“I can’t tell you which direction to turn, or where you’ll find success. But I can tell you that your path will require pivots and quick thinking, and a lot of grace and adaptability. It will be messy and incomprehensible and incredibly rewarding.
Some days you land a dream client or your novel gets a surprise front-page billing that nets you hundreds of sales and new fans; other days you get shot in the eye.
Life is chaos like that. Life is messy. Business is messy. But it’s all good, because we’re in it together!
I hope you’ll join me on this journey.”
That’s how I ended my very first Substack post back in September of 2023. I called the fledgling project From Chaos with Love as a nod to my first creative productivity book From Chaos to Creativity—and as acknowledgement that no productivity system could fully erase the chaos.
I wrote that post only two months after my eye injury, before I understood exactly how long it would take me to recover not just physically, but emotionally and mentally.
I figured I was good to go! I had a story to tell—with a beginning, middle, and end! It even had useful lessons and morals I could share with my audience!
I was wrong.
The never ending story
We live in a culture that rewards finished arcs. The algorithm of popularity prefers Instagram polish and neat before-and-afters. We shake our heads in disappointment when someone regains that lost weight or falls off the wagon or returns to an unhealthy relationship.
Haven’t they learned? Didn’t their happy ending stick?
There’s a ton of pressure to present our own stories in the same way: with a neat beginning, middle, and end, the moral tied up in a tidy bow.
But that’s not how real life stories work. In real life, we’re forever standing in the middle of the story, telling it from the inside out.
I teach people to use story frameworks to shape their arc and help their stories land more effectively. The Magnetic Story Framework is a powerful way to present your story to the world, but it’s not meant to be prescriptive. It should be a tool, not a straightjacket.
It’s not wrong to present your story to your audience with a clean beginning, middle, and end. But the challenge comes in how we narrate our stories to ourselves. When we feel the pressure to push through the mess and manufacture meaning before we’ve actually lived it.
Trying to force your story to fit a tidy narrative arc—especially while you’re busy living it—isn’t just difficult.
It’s dangerous.
The problem with forcing the arc
Telling your story can be healing. In those early days of From Chaos with Love, I used it as a public place to process what had happened to me in posts like “It’s okay, little sister” and Rhinestone Recovery.
But I also doled out cheerful (and extremely premature) advice about how to get back on your feet and figure out your priorities after life dealt you a blow.
(Spoiler: it took me almost two years to really get back on my feet.)
I wince when I read back through some of those essays, but I also feel for the version of me who was desperately searching for meaning that added value for others—and that I could use for myself. I wanted to find a takeaway that would make what I was going through “worth it.”
Drawing premature conclusions can close the book on lessons that still need time. When we lock in a tidy moral too early, we stop being curious. We stop noticing the contradictions, the reversals, the new information that only arrives in the next chapter of our story.
We tell ourselves what we should be experiencing, instead of experiencing what we are.
This is where the concept of Doors of No Return can be so helpful.
We’ve all walked through many Doors of No Return in our lives, and we’ll all walk through many more on our way to that unknowable Final Door. This means that at any given stage of our lives, we’ve gone through a Struggle and are living in the Promised Land—even as we’re experiencing a new Struggle brought on by walking through a new Door.
Many things can be true. Many stories can be told from the chain of events contained in a single life.
So. How do you tell your story from the middle?
Ground yourself in your experience, not your journey
Be open to what is actually happening, rather than trying to fit your actual experience into some prescribed model. Be mindful of what you’re actually feeling rather than what you’re supposed to feel. Be curious about yourself. And don’t feel like you have to have the answers now.
You’re not on a Hero’s Journey right now—you’re living life, and it’s messy, complicated, and chaotic. Honor that. You can make sense of it later.
Right now, notice how you’re talking about the story you’re currently living. Where are you at? What are you trying? What have you noticed? If you catch yourself saying, “Here’s the grand takeaway that explains everything forever,” take a breath and ground yourself back in the moment.
Telling your story is a powerful tool for healing. It can metabolize pain, connect you with others, and help you process what you’re going through. But don’t let it become a shortcut to bypass the discomfort of actually healing.
Offer a lantern, not a map
I’m not saying you have to be at the end of your story to share wisdom, though. Far from it. In fact, sometimes the people you can help most are the ones who are just a few steps behind you.
They might not be able to visualize the very end in the final transformation or take inspiration from someone living deep in the Promised Land, but they can take comfort and guidance from you shining the light a few steps ahead on the path and saying, “Hey, friend. Watch your footing here.”
Sometimes the bravest thing you can publish is a field report—short, local, and honest about the terrain underfoot. Describe the threshold you’ve crossed, what you’re aiming for, and what you can see in your immediate surroundings. Don’t worry about turning it into an epic.
Get an outside perspective
Trying to tell your story while you’re in the middle of it can feel like trying to read a label from inside the jar. You absolutely need to get an outside perspective.
Early on in my eye loss journey, my doctor connected me with an in-hospital therapist who specializes in helping people deal with traumatic injuries and PTSD. That experience was invaluable.
She gave me space to talk about everything rattling around in my mind. She helped me understand the stories I was telling myself about my injury, and she gently contrasted them with the reality of an outside perspective.
As an expert in helping other people tell their own stories, I still seek out the guidance of coaches, accountability partners, and friends who can help me see outside my head.
Protect the raw
Give yourself a place where you can tell the raw truth without feeling a need to perform: a journal, your voice memos, a therapist, a trusted friend. Remember that not every story needs a public audience. Not every draft belongs online.
Yes, you can mine that raw truth to share with your audience if appropriate, but it’s critical to have a space where you can tell your story honestly, without the pressure to pull a lesson out of it.
Let your story be unfinished
When you treat storytelling as a tool rather than a shortcut, you give yourself time to heal, learn, and integrate. And when you share what you’re learning a few steps at a time—without trying to slap a moral on it—you become exactly the guide your audience needs today.
It’s okay to find a moral if it helps you right now. Just hold it lightly and know your understanding will keep unfolding as you do.
The stories I shared in the early days of my From Chaos with Love Substack were incredibly healing—as was my willingness to let the messages I was taking from them evolve.
I’m sure I still have a lot of evolving yet to do. And so do you.
Welcome to your story, friend. Give yourself the space to live it.
And if you could use a bit of outside perspective, get in touch.