It’s a new place for rural women to share stories

Mental Matters
By Dr. Jennifer Goble

For my 2016 (and beyond) project, I need your help. Let me start with some background.

In the last few years, several deaths have hit me hard, especially the passing of women who influenced me and whom I admired.

I wondered if they had told their stories, or better yet, written them. Stories about who loved them, what made them laugh and/or cry, where they most enjoyed visiting, when they learned their hardest lessons, why they chose their lifestyle, and how they learned to cope, give, and appreciate.

Mainly, I wondered if they would have recognized the woman in their eulogy. Curiosity and concern prompted my next project, encouraging rural women, American women who currently live or were raised outside cities and urban areas, to write their stories. Women like you and me. Women like them.

It is up to us to tell our stories. If not us, who? Who else would get it right? We might think our parents, spouse, kids, friends know us, but they don’t – not like we know ourselves.

If we don’t tell our stories, they will be lost. Forever. If we don’t tell our stories, nobody will know who we really are. Our stories are important to us right now, and writing them is therapeutic and courageous. Stories keep our family’s history alive.

At a friend’s funeral, little was said about her other than when and where she was born…went to school…got married…had kids…died. More was said about her husband, kids, and grandkids than about the woman who was so special to many.

I hired a rural woman to redesign my website from promoting my book to giving rural women a means to share their written stories. The site also includes my blog and a Dear Dr. J., similar to a Dear Abby, where women can ask me questions and get straight answers. Both stories and questions can be posted using a fake or real name.

The primary purpose for the site is a safe place to post and share stories, and to ask me questions about life’s challenges.

Check it out, try it out, help me get the bugs out.

THANKS! Let me be on your support team.

www.ruralwomenstories.com or www.jennifergoble.com.

To be continued next week.

Until the next time: Live while you live!

(Jennifer Goble, Ph.D., LPC, is the author of My Clients…My Teachers, and the blogger and encourager of Rural Women Stories: www.ruralwomenstories.com.)

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