Defining Stories

Episode 8: Transitioning Stories


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Allison is one of those unique people who can talk about

seriously difficult and heavy content and can hold it lightly, seeing the humour in its complexity and the beauty in its heartbreak. It’s a wonderful ability to hold opposing forces together at the same time. Just one of her many
superpowers. Perhaps this skill comes from being raised in a family that could love anyone into existence which is an approach Alli has brought to all her relationships and life in general. As she enters her 4th decade, she’s working on softening the rules she had in place for who she was meant to
be and how life needed to unfold.

Alli shares a transitional dilemma on whose horns she is

stuck. She is navigating a way through an identity shift that she knows is inevitable and over which she is bereft and infuriated with the unfairness of it all. She is working out how she is going to shape her future and how much of her future is going to shape her.

When we feel displaced by life and we are trying to make

sense of the causes of the displacement and the actions needed to reposition us on our life path, we can feel disoriented when the landmarks we used to
navigate our way around life are less visible and even less meaningful. Becoming the next version of ourselves is a tricky migration. It doesn’t help when others notice we look displaced, and they comment on this dislocation as if we hadn’t been deeply aware of our situation.

Listen to Alli’s story of transitioning as she examines how one

of the heaviest parts of transitions is weighing up options and somehow having to conjure up a measure of which future options will bring equal value in the score of happiness and fulfilment. It’s an unknowable science and a significant part in the art of living.

The quotable quote from Allison is this: ‘If you can’t see

what you want to be in the world, you have to create it.” Enjoy listening to Alli joyously laughing about the innocent errors she’s made along the way and the heavy burden of letting go of the life she thought was meant to be hers. As Soren Kierkegaard has said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Alli’s story of transition is this concept made real.

 

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Defining StoriesBy Callan McDonnell