Self as Coach, Self as Leader

Chapter 2 Foundational Works Informing Our Internal Landscape

We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or hate, to see or be seen. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning.

The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then become a story-teller.

—Rebecca Solnit (2014)

We tell stories and our stories tell us. One of my stories is about my grandparents emigrating from Scotland at the turn of the twentieth century. They left their home country out of desperation with impending signs of starvation, arriving on a new continent well before immigration laws were in place. They ventured to a new country of which they had virtually no knowledge and ultimately homesteaded the farm and cattle ranch I grew up on nestled at the corner of Manitoba, Minnesota, and North Dakota. They were courageous, rugged, resourceful and family focused. In spite of the inevitable losses that come with the upheaval of immigrating to a new land, they managed to arrive with optimism, determination, and their rich cultural history (including bagpipes!) to sustain them. Like everyone, my history reaches back much farther than a generation. Our roots run deep and they provide added texture to our family and a breadth of context for our individual lives. My Scottish heritage is embedded in the longstanding McLean Clan, one of ...