LifeWriters Talk About LifeWriting

Deborah Hanzen Linzer was born and raised in South Dakota. She majored in English and did graduate work in journalism and mass communication. After 15 years in public relations, she became Executive Director of the Arizona Center for the Book. A passionate supporter of progress for women, she went on to develop the National Life Stories Center, a non-profit organization that sponsors activities similar to those of the Story Circle Network. When we met her at our first national conference in February, 2002, we were struck with the parallels between our two organizations. We have invited her to tell you about the NLSC, with the hope that SCN and the NLSC can begin to explore ways in which we can work together to meet our mission: encouraging women to write and share their life stories.

Story Circle Journal: Please tell us about the National Life Stories Center and the Cameo Life Stories program.

Deborah Hansen Linzer: The nonprofit National Life Stories Center was created 1) to encourage people to value their lives as significant contributions to human history and progress; 2) to make history more complete and more accurate by including women’s individual histories and personal life stories; and 3) to increase respect for the worth of the individual by establishing a universal tradition of life story writing, sharing and preservation.

Headquartered in Scottsdale AZ and led by a seven-member board, the NLSC sponsors three key programs: 1) Cameo Life Stories, a life story writing program for women; 2) FirstCameo Life Stories, a life story writing program for young women; and 3) FourWords, a rite-of-passage program for adolescent girls and boys. Life story writing programs for men and boys are being developed.

The genesis of Cameo Life Stories was the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention in the world. I’ve been involved with women’s issues my entire adult life and was excited in 1997 about the upcoming opportunity to honor the women who so courageously challenged the awful status of women in 1848. While reading about the history of the convention and the subsequent women’s suffrage movement, I had three significant epiphanies. First, I was struck by the reality that the progress of women was not the work of Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton alone, but the result of the millions of individual acts of courage of women of every walk of life!

Second, I saw that written history does not recognize the important contributions of individual women, nor are women generally taught—or taught to appreciate—the enormous influence of women who have paved our way for us. That felt like a tragedy to me, an unfortunate oversight that hampers women’s individual and group development because real-life examples of women’s decisions and lives can be very empowering.

Third, I realized that women today needed to connect with the truth of other women’s lives—lives past and present—and that simply extolling the virtues of reading women’s history would fall on the deaf ears of women who were too busy, who thought history was too boring, or who were suspicious of women’s history because it had bad associations in their minds with militant feminism.

So I thought long and hard about how to use my marketing background, my passion for women’s progress, and my respect for women’s history to create a project that would open eyes—that would provide epiphanies to women, girls, men and boys. My hope was that asking women to tell their personal stories would underscore the history-making quality of their lives, give them added self-confidence, and create a stronger bond among many different kinds of women.

It has worked—largely because of the innate power of life story writing and sharing. Cameo Life Stories has now reached thousands of women throughout the U.S. and the world. “Cameo” was a perfect fit, because it is a portrait of a woman and an item that is traditionally a precious heirloom passed from woman to woman, generation to generation. My daughter Jennie Anna, a high school senior at the time, posed for the logo, as well as for the cover of my book. Having her lovely profile adorning all our materials is now very poignant for me, because we lost Jennie in a car accident a year later. Her death has been very hard for me, but it is consoling to have her loving spirit live on in such a love-filled program.

SCJ: Before you began to work on the Cameo program, you had already had two different careers, one in public relations and the other at the Arizona Center for the Book. How did you happen to move from PR to the AZ.C.B.?

DHL: After graduate school in journalism, I worked for 13 years serving as director of public relations for two multi-hospital corporations, the largest hospital in Arizona, and the third-largest community college district in the country. At 35,when I remarried, I chose to stay home to raise my two daughters, who were only 6 and 7. I became active as a volunteer in causes important to me. I ardently believe that two of the human race’s worst habits are patriarchy and intolerance, and I believe that knowledge is the strongest tool to overcome both. Good reading broadens our knowledge of ourselves and others and promotes tolerance. To encourage children and adults, to read, I volunteered as executive director of the Arizona Center for the Book, building it into a part-time paying position. The mission of the Center for the Book is “to stimulate public interest in books, reading, libraries and literacy.”

SCJ: One of the features that sets your program apart is your aim to archive women’s stories. How did that come about?

DHL: I was heavily influenced to create an archive by the women’s history classes I had taken and by association with some of the leading women’s history scholars and advocates in the country, including Mary Rothschild, then head of the Arizona State University Women’s Studies Department. I realized that scholars were interpreting the women’s materials they had available, but saw no organized effort to collect life stories from a wide variety of women and make them available to the historians who are helping to create our educational legacies.

SCJ: You have written a book and offer workshops and other programs for a variety of audiences. Tell us about these activities.

DHL: In the Cameo Workshops, I found I had too much to say in too little time, so I decided to provide the information in a workbook, which grew so big that it was impractical to make copies all the time. So I sequestered myself for a month and expanded it to book size. The money to print it came from Daryl Ott Underhill, who edited Every Woman Has a Story for Warner Books. I went on a national book tour with her. That was a wonderful connection.

NLSC is committed to encouraging people to write, share, and archive their life stories, and we preach that message through publicity, speeches to women’s organizations and Cameo Workshops in churches, senior centers, libraries, conventions, family reunions—anywhere we can find a venue. Usually there emerge a number of women who are excited not just about writing their own story but about helping other women write theirs. They have become our Cameo facilitators, leading their own Cameo Circles and helping others form similar groups, similar to Story Circles.

The workshops are always a magical experience, because life story writing is a “transformative art”—as members of the Story Circle Network know very well. Many women come thinking they will simply learn techniques for getting their story on paper. They end up learning to empathize with others of different backgrounds and faiths, to reexamine their own experience and learn new understanding and acceptance, to appreciate the fascinating tales and influence of a larger women's history and to be proud of their own contributions to human progress.

NLSC also sponsors a program to encourage young people to face the future with a sense of hope and possibility. FourWords is a simple but powerful rite-of-passage ceremony for pre-teens and teens that brings together the young person and her or his significant others—parents and siblings, friends, teachers, clergy—in a symbolic crossing of the threshold on the path to maturity.

SCJ: Your website offers an interesting questionnaire. How do you hope women will use it? What do you do with the questionnaireand the stories you receive?

DHL: The Cameo Life Stories Questionnaire was created with input from women’s history scholars and women from all walks of life. Its purpose is to encourage women not just to record the facts of their life journey, but to examine and reflect on them for the lessons they hold. The questionnaire also serves to gather information about life experiences unique to women—information we hope they will share with historians, so the truth about women’s lives is captured and not minimized in the larger picture of human life. Completed questionnaires (and any other form of life stories we receive) are acknowledged by NLSC, then sent to the Fletcher Library at Arizona State University-West Campus. Discussions are being held with archivists at Smith College about including our archive in the Sophia Smith Collection, one of the largest women’s history archives in the country. (Details of the archiving process are still being worked out.)

Our programs are endorsed by the National Women’s History Museum, which is working towards a building in Washington, D.C., and by the 21-year-old National Women’s History Project in California. The NWHP provides the largest selection of women’s history material available to schools and individuals and has an extensive website with an online catalog—www.nwhp.com.

SCJ: Tell us about Cameo Circles and how they work. They sound very similar to Story Circles.

DHL: Cameo Circles are safe and disciplined gatherings for women to reflect, write, and share their life stories. Chapter 9 in my Cameo Life Stories describes how to form and lead one. The model came from my experience with “consciousness-raising groups” of the 70s, which were an amazing American phenomenon which stimulated great personal growth and bonding for women. As with the Story Circle Network, Cameo Circles are a support group to help women progress with their writing, but we follow the format of the 92-question Cameo Life Stories Questionnaire. We don’t know how many Cameo Circles are presently running, since many are begun independently by women who have read the book or are encouraged by someone who participated in another group. A woman can call the NLSC for information on what circles may be meeting in her area.

SCJ: You have networked your Stories Center with other women's history organizations. How has this helped to shape your organization?

DHL: To me, women’s history is a powerful potion that too often sits corked on the shelf. In America, women have lost much of our oral life-sharing tradition. The workplace is not an appropriate place for baring our souls to each other, and we are often too busy or too overworked for time with trusted friends or even our mothers and sisters.

Our goal is to remind women that we are shaped by our history—just as we are shaping the women who follow us. Networking with women’s history scholars and organizations helps “history” and contemporary women connect with each other, creating an energy good for them both. Networking helps spread the word about the power of women’s words!

SCJ: How has your work with the Stories Center changed your life? What do you see for yourself as you look ahead?

DHL: In my previous career, I always felt restless, longing to apply my skills and energy to a cause I felt would have a bigger impact on making the world a better place. Cameo Life Stories and its related programs combines my passionate beliefs in the need for women to lead full, authentic lives, unfettered by stereotypes that don’t fit their souls and the need for human beings to control their instinctual intolerance and learn to live in harmony.

Cameo Life Stories has changed my life by bringing me closer to the most marvelous women imaginable—and by bringing me closer to myself. The death of my precious daughter has taught me, as nothing else could, that my life story is not endless and that it is wasted without love. While I still yearn to evangelize about women’s empowerment, I know it is time for me to be still and write my story—on paper and in the lives of those I love.

• FourWords Guidebook, $5
• FirstCameo Life Stories Questionnaire for girls, $5
• Girl Scout Cameo Program Points Booklet, $5
• Cameo Life Stories Writing Guide for Everywoman (272 pp—also available from www.thestoriescenter.org) $19.90

Last updated: 08/26/02