Lore: Harnessing Your Past to Create Your Future

By Jeanette Schneider

As a woman, youve been programmed to act, think, and behave in certain waysand not always to your benefit.

Loreas in folklorechallenges women to closely examine the stories that have shaped their lives.

Jeanette Schneider, a single mother and the founder of Lore Advocacy, a network of professional women whose goal is to inspire women to change the world, shares love letters women wrote to their younger selves. The lessons in the letters along with the authors own insights will help you:

change the trajectory of your storyline;
challenge what youve been led to believe about yourself;
monitor your thoughts and understand where they come from; and
enjoy the benefits that accompany forgiveness.

The book includes exercises to assist you through free-writing, visualizations, and reflection points, and as you complete the activities, you may get stuck on specific memories or events. Allow for that, but keep working to find your truth with this guide to smashing self-imposed limitations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982201555

Jeanette Schneider

Jeanette Schneider is a single mother and the founder of Lore Advocacy, a network of professional women whose goal is to inspire women to change the world through a gender lens of equality, self-actualization, and the shattering of glass ceilings. Schneider is also a senior vice president in the financial services industry and serves on several boards. In 2015, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Womens Chamber of Commerce in Nevada and was selected as a Nevada Woman to Watch.

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Copyright © 2018 Jeanette Schneider.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0156-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0154-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0155-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018903917

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/13/2018

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Past—Forgive

1. Uncover Your Messaging

Do the Work - Reflection Point

2. Finding Truth—Belief Systems

Do the Work - Belief Systems

3. You Got It from Your Mama

Do the Work - Self-Talk

4. Tragic Life Events

Do the Work - Self-Care

5. Forgiveness

Do the Work - The Intention of Forgiveness

Do the Work - Hot Letters

6. The Letters—Forgiving the Past

Chelli Wolford

Caroline Heldman

Camille DiMaio

Kimberly Derting

7. Writing Your Love Letter—Getting Started

Do the Work - Visualizing Your Younger Self

Do the Work - Going Deeper

8. Free-Writing

9. Emotional Writer’s Block

10. Keep Writing—Keep Going

Part II: The Present—Choose

11. Choose to Choose

Do the Work - Deathbed Wishes

12. The Gut-Check Method

Do the Work - The Gut Check

13. Active Orientation

Do the Work - Active-Choice Orientation

14. Choice and Self Worth

Do the Work - Choose Yourself

15. The Relationships We Choose

Do the Work - Reflection Point

16. Love Yourself First

Do the Work - Love Yourself First

17. Appropriate Boundaries

Do the Work - Boundaries

18. Healthy Conflict and Communication

Do the Work - Healthy Conflict and Intimacy

19. External Approval and Choice

Do the Work - Perceptions

20. Overcoming Social Influence

Do the Work - Observing Social Influence

21. Role Modeling

Do the Work - Unfollow, Unfriend, Unload

22. Your Relationship with Self

Do the Work - Mirror, Mirror

23. Masculinization vs. Sexualization

Do the Work - The Feminine Spectrum

24. The Letters—Making Choices

Jessica Moore

Jamie Little

Amy Jo Martin

Sadaf Baghbani

Part III: The Future

25. Manifesting

Do the Work - The Wish List

26. Your Future Self

Do the Work - Visualizing Your Future (or Higher) Self

27. The Letters—Manifesting the Future

Donna Brazile

Priya Matthew

Emily Nolan

Part IV: For the Girls

28. Your #girltribe

29. Creating Your Daughter’s #girltribe

Do the Work - Reflection Point

30. Conscientious Messaging—Head, Heart, and Health

Do the Work - Head, Heart, and Health

31. Mom to Mentor

32. Purposeful Girl Talk

Do the Work - Date Night

Do the Work - For the Girls: Love Letters to My Future Self

33. The Letters—To My Future Self

Aleena Valdez

34. Conclusion

Part V: Love, Me

35. The Author’s Love Letter to her Younger Self

Acknowledgments

Recommended Reading

Dedicated to the memory of Frieda Wagner Schneider.

Wherever you are, I know you shine.

If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully.

However, the wisest thing you can do is be present …

Gratefully.

—Maya Angelou

Introduction

LORE

Harnessing Your Past

To Create Your Future

Lore (noun): a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed person to person by word of mouth. Synonyms: mythology, myths, legends, stories, traditions, folklore, fables, oral tradition, mythos.

—Oxford English Dictionary

S elf-reflection is one of the greatest catalysts for a new way forward. Through it, we discover the essence of how we approach life, how successfully we move from aspiration to actualization, and how we uncover our lore. These are the beliefs we have been immersed in from infancy by those who live alongside us. This book offers you the opportunity to shape your story and write your chapters yourself but only after you are consciously aware of where the story begins.

I have had the honor of having final conversations with those heading on to new adventures. It seems that in the moments between here and there, we are no longer housed in the stories of our lives. The way we’ve raised our children, our legacies, our prejudices, and our beliefs become inconsequential. It is as if we are able to review our lives in real time, and God, what magic it is if you can be present as someone moves from maligned to wise.

My grandmother, a German immigrant, raised ten children in a three-bedroom home in Florida all the while rocking magenta nail polish and a bite. At the end of her life, we had three incredibly meaningful conversations that will remain with me for the rest of mine. All the family stories about lack, hardship, and our token self-deprecating humor fell away. Our religious biases and deeply entrenched views of ourselves and others were suddenly tagged as nonsense. She asked me to see the world differently, to roll with the big things because they would work themselves out, to pay attention to the little things, and Love each other every day. Then she asked me if she could leave us.

Many years before, I had a similar conversation with her husband, my grandfather, prior to his decline into Alzheimer’s. He raised a brood of children as a devout Jehovah’s Witness; in his world, his authority was absolute and the elders reigned supreme. But as we talked about my clashes with faith and my leaders, he shook his head and said, They are just men, little one. Find your own way. I was stunned that this stoic man, who had breathed the faith of our family, didn’t shake his finger at me for my trespasses. Instead, he saw it for what it was as his light began to diminish.

Another man became like a grandfather to me at the end of his life. He had built an incredibly successful business and had achieved a great deal of wealth. He called me the day before he passed to say he was being transferred to hospice care. Will you come see me? he asked. I sat next to him as he shooed away my tears with his hands. Stop crying, he said.

We didn’t have time for tears. He had things to tell me. He shared his wishes for me and my daughter and what he needed me to know. None of it is important. Money, success, your business. Don’t waste your life chasing things. The people who are around your bed when you’re dying? Those are the people you should love while you’re living.

All of those people, strong in their own right, challenged the messages they’d received throughout their lives and the messaging they instilled in their children and grandchildren. It was as if all the things I knew about them were no longer real, as if they’d never been.

Even with this grand imparted wisdom, I didn’t change my life to reflect their wishes for me. No. I got caught up in living—paying bills and handling relationships—and it wasn’t until I was responsible for the messaging of another that all this came rushing back wrapped in a question delivered by my inquisitive five-year-old, Mom, is it true? Rather than believing what she was told rote, she began coming home from school asking if certain things she was being told were true.

No. They’re not.

Most of what you believe about yourself and your worldview has been handed to you via generational, social, and cultural messaging. These beliefs are a timeless hum that makes up your person. Here’s the catch. They will color the world of your children unless you pull that messaging out of you, hold it in your hands, and begin to differentiate between truth and story. It is hard work. You are excavating the old, tragic experiences, the things that go bump in the night, but in the end, the relief is so great. You are left with conscious, purposeful messaging to build up those you love. You are taking off the shine and baring your soul to create healthier paradigms for yourself and your children.

This book pokes at stories, digs holes in belief systems, offers reflection points, and ultimately asks you to love yourself scars and all so you can create a new conversation for yourself and those you influence.

I have spent the last two decades in finance, an unequivocally male-dominated field. As a senior vice president with my firm, an influencer in my community, a philanthropist, and a mom, I have been blessed to meet an army of women who have been on this search with me. We see the gaps in our industries and our cities and look to each other to be voices for those who haven’t found theirs. We come together to mentor others, share stories, create dialogue, and most important, build a platform on which women feel comfortable sharing their personal trials and triumphs.

Many of these women have offered their stories and musings and have done the work to show you the way. In these pages, you will find writing and visualization exercises as well as questions to stir up some of the good stuff.

This book has been organized as if you were in a workshop. There are five parts that were informed by an accidental project, Love Letters, that will be referenced many times in this book. Several years ago, I began collecting love letters women wrote to their younger selves and published them on my blog, www.loreandlittlethings.com. I have carefully curated those I think are most salient. The insights were astounding. As I interviewed the writers so I could delve into the stories behind the poetry of their words, themes began to emerge. Those themes are the bones of this book. You will find the exercises build on one another, so have a journal handy.

We begin by unraveling the old; messages from your upbringing and generational and cultural programming in Part I: The Past—Forgive. In Part II: The Present—Choose, we move into the foundation of choice and how your new way forward is based on choosing yourself in all manner of ways and learning to trust yourself. We end our internal work with the future and all that is possible in Part III: The Future—Manifest. We then move outside ourselves and to the next generation in Part IV: For the Girls. For those who are mothers of boys, I invite you to read through this section as it may provide some insights into ways you can communicate with your sons about the women and girls in their lives. We end with a challenge from the women who wrote letters: my own love letter to my younger self.

Each section has Do the Work Exercises to assist you through free-writing, visualizations, and reflection points. Any time you do deep, internal work, you will need time to process the emotions that bubble to the surface. You may be triggered, you may cry, and you may find yourself stuck on one specific memory or event. Allow for that. Give yourself the time and space to feel through it. Write through it. Do not be afraid of it. You find the truth of self in the excavation of self.

My greatest hope is that every woman who reads this book will find something meant to be whether a quote, a blessing, or a story and will pass it on to the next generation. We are creating our children’s lore every day. Our daughters, unfortunately, are suffering from a confidence deficit that keeps them from believing they deserve to be elevated to certain spaces. It comes by way of advertisements, social influence, and generational and cultural messaging.

The beauty of youth is that they’ve yet

to carry our baggage.

—Galit Breen

How much more powerful could we be if we harnessed our past to reframe our messaging and allow the most harmful messages to die with our generation?

Cycles end every day.

Let’s get to work.

The%20Past%20_%20Forgive.jpg

We are the stories we tell ourselves.

—Joan Didion

CHAPTER 1

Uncover%20Your%20Messaging.jpg

T he circumstances of our upbringing and others’ comments send us messages that get buried deep in our subconscious and affect everything we do. Every woman who has written a love letter to her younger self knows something intrinsic about herself. When I pointedly ask, What is one thing you’ve always known about yourself? there’s barely a pause before adjectives fit for warriors and priestesses are issued with a Dare you to say I’m not kind of bravado. These women are determined fighters; they know they have a fire within that cannot be extinguished.

One explained that since the age of five, her father had told her that she had great instincts. She learned how to sharpen the tool she was given, and it created a lifelong relationship with her trust of self. Such a powerful message to grow into knowing deeply that your knowingness would lead you.

When I was a little girl, I knew I was smart. I knew I could get through anything life chucked my way simply because I could brainpower my way through it. I didn’t grow up with an innate knowledge that I was intelligent; the messages I received from family members and friends taught me that. They called me the smart one. Through conversation and their interest in my little mind, they made it clear I had something going on between my ears. Granted,