Stories. We all have them. Our stories define us, for better…or not.

This is the story of me. And of you. Of each of us as individuals and of all of us together.

This is the story of how I came to understand the role our stories play in the reality of our lives. And how gaining a fresh perspective on our stories can change those realities in a way we get to define.

This is the story of realizing a simple yet profound truth – every story has two parts: The facts and the stories we tell ourselves about what those facts mean, what they say about us. Stories of hope or woundedness. Stories of strength or oppression. Stories of owning our birthright of wholeness and pure love or shrinking from it. All from the same facts.

It is the story of being staggered by the beauty of women who have lived and loved and laughed and cried… who have triumphed and suffered… who have soared and crashed and gotten up to live and love and laugh and cry some more.

And love. It is the story of Becoming Found by our own original wholeness and love. Of coming home to our own whole Self, the place where we always belong, warts and all. We’re beginning to understand that “warts” are just pieces of ourselves that someone else didn’t like or we didn’t accept. They’re just unloved little bits of our Self.

I began writing to explore what I think, feel, and believe about how our stories are formed and how they inform our lives. Writing quickly moved into teaching. We teach what we ourselves most want or need to learn. Teaching gently yet firmly requires us to ask deeper questions into who, what, why, and how. And look – it leads us right back to our stories.  

What emerged was conscious awareness of a process I had been using unconsciously with myself and my clients, the StoryShift practice that clears, heals, and helps reframe our old stories without pretending that some things never happened or didn’t hurt when they did. It’s chock-full of the teaching and tools we need for Becoming Found by our original wholeness. To come home to our Self.

Anything we want and don’t yet have already exists for us just outside our comfort zone.  We are continually being offered two choices:

• Grow our comfort zone big enough to contain our desires
• Shrink our desires to fit into our comfort zone

If you have read this far, you are ready to join me in growing our comfort zones. To embrace the labor pains of birthing the real you, the You who has been inside you all along just waiting to Become Found again. The You who is aching to return to original wholeness.  

Breaking free from our past, re-finding our voices, becoming free of self-doubt and self-judgment.  

All of these things start in the exact same place – Becoming Found.

Life and love are looking for you. Are you ready to become found?

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I’m Anne Wade – teacher, writer and storyshifter. I have a master’s degree in education focused on the psychology and physiology of how we learn and how our thoughts are formed. Whole brain, whole body, whole emotional, intuitive, energetic, and spiritual self working together as they are designed to.

 

After my first marriage ended, I started a training and organizational development company working mostly with major industry, then adding nonprofits and women-owned businesses.

 

That may seem like an odd mix, but the thread running through all of it was the growth, development, and healing of the individual, and how important our personal work is not only to each of us, but also how it fits into the big picture of our careers, our circumstances, our relationships, and out into the world. I once told a division head for a company that is a household name that his company could only grow to the degree that he was willing to grow, develop, and heal himself. I truly believe the healing of our world begins with each of us doing our own personal healing. And he agreed.

 

I love learning and have lots of certifications. Two of them matter to the work of StoryShifting and Becoming Found.

 

One is EFT, Emotional Freed Technique, which is probably the best-known style of tapping. I learned tapping circa 2000 from Gary Craig, who developed EFT by modifying and simplifying an older version of tapping. Then I modified and simplified a little more to create StoryShift Tapping and have been practicing that way ever since.

 

The other is NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming. Neuro refers to the nervous system. Linguistic refers to language. NLP is the study of how individuals organize and integrate our thinking, feeling, and language.

 

Thinking, feeling, and words working together.

 

It’s time for us all to shift our old stories and come home to our true wholeness. Our whole Self. 

Welcome home.