And that's when the discussion really heats up. Threads are a perfect metaphor for our own life stories, too. I was the weird one growing up. Most people I knew might have described me as creative – which more often than not suggested an offputting predilection toward all things fantastic, dreamy, and inaccessible to anyone living outside my head. I was also deemed too sensitive, which didn't help matters when facing unsolicited criticism for sharing the stories of my, well, anything. All of which can test the limits of even the most patient albeit, unprepared parent. I had an extremely rich inner life, full of stories and color and ideas just waiting for me to reel them in from the ether and share with anyone in within earshot. In so doing, it happened that I often knew things I wasn't supposed to. My dreams were vivid; inspiration and imagination were my constant companions and I was, as you might expect, a tremendously high-spirited and, some would say, annoying child. Like lots of imaginative kids, I sometimes heard people talking to me and around me, without ever necessarily seeing anybody. Somehow, I knew I had support beyond what I saw and consciously understood. Some were people I knew or knew of, others not. I remember recurring dreams in which I was told that I could see despite the fact that I knew my eyes were closed. From an early age, I'd been aware that there were different levels of consciousness available to us yet untapped. In school, I was always had among the most colorful ideas in class. Without fail, my mouth was the first to fly open with intricate explanations of story lines, artistic interpretations, and meanings behind metaphors; my penchant for unwrapping tricky symbolism like Christmas gifts to share with the group was unparalleled – and usually under-appreciated. I've also always had a cast of colorful friends that spanned the gamut of interests, orientation and ethnicity. In retrospect, it's easy to see how those threads ran seamlessly through every area of my life. These days I see them as the integral, if not defining elements of my life's purpose, present by varying degrees, in everything I do. One of the things I wanted most in life – aside from the proverbial pony and private island all my own – was to be truly seen and understood as the magical, deeply dreaming child that I was. And although this validation was a long way off – decades away – I would first have to learn to dismantle the parts of me that drew all the criticism. Fortunately for me it didn't work. Those threads of my early story kept running through my life like they'd been forever fastened to a silent loom spinning in the backdrop, all the while working up an amazing tapestry that I delight in displaying with pride today. Like I've said before, disentangling other people's agendas and opinions from our own in order to get to the truth of who we are and what we came here to do can sometimes feel like an uphill slog through driving rain, funky headwinds and low visibility. And that's because once we begin the excavation of feelings that have been stuffed and denied over the years, we come face to face with it all. But, the truth is, to get to the heart of who we are, there's no way around it. You can't Tivo, text or phone in this kind of work. When you stick with it, you enter into a true sense of a Self that looks nothing like the person you thought you knew or paraded around as in the past. In a word, becoming yourself – which, in my opinion, is our life's work, passion and mission – takes bravery. And it's worth every step. The 19th century British writer George Holbrook Jackson once said,
