What Is Your Origin Story?

How you frame it makes all the difference.

Baby Me. Where am I? Who am I?

Why an Origin Story?

Cultures around the world have creation myths to explain how the world began, how people and animals came to be. These origin stories provide a foundation for the culture's identity, values and beliefs. In the same way, the roots of our personal identity can be found in the stories and mythology of our own beginnings. How we frame these genesis stories can make all the difference to how we live and view ourselves today.

The super-heroes we love to watch on our screens have origin stories too. Superman, the Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, the Flash - there is always a back-story to explain the origin of extraordinary powers. Origin stories add depth and motivation to characters, and often initiate the core conflicts a superhero will face, setting them on their path of moral choice and transformation. I wonder, what do OUR origins say about our conflicts and life quests?

What is it we love about super-heroes? Is it their mix of human character and flaws, with the extraordinary powers that seem to make them invincible? Do our hearts long for this blend of human and beyond-human in our own lives too? Perhaps this explains (at least in part) our desire to write life story and memoir. We frame our lives as hero stories, in the hope that something extraordinary shines forth from the ordinary days of our lives. Don’t we all secretly suspect there is hidden potential within, that we are not only Peter Parker, but Spiderman too?

What about you?

So, how do you discover your personal origin myth? This is not as straightforward as you might expect. Is it the story of your conception, birth and childhood? Or does it go back further, to your lineage, your ancestors? Do you believe in past lives, and might they be included? What of divine origins? The origin stories you need to tell are the ones that make sense to you, the ones that will be most life-giving.

For me, that means two origin myths; two stories that have bumped together in my heart for decades. When I speak of myth, I do not mean fictional. But neither is there just one obvious story, or single truth. The story is in the interpretation, in the memories we choose to include (or leave out), in the way we weave them together and the meanings we assign to them.

In a recent conversation with my brother I discovered that his remembrance of significant childhood events was entirely different from my own. He had interpreted things through the lens of his own personality and the impact of events was polar opposite to my own experience. The mythology he had built around those situations, was different to the mythology I had taken on.

I will share my two origin myths now, in the hope that they might prompt you to write your own.

ORIGIN STORY ONE

I was conceived in 1961, just one month after the contraceptive pill was introduced in Australia; conceived out of wedlock, at a time when that was still frowned upon. I sometimes wonder if I scraped through into this world by luck of timing. I grew in the womb of a fearful mother who was still recovering from the sickness and stigma of tuberculosis. She had been heartbroken several times over, and was still unsure of her relationship with my father.

I was born to parents of poverty, parents who suffered as children through Great Depression and wartime. I was born to parents who suppressed their fullest expressions in their own lifetimes. My Dad lived a vagabond life for 16 years, adventuring and working his way around Australia, until my birth forced him to settle into a back-breaking job to pay the bills. His penchant for politics and social justice was pushed aside. My mother had creative flair. She was a whiz with a sewing machine, and had passion for antiques, but no means to translate this into income or satisfaction.

I don't remember ever feeling carefree as a child. I was born burdened, weighed down by my parents' frustration, the fears of my mother, the worries of my father. I came forth damaged by my parents' heartache. My mother, so recently run-down by her own TB, was unable to breastfeed and struggled to bond with me. Child-rearing 'wisdom' of the time was that babies should be left to cry. I felt uncomforted, unloved, though I'm sure this wasn't my parents' intention. They wanted to love me, but they were broken souls. I know this now. My baby self did not. My child self did not. I became chronically timid, and shyness hindered my ability to make friends. I would hide in corners, wishing to be included, but afraid of being asked. I got good grades at school, but the work was so dull. I felt lost and lonely.

Generational trauma

This thread of brokenness can be traced back through generations. One grandfather lost his leg in war. The other lost his brother in a house fire at the tender age of four. My grandmothers had miscarriages and stillbirths. There was no counseling for any of those things back then. Nor were there government benefits when my grandfather was laid off from the mines for health reasons. On top of this, there was judgement from Salvationist aunts, who berated the drinking and other coping mechanisms of less pious family members.

Despite everything, these people had dreams in their hearts. In the 1890s my ancestors chased gold from one side of Australia to the other, made long journeys by bullock train from east to west and back again, but riches never came. Then there was my Aunt Phoebe, my name-sake. A spinster, Phoebe wrote romance tales and hid them behind the papered walls of their makeshift home, for fear that her sister (my grandmother) would find and destroy them. The women of that generation read Mills & Boon novels. With no romance in their own lives, they lived vicariously. Yet the longing was there. Many were unmarried. Those who did marry were bogged down with childcare and endless chores. Stories were their escape.

Revelations

Of course, I knew little of this when I was growing up. It was all revealed slowly. My mother left home a few months after my sixteenth birthday, to try and find herself. Perhaps it was the restless sixties that unsettled my mother, the cries for freedom and feminism in the zeitgeist, but whatever triggered it, her heart could no longer stay stifled in an empty marriage. At sixteen, this was not how I saw it. I blamed myself. I felt utterly rejected by her. And I took on the role of trying to hold my father together in his grief. I crashed hard. No-one, I was sure, had ever been so damaged, no-one could ever understand, this was absolutely the worst thing that anyone could ever have experienced. I was convinced of that. (Reminder to present self: Don’t judge the intensity of another’s feelings.)

After Mum left, I discovered some papers in an old bureau. This was how I found out that Mum had a previous marriage, that my parents had to wait for her divorce to come through before they could marry, in a registry office, just days before my birth. In retrospect these facts seem minor, unimportant. And yet, to my teenage self it felt like everything I knew about myself and my family was a lie. My origin story was rewritten in the shock of a moment.

This origin story no longer has much charge for me. I have unpeeled and healed so many layers of it. I have chosen to keep what is helpful and release what no longer serves me. I have re-framed the story of my forbears into one of resilience, perseverance and strength, rather than brokenness. I have moved on. Origin Story Two has helped me with this.

ORIGIN STORY TWO

Many super-heroes don't discover their deeper origin story until later in life. For example, Harry Potter’s true origin and destiny didn’t begin revealing itself until Hagrid's visit on his eleventh birthday. For me, it began a few weeks before my twenty second birthday.

Raised a firm atheist, I had never given thought to spiritual matters. Yes, I had questioned the meaning of life, deeply. But always through a lens of atheism. Free university tuition was introduced in Australia for a brief period in the seventies and so I became the first in my family to attend uni, studying history and politics. I wrote an honors thesis that set out to solve the world’s problems. (What was I thinking?) As I handed the thesis in, it happened. I heard a voice. Exhausted from sleepless nights of thesis writing, I heard a distinct and clear voice. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that a fully formed idea-package landed, unbidden, in my mind. And this was the essence of its message: ‘You cannot solve the world’s problems unless you change people’s hearts.’ This was not my own thought, I knew that for sure. And the words had a power that I could not ignore. In retrospect, I believe this was the voice of my soul, or of the divine, but at the time I just knew the words were not my own.

‘You can’t solve the world’s problems unless you change people’s hearts.’

The VOICE

Co-incidence or Kismet?

The next day, as timing would have it, a friend invited me to a concert. Normally I would have said no, but craving social interaction after being holed up writing, I agreed to go.

Photo by Chris Bair, Unsplash

The artist was a trumpeter and after a rousing performance, he shared about Jesus changing people’s hearts. His message felt like a trumpet blast from the heavens, with it’s obvious connection to the voice I had heard. I was hooked. It also helped that my friend’s youth group was so welcoming to shy, lonely me. When they took me for coffee after the concert it was nectar to my starving soul. This set me on a spiritual and healing journey, through the Christian church, then beyond, and into the depths of my own heart. There have been twists and turns (that will find their way into other articles) but I have discovered that there are more depths and layers to life than we can possibly imagine.

I believe now that my origin is in the stars. I am a fractal of the divine. I am a multi-dimensional being with unique gifts. Life is magical. I am here on purpose. I may have been a mistake to my parents, but not to the divine. I was born into the family of my choosing, for growth and experience. And I can rise above it all to shine a brighter light. The message of the voice has resounded through my life and I am now committed to the importance of heart-healing and heart-consciousness. It is this second origin story that liberates and energises me.

So I have two origin stories, one human, the other, divine. Both stories matter. Both origin stories are important to tell, impossible to separate. In any superhero movie there is a skillful weaving of the human story with the story of the hero in their full powers. This is a good guide for us as we write our stories.

Over to You

In communicating your authentic story, I encourage you to explore all the threads, explore the way in which they come together and move apart, weaving in and out like a dance.

I believe we are all superheroes. We are all chosen ones. We all have both a human and a divine story. How might you weave yours together to energise your life and share it with others?