Surrender

"If we must surrender a close bond,
we need to learn
to sacrifice the relationship
without sacrificing the love."

Christina Baldwin

"If you see yourself
as no one worth looking at;
if you believe you are
not worth listening to,
if they told you,
"That's not what you saw,
not what you heard,
not what you think
you cannot trust yourself"
You are lost.

Don't look to others to find you,
to love and take care of you now.
You'll suck them dry.

No one out there
is responsible.
Go back and find
your soul.
Be mother and father
to yourself,
Until the divine parents
arrive.

Christina Baldwin

Trust

"No amount of therapy
can heal a heart that doesn't trust.
To learn to trust
is often
the heart of therapy."
Christina Baldwin

Journey Home

"Each journey has it's gifts.  Not all of the gifts are welcome but each does, indeed, carry the potential for quiet transformation."   Christina Baldwin

Silence

"Silence is important because it provides direction.   What waits for you in silence is the insight and direction you need to determine the next step in your quest."  Christina Baldwin

Healing Story

"When we get to the point where we can wonder at the other people's perspectives in the turning point events of our lives, we begin to heal laterally across relationships of the living family."  Christina Baldwin

Family Story

"If we step up to the challenge of healing the family story we need to be grounded in the healing of our personal story.   We start there, standing firm in our own life experience and the person we have become through linking, editing, disorienting, and revisioning our personal story.   This is the psychological and spiritual foundation required to head into family history."  Christina Baldwin

Life as Story

"Story is the mother of us all.   First we wrap our lives in language and then we act on who we say we are.   We proceed from the word into the world and make a world based on our stories."  Christina Baldwin

Life as Story

"As creatures of story, we long for story; not just wordiness but the quality of interaction story engages in us.  Ironically so many of us experience great loneliness as we jostle around each other on crowded streets, overhear each other on cell phone, or cruise the internet late at night.   As we practice the art of storycatching, we can look for opportunities to insert story space into our daily life when we pay attention, and when we are paid attention to, we learn to take our place in the story going on around us."  Christina Baldwin

Perhaps

"Perhaps we wouldn't eat so much or smoke, or drink so much, if we were paying attention to ourselves.   Perhaps we wouldn't talk so much if we were paying attention to each other.   All of these oral activities are trying to meet a need, and perhaps the greatest need is to be seen and heard."  Christina Baldwin

Junk Food for the Mind

"The sound of one another's voices is so often background noise, as though life were a never-ending cell phone call.  Mirroring a junk food diet for the body, we have developed a junk-talk diet for the mind.   The cure for junk food is not to stop eating but to eat consciously.   The cure for junk talk is not to stop talking, but to speak and listen and write and read consciously, carefully determining our communication."   Christina Baldwin

Oneness

"Those who control the ear of the heart understand that if people truly discover each other, we will have a million circles and sit down and laugh and cry at our commonalities.   And then we will not be so easily led to fight wars.   We will not so unconsciously exploit each others lives in order to make our own more comfortable.   We will not be confused by the manipulation of half-truths and lies."  Christina Baldwin

Storycatchers

"Sometime storycatchers are provocative, disturbing the status quo with probing questions or statements."  Christina Baldwin

Storycatchers

"Storycatchers are people who value story and who find ways in the midst of their everyday lives to honor this activity.   The storycatcher's job is to help shift us into narrative, the ones who ask the leading question, make an inviting comment."   Christina Baldwin

Love

"When we live in a family, a community, a country where we know each other's true stories, we remember our capacity to lean in and love each other into wholeness."  Christina Baldwin

Story

"The practice of story creates a social net that makes us capable of seeing each others unique contribution and incapable of simply dismissing someone as "not like me"  Christina Baldwin

Story

"Story takes life events and combines what is happening with all our thoughts, feelings and reactions."  Christina Baldwin

Story

"Our lives are our story, and our story is our life.   Story is the narrative thread of our experience - not what literally happens, but what we make out of what happens, what we tell each other and what we remember."  Christina Baldwin