THE PEN IS IN YOUR HAND

Rachel Catherine Allen is a writer, entrepreneur, and author of 23 books whose work explores the power of language, identity, and the stories we inherit. Rachel grew up in a deeply conservative religious family with a clear story about who she was supposed to become. Writing became one of the first places she could question that story and imagine another life. She started journaling when she was nine. Those pages gave her somewhere to ask whether the world she had been handed actually made sense to her. Eventually, leaving meant going no contact with her family and rebuilding her understanding of herself from the ground up. Rachel describes a moment when she no longer trusted her own perception of reality and decided to begin with one thing she could trust: her experience of pain. From there came other questions. What feels safe? What makes me happy? What belongs to me? We talk about inherited narratives, family estrangement, identity, writing, entrepreneurship, fear, agency, forgiveness, creativity, and Rachel’s belief that words make worlds. We also explore what happens when you can understand someone else’s story and still decide that their world is not safe for you to live inside. And Rachel offers a definition of Narrative Intelligence that gets very close to the heart of this project: being aware of your own narrative and the narratives around you, and having the capacity to actively shape your story. The question I’m leaving with: What story were you handed, and what are you doing with it now? More about Rachel Catherine Allen: https://www.boltfromthebluecopywritin... More about Paige Williams: https://paigewilliams.co/ StoryKeys: https://storykeys.co/ The 100 Stories Project: https://100storiesproject.com/ YouTube chapters 00:00 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project 00:56 Rachel Catherine Allen and a life built around words 01:33 Moving to Hong Kong and becoming a paid writer 03:38 Leaving the story she was raised inside 05:26 Going no contact and rebuilding reality 09:05 Finding the story underneath the story 13:13 Why words are a technology 14:45 How identity can become a place of safety 16:36 What gets between imagining change and doing it 19:06 Listening deeply enough to write someone else’s story 23:05 Seeing her family’s story with compassion 25:41 The narratives we inherit before we can choose 27:46 How the story of becoming a writer changed over time 29:20 What family estrangement did to her identity 32:55 Can we create the future through story? 34:29 Becoming who you are — and learning to be loved 37:20 Rachel’s definition of Narrative Intelligence 37:46 Could the family story ever change? 41:22 Forgiveness, perspective, and moving forward