Life-Writer's Notebook

Public Lives/Private Stories
Caring For the World
Women are passionate creatures with the capacity to care deeply, and community needs have always been high on our list of priorities. We focus our caring on what we value in a way that takes us beyond our private lives and into the public arena. In your life, you have probably learned that we have greater power when there are more of us at work on the same task, and you have probably banded together with other women to work for the causes we value the most. Your private story necessarily includes your public life: the way you have cared for the world. Here are some suggestions for documenting that important part of your story:

• Divide your life into decades. For each decade, make a list of the cause-oriented organizations to which you belonged in those years (for example, Greenpeace, a church, a political party, Hospice), the dates of your involvement, and (briefly) the mission of each organization. Include, as well, causes that you may have pursued independently, outside any organizational affiliation.

• In each decade, choose the organization or the cause that seems to you now to have most importantly defined your caring concerns. Write several pages about each of these, answering some of these questions. Why did you care about this organization and its mission? What made it worth your time and energy? How did you get involved? How long and in what ways did you work for it? With what results? Are you still involved? If not, why not?

• When you've finished, look back over what you've written, over all the causes you've cared about, and write several additional pages, answering these questions. How have your caring commitments changed over the course of your life? What new directions do you seem to be taking? What do these changes suggest about your evolving sense of engagement with the world?

Sometimes, in the rush and confusion of life, we lose sight of the many ways we have cared for causes outside ourselves. It is important that we write about these engagements and that we see how our private lives have been shaped by our compassionate concern for community and the world. It's all part of the story!
--Susan Wittig Albert