Hard Stories are Celebrations

The day before I fly home after a week of traveling-for-work, I throw myself a little celebration. I’m very fortunate to get to do the work I do. But it’s also very hard, both personally and professionally for reasons I won’t talk about because it will sound like self pity (and probably is).

But the night before I fly home, I get a little more food than I should and find a grocery store for some cheap wine and these ridiculous ice cream sandwiches named after me because I almost always forget a spoon. It’s a little bit over the top, but also serves as a reminder of the “why” of this community storytelling work: it’s an act of celebration.

We need to celebrate ourselves and each other more than we do.

Especially each other.

I met a woman today, a salon owner. Eight years ago, she was in an abusive relationship and in the middle of the night, called a friend to come pick her up because she wasn’t sure she would survive until morning.

In the car, her friend offered her something to smoke that would “make her feel better”.

It was meth.

“As soon as I breathed it in, I knew that my life was over,” she said.

She spent the next two years getting high, living in abandoned buildings, and walking barefoot around downtown and through neigborhoods looking for drugs.

She ended up in prison for five years, then used the drugs that get passed around among inmates and was thrown in lock-up: four months in a room by herself.

“Things got so bad for me in there that I had two choices: get my life together or end it.”

She chose to end it.

But as she walked over to the bed to take grab the bedsheet and tie it into a rope, she tripped and fell.

“But I tripped on thin air. There was nothing there,” she says. “And as soon as I hit the floor, I started crying and calling out to God to save me from my addiction. I spent the next four days fasting and praying, telling him how sorry I was and that if I ever got out, to use for some kind of purpose.

Then, on the forth day, I felt comfort. I felt loved There’s no other way to explain it. I felt like he was wrapping his arms around me and saying it was going to be OK.

I haven’t touched a drug since.”

She gets out of prison and goes immediately into hair school. She graduates and starts working at other salons.

She opend a salon of her own in April of this year.

Two months later, women are driving an hour one way to have her do their hair.

The Main Street director I was working with today asked me, “What kind of stories are your favorite?”

Stories like this.

As I walked out of the salon after our interview and photos, I told the woman how amazing she was and how proud she should be.

“Your story is a hard one,” I said. “But also a celebration.”

I want to say to anyone reading this who is living a hard story that you are worthy of celebration. For what you’ve been through, that you’ve gotten this far, for what you’ve accomplished (even if that means simply waking up to try again), for what you will be able to do from here.

You should be celebrated. You are worthy of celebration.

Even if that means simply buying yourself just a little too much food, cheap wine, and an ice cream sandwich.