ISABEL ALLENDE, CHILEAN-AMERICAN WRITER (1942–)
Find One Safe Place to Tell Your Story
The first and most important way to keep your head above water when life threatens to drag you down is to create a safe place where your stories can be heard—a gathering of kitchen-table friends. Gathering around a kitchen table and telling our own stories was empowering. While we didn't know it at the time, we were “bearing witness” to one another by talking about our experiences in a trusted environment. Psychologists tell us that “bearing witness” is a vital ingredient in the healing process.
We looked forward to our gatherings because we knew that they provided the one place in our lives where we would be heard—a place and time where women would listen without judgment. We have no doubt that being able to tell our stories saved our sanity and, in some cases, saved our lives. We believe that every woman needs to create for herself a safe place where her story can be heard. We know from our own experience that staying connected with each other has made all the difference in our ability to cope with the challenges we've faced.
Think you don't have time for your women friends? We encourage you to think again. If you're thinking that you don't feel up to doing this right now, that's precisely why you ought to do this. If your energy is low, it's because you're trying to do everything by yourself. You're running on empty, and you need to fill up your emotional tank with support and input from women who care about you. Your own kitchen-table group will feed your soul. You can get started today by following these seven simple steps to create a wonderful network of women friends.
Seven Steps for Forming a Kitchen-Table Group
1 Reach out: No matter how bad your life may be right now, plan a get-together with women you admire. They do not need to be famous, rich, or fabulously accomplished. You do not need to know them well, although they do need to be women you respect and who share similar values and priorities—women with integrity who will be willing to listen, give encouragement, and be honest. Many women feel just as isolated as you do. Now is the perfect time to get to know that mom who shares car-pool duties with you. What about the woman at work with whom you have only a nodding acquaintance but have always felt a spark of connection? Perhaps there's someone on a fundraising committee you've admired, someone who can always be counted on to do what she says she's going to do.
2 Choose a location: Pick a meeting place that has comfortable surroundings and that gives you privacy. It can be the corner of a local coffee shop, or the living room of your home. The kitchen tables in our different homes have worked well for us all these years.
3 Set a first meeting: You don't have to do anything fancy. Just pick up the phone, send an email, or ask in person. Tell the women up front that you know they're busy, that the purpose of this meeting is to create a support network that meets regularly where women can talk out what's going on in their lives in a confidential setting. Participants are welcome to talk about their jobs (or lack of a job), their families, their health, and their finances—whatever is on their minds and in their hearts. Give your group a name and commit to meeting regularly (every other week, or at least monthly). In our own group, we meet monthly but sometimes convene more often when one of our members is in the midst of a crisis.
4 Set ground rules: The first few meetings of your kitchen-table group can probably benefit from some sort of structure. In our group meetings, we always begin with some illuminating questions:So, how's your life?How can we help?Who do we know who can help?What are you happy about right now in your life?What is there to laugh about?When we leave here today, what three things are we committing to each other that we will do for ourselves?
5 Stay positive: Do not allow your group to turn into a “pity party.” Pity parties rob you of your spirit and do nothing to empower you. The purpose of this gathering is not simply to complain, and stop there. Go ahead and get what's bothering you, worrying you, or hurting you off your chest, and then ask for advice. Brainstorm possible solutions and strategies for the issues you're facing.
6 Use the WIT Kit: The suggestions found at the end of each section in this book can provide a focus for your meetings. We purposely created the WIT Kit to give you tools that you can work with as a group in your own kitchen-table meetings. Discuss the topics and questions among yourselves.
7 Share your experiences: Visit our website, www.kitchentablefriends.com, and let us know your stories.
Our kitchen-table group met for over ten years and, during that time, we told many stories, solved many problems, and mended many broken hearts. We begin by introducing you to the defining moments that brought us together as lifelong friends.
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TRANSCEND MISFORTUNATE EVENTS.
Although there may be tragedy in your life, there's always a possibility to triumph. It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always.
OPRAH WINFREY, TV HOST (1954–)
Jungle Encounter
“Nightmares. They still invade my sleep forty years later. The nightmares remind me that life is a precious resource to be used up, enjoyed, lived. I am Jackie Speier, and my nightmares take me back to a fateful November day in 1978. I was twenty-eight and getting ready to purchase my first home. I was legislative counsel to a US congressman and I had it all! I also had a strong premonition that the trip I was arranging to South America could be one from which I might not return. ‘Silly thoughts,’ my friend Katy assured me. ‘After all, you will be traveling with the press corps and a US congressman. What could possibly happen?’
“Holed up in a congressional office for hours at a time, I was reading State Department briefings on a religious community created by the Reverend Jim Jones. We were investigating numerous allegations from relatives that their family members were being held against their will in a jungle hideaway known as the People's Temple. As we reviewed taped interviews with defectors, I had an ominous feeling—a feeling I could not put out of my mind. One former member had told us that people were being forced to act out suicides in an exercise Jones called the White Night.
“Congressman Leo Ryan, my boss, had heard enough. He decided to see firsthand the plight of US citizens in Guyana. But even after the CIA and the State Department had cleared the trip for safety, I still had doubts.
“We flew into Guyana's capital, Georgetown, changed planes, and continued on to Port Kaituma—a remote airstrip deep in the South American jungle. A convoy of several trucks drove us to the Jonestown encampment. We entered a clearing in the jungle, where I saw an outdoor amphitheater surrounded by small cabins. You couldn't help but be impressed by the settlement. In less than two years, a community had been carved out of dense jungle. During our first and only night at the People's Temple, the members entertained us with music and singing. I remember looking into the eyes of Jim Jones—and I saw madness there. He was no longer the charismatic leader who had lured more than 900 people to a remote jungle commune; he was a man possessed.
“The congressman and I randomly selected people to interview to determine whether they were being held against their will. Many of the individuals were young—eighteen or nineteen years old—while others were senior citizens. One by one, each confirmed that they loved living in the People's Temple. It was almost as if they had been coached to answer our questions. As the night drew to a close, NBC news correspondent Don Harris walked off alone to smoke a cigarette. In the darkness, two people approached him and put notes into his hand. Harris gave the notes to me, and I held in my hands evidence of what I had sensed all along: These people were indeed being held against their will in this South American compound.
“Morning broke, and I interviewed the two people who had given Harris the notes saying