Authenticity and Integrity are my two favorite words in the English language. Both of which I hold myself and people to the highest standard, yet I am often let down.

Do you ever notice that the people in our real lives rarely follow the storyline we set out for them? (Sigh)

Recently, I had a candid conversation about living our most authentic life with integrity. I was surprised by how difficult it is because of perceived social expectations.

I gave the example of a person who continually lived an inauthentic narrative that I assigned and assumed. I realized I made him a character in my story to fit into my perfectly orchestrated definition of life. I forced a story that was so uncomfortable that he couldn’t maintain the role. To be fair, his mask was transparent, and I chose not to see it clearly because that would mean an interruption to my storyline. The inconvenient truth would disrupt the flow of the narrative I made up, so I, therefore, ignored it.

The point is that relationships often sour because of this, and instead of looking outward, we should look inward to our expectations of the characters and stories we tell ourselves.

In fiction and reality, we often perceive who and what people should be and are disappointed when they don’t fit into the beautiful box we created. 

How dare they? (insert sarcasm)

How lovely it would be if the people in our lives would cooperate with our prose. But they don’t. 

To quote the great Maya Angelou, 

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” 

I will talk more about this on my podcast, but the story I feel expected to write and the one that flows out of me often do not reconcile.

I find that I start off assigning my characters with a purpose and identity when, in reality, as the story unfolds, there is a stark difference in what I intended.

In the manuscript I am currently working on, I had every intention of telling a story of love, growth, and letting go of the identity of motherhood ~ instead, as I started to write, the characters presented differently than I anticipated. They are far more complicated, flawed, and destructive. 

As I developed the characters in my imagination, they lacked, well, the human experience. 

I was initially writing a story littered with idealism. A story I told myself about my own life for a long time. When I dared to write without expectations, the raw emotions of motherhood, marriage, and being human flowed onto the pages far more authentically accurate. 

There it is…. authentic writing with integrity instead of allowing what should be, I permitted what is…. Complicated relationships that lack perfection.

Such is life.

Join me this week as I discuss my journey to authenticity and the lessons I have learned by writing with integrity. 

We are all characters in people’s stories. Continue on the path of living and writing your truth while contemplating what that means to other people’s stories. 

In the meantime, write on.

With love and gratitude,

~dlm