I am an identical twin. My twin sister died at birth and I have always struggled with the idea of missing something I never truly knew. Her spine wasn’t formed properly, and my parents knew they would only be taking one of us home. They named her Lea Michele. Lea is my Mum’s middle name, and my Dad’s name is Michael. I grew up knowing that I had a “Guardian Angel”.

When I was 12 I found out I had congenital scoliosis. We had a nurse come into school and tell us about how, with scoliosis, there is a curvature of the spine, and a good way to detect it is to bend over and touch your toes, and if one side of your back is higher than the other, then you should get it checked out.

I went home that afternoon frantic. I told mum, and my bothers and sisters, and my dad. They all acted calm and collected but I later found out they had been concerned about this for a while too. One afternoon a few weeks earlier, I was reading on the front porch in the sun and was bent over my book, and my siblings noticed and showed my mum. So my coming home with this news probably wasn’t that shocking.

We made an appointment with the GP, which led to x-rays. Which led to a visit to the specialist.

I did have scoliosis, but not the conventional type where it is purely just a curvature. Congenital means “born with” – and the reason I was born with my scoliosis is because I had an extra vertebrae – but only on the left hand side. This extra half had a rib off of it too. Here I was, with extra spine when my twin died because hers wasn’t fully formed? Basically, my spine was straight until it hit this uneven patch, where is curved out at the bottom. The funny thing is, that my condition should have been so much more physically apparent, but because I was so into swimming training, my spinal muscles were so strong that they held me in place. My shoulders were level, and for someone with my condition it is usual for one shoulder to be much higher than the other.

So, we had to book in for surgery. I was lucky enough to have the best orthopedic surgeon at that point in time in WA as my doctor. The surgery would basically be two in one, and was expected to take about 10 hours. They would first remove the extra vertebrae and rib – but to get in there, they would have to remove the whole vertebrae and ribs directly above. I started with an extra half and now I am minus one! Then they would roll me over and put steel rods against my spine. These will stay in there forever.

In the lead up I gave blood over 3 different occasions, since it was anticipated that I would need a blood transfusion. My mum desperately wanted to donate for me, since she felt the amount of blood was too great for me to give myself. However, we were not a direct match and while her blood could have been used, it would have been better if it were my own. The first two times I gave blood I thought it was great. I was nervous, but it didn’t hurt and I didn’t get dizzy, and afterwards I got all this free food and the rest of the day off school (I had never had one day off school until my back surgery. Not one in 7 years)! The third time I think I was a bit cocky after the success of the first two times, and I think I looked at another person across the hall and looked at exactly what was happening, and I came over very dizzy, had a hot flashes, and nearly passed out. Luckily they put a fan over me and I recovered.

By the time all of this had happened I was 13 and half way through my first year at High School. The surgery was a success, it went for over 12 hours. My lungs collapsed during (this is normal, they had to peel back my rib cage), my organs started turning off since I had been under anesthetic for so long, and it was lucky I had given so much blood leading up to it because I ended up needing every last drop. I was on life support afterwards, and I remember once I woke up they took the ventilator out of my throat. The nurses said, “Don’t look, Mum” which I thought was really funny because she’s my mum, not the their mum, silly nurses!

I don’t remember much after the surgery. That was horrendous though, having the ventilator removed. I remember having the sorest throat afterwards but not being allowed any water, just ice chips, which my sister fed me. I remember seeing my sisters partner Christian and asking what he would take with him into the desert. I was so drugged up so I don’t blame him for being confused, but I was dreaming about lettuce. Because it’s food and water so would be ideal for the desert. I remember seeing my brothers then girlfriend (now wife) standing over me, and asking where my brother was, only to see him sitting in the chair next to my bed with his head in his hands shaking, and dripping with sweat. This is the brother who is a fireman!

I moved from ICU into a normal ward after a few days, and they removed the drip from my back. I still had the tube down my nose, and how I hated that thing. I know it was necessary since I wasn’t allowed to eat so it had to remove the bile from my stomach, but ughh. I was only in hospital for another week after that, but god it felt like a month.

My family took it in shifts to visit me, and tried their best to ensure I was never alone. I cried a lot. I hate hospitals, and was in pain, and was certain I’d made a terrible mistake in ever going through with the surgery. I pretty much had visitors from 7am until 11pm. I think the nurses allowed my family to break the visiting rules since I was young and terrified. I also had multiple visits from two of my best friends. Who are still my best friends today. I remember the first day I was able to sit up, I was eating my dinner in the chair next to my bed. Sas was coming to visit with her mum, saw my empty bed and was certain that I’d died. She made her Mum walk in first and there I was sitting up oh-so proud in the chair.

I remember a nurse, towards the end of my hospital stay, completely changed my mind set. She was the nicest lady. It was about 12am and I was in excruciating pain. I had just been taken off my morphine drip and the panadine forte tablets weren’t really doing the job. I called the nurse in, nearly in tears, and she gave me some more medicine and sat and talked to me. I don’t know how she knew I needed that, but she did. Most of the other nurses were nowhere near as nice. She sat and talked to me and told me that when she has back pain and is trying to sleep she lies on her side with a pillow in between her knees and knees bent. She went and got lemonade from the nurses lounge for me as a sweet to have my tablets with, and generally gave me a sense of comfort – which I have learnt is invaluable.

Now, 10 years later, I still don’t know how I feel about this whole experience. I do believe, as corny as this sounds, that I had a bit of extra help getting me through it though.

I had to give up swimming. Swimming up until that point had been my life. I had dreams, man. I was going to the Olympics. I mean, I probably would never have made it that far – I don’t have the right build for swimming – but how I loved it. I loved training, following the black line up and down the pool. I loved butterfly, it was my favourite stroke. I wasn’t allowed back in a pool at all for 3 months after the op, and even then I wasn’t allowed to actually swim until about 6 months. But the water felt different. My back felt different.

Don’t get me wrong, I can swim now. And I think I’m pretty good, considering how unfit I am. But that’s just because of my technique. If you are taught to swim properly, you will never lose your technique, and it makes you that much of a better swimmer. But I had to give up on my dream, I’m not allowed to do butterfly anymore. Well, I can, but I have to be careful. I generally get very sore afterwards.

But, I get sore after a lot of things now.

I have three scars across my back. One down my spine; one along the side, tracing the ribs; and a small one below, where the drain was. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate my scars. I think scars tell a story, make me interesting. I do feel that they take away some femininity though, but as far as scars go mine are pretty good. They aren’t too raised, or red. I’m pretty lucky I had such an amazing surgeon and that my body apparently scars well.

I know I am in no way worse off than others. Hell, my own dad has been through so much more than me. He’s been paralysed, had multiple surgeries and can now walk with the aid of sticks, and he has now also had and beaten cancer. He is undoubtedly my hero. As is my mum. She has been the rock through everything, my twin dying, dads troubles, then mine. I have two of the strongest individuals for parents in this world.

But I find it hard to be happy that I’ve been through this. I mean, I suppose it’s hard enough being a teenager and figuring out your body when you don’t have a demented spine. But at the same time, this is something I have been through, and it has undoubtedly made me who I am today. I look back on the 13 year old me with pride, I didn’t know that little girl could be so strong or brave.

But what would my life be like now if it had never happened? Would I still be swimming? I probably wouldn’t have partied so much or stop caring about school work. I feel like this is the event that changed the course of my life. Pre-surgery, I was a gawky pre-pubescent, who read 8 books a week, and swam almost as much. Post surgery, I became a teenager always trying to improve herself, look different, party hard, etc. That’s not to say I went off the rails. Just that different things became a priority.

I think now I have combined the two of those me’s. I think recently I have been getting back to the girl I was before, and embracing the things she loved again.

I don’t resent the fact I had spinal surgery. It was an experience that made me who I am today. But you can’t help but wonder what could have been, I suppose.

When I was 16 my Mum bought me a star in the sky, located in the Southern Cross for my birthday. She named it Lea Michelle. When I was 18, my best friends Dad passed away suddenly and we had always said that we would get a tattoo together. The next day we both went and got a star on our right wrists. I believe mine stands for family, belief, and love. And that is the strength I get from it when I feel down.

Visit her blog “Mounting and Counting”

I think many of us broke ass bitches in New York City have either playfully or seriously considered trying the escort route. One reason is thanks to campy chic flicks that may have the average broad thinking that being an escort is just serving as an eye candy wedding date for a guy who doesn’t have a plus one. Truth is, it’s far more raw. Sex is expected and you have to risk going to stranger’s homes and fend for yourself once you pass their door.

I’m doing the reading, thinking thing on vacation here and I just read an October ’09 Vanity Fair article about the Craigslist killer investigation. I don’t like following sensational media frenzies, but the murdered girl was giving sensual massages, not even sexual favors and managed to lose her life. In desperate times, I’ve responded to ads like that on CL.

Craiglist is a scary venue and one I’ve come dangerously close to using for very wrong reasons. One night, I booked work with an escort service right before rent was due. I was nervous as hell and knew I’d be an emotional wreck if I had sex for money. I could almost feel my Dad’s heart break more than any stripper revelations would induce.

My first call was a guy who just wanted me to dance for an hour. The guy actually behaved, but when I arrived, I went down to his basement level place that resembled a mob killing setup and had his pit bull run up to me the minute I walked in.

He offered me an extra $150 for sex and I turned it down. He wasn’t offended and didn’t pressure me to have sex. He had just nonchalantly put the offer on the table, literally, in bills. The fact he smoked me up got my racing heart down and I was able to think clearly and calmly about continuing making calls that night.

I was supposed to have another call with greater expectations and canceled on the woman running the escort service. While my financial issues remained in tact, my emotional baggage lifted instantly. I feel grateful I quit while I was ahead and I might add that of the $150 paid by the customer I danced for, all of $60 went to me. A huge cut went to the driver and the agency. Had I accepted the $150 and done the nasty, I could have pocketed all that extra  money, but why go there when $150 is just the take for a decent lunch shift waitressing at a high volume restaurant. Who needs to cross that line for chump change?

I think I’ve been naive to even entertain the escort idea and I’m glad I’ve made a point to read things that are scaring me away further. Beyond the article about the Craigslist killer, I also made a point to read American Psycho recently. The main character kills homeless people, animals and other Wall St. bankers, but he has the most disturbingly entertaining time torturing and murdering call girls.

So many strippers seem to have no qualms about working as escorts outside the club, but while activities inside the club can get sketchy, there is a metal detector, regular bag searches, security and liability. Some sexual conduct may occur that is not within the law, but working as a stripper that’s the most you have to worry about. Working as an escort, you have to rely on luck to live.

Hey guys! So does anyone remember my original call? If I can get 15 LifeStories up and posted I’ll make this space a little more official. I’ve been eying the domain “alifestoryproject.com” for a little while and I want to take this blog to the next level both with a new address and a spruced up look!

Keep sending me your stories and encourage your friends and fellow bloggers to do the same! I want to get out of wordpress.com and into the real interwebs!

On that note, you guys have been awesome and I love the stories that I’ve been getting. Keep up the good work and stick around!

Visit her blog “She’s In The Band”

I am now, was then, and probably always will be your typical teenage girl.

Alright, the jig is up, I’m twenty now but something tells me I’ll always be the same obsessive, slightly impulsive 18-year-old. I attach myself to people and things easily, have serious abandonment issues, and have a tendency to swing my mood back and forth like a 9-year-old going after a pinata, but it took three long years of misery and obsession to turn me into the best possible version of myself. This story is about love, heartbreak, and wading through all the bullshit to figure out who you really are.

I met him on my 17th birthday. I was hooked immediately. He was interesting, attractive, with just a hint of tragedy. Perfect for me. I love a sense of mystery and the idea of being someone’s go-to girl. We got continued to talk until I entertained the delusion of him actually sharing any kind of mutual feelings for me, and that’s where our downward spiral begins.

He quickly became one of my closest friends. I always wanted to be around him, and hear what he had to say. I began molding myself into the type of person I was sure he’d appreciate, and maybe one day love. As the days, months, years progressed, I was so far off from the person I had been pre-boy that I had unknowingly burned several bridges between friends and family in the process.

I became obsessed. I have been a musician all my life, though admittedly, I only began writing my own music the year I met him. At first it was a simple ploy to get his attention, but I soon fell in love with a little instrument and the idea of expressing myself. However, no matter how much joy I got from playing ukulele, every song I wrote was packed to the brim with references to him and I and what I wanted from this seemingly meaningful relationship.

Remember when I said I became obsessed? Multiply that by about one hundred. My mood, my life, my well-being was completely dependent on him. The days we didn’t speak were the days I cried. The days we argued were the worst. The day he didn’t wish me a Happy Birthday and therefore ruined the day altogether for me was the day I decided I couldn’t do this anymore.

I know I’m a girl, and I know this is a typical story of your “first love” and how it almost never works out the way you want it to, but I do have to mention that aside from parts and placement, I’m the furthest thing from a girl you will ever meet. I get tattooed, hang out with boys, and stare at eyeliner pencils and mascara brushes with the most horrifyingly confused look on my face. The idea of feeling this attached to someone was as foreign to me as the inside of a compact.

To put it gently, he destroyed me.

At the end, I was the worst possible version of myself; sort of the Terminator-Hannah, ready to tear down the walls of my independence one bazooka at a time. I decided it was time to say so long to dream-boy and hello to building everything back the way it should be.

After a few months of removing him from my life, and keeping the communication waves silent, it dawned on me; being happy is NOT difficult. All it takes is firmly planted feet, and three words that have become a household phrase, thanks to Nike: “Just do it.”

Upon realizing that I, in fact, was the moderator of my own feelings and emotions, the world opened up to me. I found that there are plenty of other things to write songs about. I began to discover who I really was as a person. I discovered that a lot of the things he despises are things I adore. Like feta cheese. Man, I love feta cheese.

It’s been over a year now, and I finally, for the first time in my 20-something years on earth, love who I am. It’s not from a place of arrogance or narcissism, rather just a place of living life. I’m learning new things about myself every single day and even more so learning how to embrace all of them for what they are: me.

Did I ever get my happy ending and get my dream guy? Nope. But we’re currently just friends with no intentions of changing the game. Has this been your typical teenage story of heartbreak and woe? Yes, but ideally it inspires all you obsessive, slightly neurotic, but incredibly unique women out there to keep yourselves happy before anyone else. No matter how much you love someone, don’t compromise your own story to merely have a cameo in theirs.

In the wise words of every Nike commercial for the last decade or two, on the subject of keeping yourself happy and making yourself the best possible version of yourself: just do it.

Visit her Blog “Love Imagine Create”

With only six weeks left in my college career I was run over by a drunk driver. Not only did the tires crush the lower portion of my body, but I was drug between the belly of the car and the asphalt for nearly fifteen feet.

The guy driving the car was not a total stranger to me. I had met him earlier in the night, as he was a part of the group I had been hanging out with. In fact, in the few seconds before he ran me over I was trying to persuade him not to drive because he was so obliterated.

He had hopped out of our sober drive car and into the driver’s seat of his own car. His good friend and I stood by the open car door and asked him to give us the keys. He refused and put the car in reverse. It took less than a second for my mind to recognize that something awful was about to happen. The driver’s side door was approaching me and there was no way for me to avoid its path.

His friend screamed, “STOP” as he hit the acceleration. Before I knew it I was knocked to the ground and sucked towards the pavement. The asphalt tore at my skin as my mind went blank. The front driver’s side tire drilled over my left leg, up towards my torso. My body twisted in torment and desperation. Finally, the bottom of the car released my mangled body. Quickly after this I blacked out.

I was taken to the hospital and emergency surgery was performed on my face. My skull was exposed and I needed over 200 stitches in my head. Every one of my limbs were slashed. My knee and ankle were crushed. My pelvis was broken in three places.

My body took years to heal. I did a year and a half of physical therapy, as well as several rounds of shots in my left knee and ankle. I still have a scar on my left forehead. I suffered from a head injury, which required a year and a half of speech therapy.

All of that was nothing compared to the repair my heart mandated. Not only had my body been crushed but so had my spirit. My faith in the goodness of other people, the legal system, and life had been lost.

The man who ran me over had fled the scene. Many of the witnesses would not help the police. After the offender turned himself in there were three to four more years of court dates my family and I had to attend. The process seemed never ending. On top of that, my doctors told me I would never be able to attend post-college education. My brain was damaged, heck, it felt like my whole being was damaged.

Over the next year and a half I became increasingly resentful and anxious. My doctors prescribed anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. At this point I realized that I didn’t want to merely medicate my fear, I needed something more. I needed to make a choice towards love.

I found a spiritual counselor and started consciously working through my anxiety. I worked to uncover the causes of my distress. I let go of resentment. I became a new person. I started removing the barriers to my heart and working towards becoming whole. I began to see this trauma as an opportunity to transform rather than a tragedy.

Now (5 years later) I am still working on my process. I can honestly say that I am beyond grateful for having gone through this. I have completely forgiven the man who ran me over. In fact, I am thankful to him for having participated in such a life-altering event with me.

At the time, however, and even the two years after the event, I thought it had ruined my life. I thought it was the most awful thing I could have ever been through. It’s funny how our mind’s judge situations as good or bad when the truth is we have no idea what will help us grow the most.

That ‘accident’ taught me more than I could have ever hoped for. It marked the beginning of my active involvement in my spiritual process.

I now know that I am not damaged. While my body still bears the scars from that car, my soul can never be damaged. Who I am is far greater than a body. Who I really am, my Essence, is unshakable Love.

I’ll be spending some time working on buttons and getting this place all spruced up so we can all be taken seriously! But for now I have a challenge for you:

I want to hear some LifeStories about the first time you had to live away from home! Share Here!

]]> http://thelifstoryproject.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/quick-update-from-tlsp-the-lifestory-project/feed/ 0 black.dress.red.shoes Book Pages http://thelifstoryproject.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/when-youre-a-little-girl/ http://thelifstoryproject.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/when-youre-a-little-girl/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 16:32:18 +0000 KellyFlorenceE http://thelifstoryproject.wordpress.com/?p=55 ]]> LifeStory by Denise
Visit her blog “Somewhat of a Spectacle”

When you’re a little girl someone somewhere puts the idea in your head that you can rule the world, and that someday prince charming will come along to rub your feet while you do it. I don’t know who that person was, but they were really terrible for putting ideas like that into a small persons head. I get if they had said “you’ll struggle a lot, and you may not be smart enough, or pretty enough, and more likely than not half the things you try you won’t succeed at; but try little girl, and try hard, because there are people out there fighting for the exact same things you are and they are smart enough, and pretty enough, and good that the things you struggle with…” we’d all never get past making finger paintings and watching Barney because we’d just give up at the first sign of failure after we realized that it’s real.

So they had to lie to us. They had to tell us when so-and-so was mean to us that it didn’t matter, and people like that hold no bearing on the rest of our life. And once again, because we were children we believed, because we didn’t know any better. But in reality there are people who we will work with that don’t like us, and for whatever reason that is they will try to make our lives more hard than they already are. And sometimes we will win, but sometimes we won’t. You’d think that by now people would have realized holding (or pushing) someone else down won’t fill the emptiness that you feel inside, but they haven’t; or they just don’t have any other ideas so instead of trying to work with people who could possible help them they work against them. People are dumb.

After reading this you probably think I’m a girl who has lost all hope that things could ever work out in my favor; you think I’m a pessimist, and in all honesty I’m not. I do have hope, but I have realized something, and that something is this: you can only get as far as you try, because no one will help you more than you are willing to do for yourself. The minute you stop trying is the minute you fail, because that unwillingness to work for your dreams, no matter how outlandish they may seem, is the minute you let the other guy win; no, not win, conquer you. Because the bully never wins either, and that is true. Because you win when you’re happy, and those people really are never happy.

So about my Knight in shining armor; he was wonderful. I met him when I was 17, he was 21. I thought he was gay. True story though, I think everyone is gay. He was friends with my older sister, and this was at the point in our relationship where she thought I was annoying, so I never really got to know him. Then one day, sometime later I saw him again, and I remembered him, and I thought he was cute. But he was still my sister’s friend, and although he and I talked a lot, and had a lot in common, she decided he and I weren’t allowed to date. Sisters suck sometimes.

Well I fell in love, as you sometimes do with people you’re “just friends” with; but because he was dating someone and I wanted him but couldn’t have him I dated someone else too. That was dumb, but I’m a girl and we do dumb things sometimes.

I never called him by his name then, it was always “my future husband” and he and I had fun and we would stay up till 4:30 some mornings talking, and I loved him even more; so much in fact that I broke things off with my boyfriend, and waited. I waited a whole 6 months of being his friend, and doing things with him and his girlfriend. The whole time getting the major stink eye from her, but what would you have done? He told me she wasn’t the one, so I waited till one day he called and said they had broken up, and I laughed. I was so excited I laughed, and he laughed too! He may have been laughing at me, but I was too happy to care. And then things changed.

So there was a girl, and she fell in love with a boy. And soon that boy also fell in love with that girl. And they were happy, together.

Then everything in the girl’s life seemed to fall to pieces. She lost her job, she lost her vision, she lost her drive, she lost her purpose; she lost everything but him.

And she loved him so so much.

Well, that love became a crutch, and instead of focusing on solving her problems, she pretended they didn’t exist; because with him they didn’t.

Soon the boy got tired of the girl and her lack of ability to cope with reality outside of their relationship. He got tired of her always wanting to be around. He got tired of her using him to substitute happiness; because the girl he fell in love with was independent, and now she wasn’t. She wasn’t the same person, she was broken inside, and because she had him to lean on she wasn’t trying to fix it.

The girl noticed his hesitance. She noticed him not wanting to be close to her as much and she felt him pulling away; and like all irrational people she clung tighter. And in doing so she made him pull away harder, because when you cling, the thing you cling to desires space all the more.

You can’t make someone want to be with you, they either do or they don’t.

And she clung, and he tried to make it work. But it didn’t.

At least not now, not that way.

The girl is tired. She is sad. She is so so sad. But she understands which in a way makes her feel worse, because she knows it’s all her fault.

So for now she promises herself to work on the things that she was hiding from in the first place. The things she ran away from because he was easier than dealing with her broken life. And she’ll try being his friend, soon; because he really is important to her. And they really do work well together, but for now she needs to be the girl she was before she fell in love. The girl she loved to be. The girl she was proud to be. The girl who he fell in love with, but not because he loved her, because she loved herself.

And if you don’t love yourself, why would anyone else? If my parents had just told me to expect hardships and if they had told me to prepare for major life road bumps I may have been prepared for my life to fall to pieces. I may have been ready for when my car broke down and I needed to buy one that week, then a few months later when I got a freak kidney infection and ran up $27,000 in hospital bills then lost my job when I was finally well enough to go back to work because this economy sucks and restaurants don’t care about informing employees of closing down. I might have been able to handle the fact that my chosen major wasn’t working out and my best friend/roommate drove me to nausea at the sight of here because I couldn’t stand her anymore. But I wasn’t.

I was prepared for falling love with the right guy the first time, and having him help me though everything. I was looking for the easy road because I was smart enough and pretty enough and whatever else enough so it wasn’t going to be hard for me.

Now, that I’ve lost what I thought were the most important things in my life (love, friendship, financial stability) I realized that if you don’t know who you are, and you don’t have that the drive of someone who was walked all over time and time again, but chose to get back up and keep fighting then you’ll never win.

You have to fall, but most importantly you have to get back up. You have to accept that it’ll never be easy, but pray that in the end it’ll be worth it. Because if it isn’t going to be worth it you’ll just do what I did and stay down forever. Because it’s a lot less of a fall from the ground than from standing, but you can’t really see anything good from the ground. So get back up my friends, because loving yourself, and believing in yourself are the two most important keys to success.

]]> http://thelifstoryproject.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/when-youre-a-little-girl/feed/ 0 black.dress.red.shoes http://thelifstoryproject.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/hello-world/ http://thelifstoryproject.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/hello-world/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 02:17:52 +0000 KellyFlorenceE http://thelifstoryproject.wordpress.com/?p=1 ]]>

***This is a work in progress***

People’s lives are so interesting. You want to know how I know? I read your blogs and your facebook statuses all day long. OK, so not ALL DAY long. I do have to work and school and I sleep occasionally. But when I have a free moment, I like to browse around the internet and see what people have to say. It’s vastly more interesting and far less depressing than the news. I like to read little snippets of people’s lives despite the fact that in reality, many of the people I follow are total strangers.

Oh the Glory of the Internet in 2010!

In keeping suit, I decided to re-fire up my own creative drive and start a blog myself, “A Rhapsody in Green” which can be found HERE. It’s not much at the moment and that’s OK. I just wanted my own little corner of the web as an outlet to tell my story. Which was when I started thinking….

So many of the blogs I read are day-to-day accounts of people’s lives, inventories of what they’ve done, reviews of things they’ve experienced. Following a blog for a long time will give you a sort of chronology, and you do get to feel as if you know a blogger. But at the end of the day, I’ve found myself wanting to know more. If someone were to go back over their lives and pick one story to share with the world, what would it be?

Everyone has a story to tell whether they are unofficially writing a book (as so many people are) or simply looking for an ear to bend. Well here’s the thing… I know everyone has a story and I want to hear it. The LifeStory Project is a piece of the internet where people can share a story from their life whether it was something that impacted them deeply, or is just a funny little snippet from the past. You don’t have to give me your whole life story, just something important to you that you would want to share that may not have already come up on your own blog. That’s the difference between a “life story” and a “LifeStory.” Oh the difference a space and some CAPS will make! A LisfeStory is a story from your life, a piece of you to share with the world.

This is a work in progress at the moment and I’m trying to garner some interest before going full-monty into my own domain and polished layout. If I can get 15 LifeStories, we’ll make this a little more serious. So do you want to tell yours? Check out my guidelines for submission, just so we’re clear, and visit the submit page to get going!

Thank you for telling your story!