A quote to ponder

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.
--Clarissa Pinkola Estes


This quote, first found on a friend's blog, fascinated me. The word "stories" jumps out at me, especially as I'm taking a Teaching of Writing course and have been doing a lot of thinking about writing and stories, especially when it comes to developing student voices.

Some questions I thought of:
What does it mean to "let stories happen to you"? Is this easy or hard to "let" them happen? What do you have to do for this to be possible?
The speaker says to "work with them." How can writing your story do for you? For others?
The phrase "Water them with your blood and tears and laughter" is pretty profound. What imagery does it evoke in your mind?
How does the metaphor "Till they bloom" affect how you read this quote?
What do you think the speaker means when she says "Till you yourself burst into bloom"?
What other features of this quote are effective or memorable? What makes it inspirational?

(As a side note, this particular woman is fascinating in herself. I'm fairly certain that I encountered her book Women Who Run with the Wolves in a feminist studies class at a community college in Illinois when I visited a friend there. Here's her biography via Wikipedia)


I think my Sequenced Writing Assignment might just be taking a different twist now.


Betsy