The Beat

January 2025

The Stories We Carry

What Happens When We Finally Face the Stories We’ve Been Telling Ourselves

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Hello and Happy 2025!

You'll notice my monthly newsletter looks different. We’re starting the New Year by exploring stories through the lens of physical objects.

I believe meaningful things connect us to ourselves, each other, and our histories.

This week, I’m sharing the story of an item that served as a vessel for pain and healing.

When Gabrielle was a child, she stumbled on her mother’s journal.

Gabrielle opened the journal and read an entry that haunted her for over twenty years.

She remembers reading the words that said her mother, Pamela, didn't like her.

The impact of those words quietly shaped how Gabrielle saw herself and her relationship with her mother.

Two decades later, Gabrielle and her mother sat down to talk about what Gabrielle had read.

That conversation turned an old, secret diary into an opportunity for a new relationship.

Healing like this rarely happens in a vacuum.

Gabrielle and Pamela had the courage, vulnerability, empathy, and openness to mend wounds.

Their experience reminds me that our narratives can always be revised. We can leave painful histories locked in place or turn the page and rewrite them with compassion—for ourselves and each other.

Warmly,

Lisa Weiss
​The Beat​
A Newsletter by Storybeat Studio

In this issue: ​

Spotlight Gabrielle & Pamela Blackwell Practice Writing Prompts to Fuel Your Creativity Ideas Insights from Authors & Thought Leaders Don't Miss! Love, Heartbreak & Crushes Event

Do physical objects matter? ​

Explore the power of physical objects to inspire and connect.

Listen to The Object Diaries Podcast: Stories About Human Connection Told One Secret Object at a Time. Discover stories about the things that matter.

Produced by Jessica Terrell, April Estrellon, and Lisa Weiss. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. 

Listen Here

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Spotlight

Gabrielle & Pamela Blackwell:

The Journal

Gabrielle Blackwell was 28 when she wrote me a letter about a secret diary that she discovered in her mother's drawer as a young child. If this were only about a secret diary, it would be a good story. But this is so much more than that. It's about mothers and daughters, about the secrets we carry, and how sometimes an ordinary object can become an extraordinary tool for healing.

Practice

Write Down Your Dreams

In our monthly Practice section, I'll share writing prompts for your physical journal, helping you transform thoughts into words on the page. ​ In Laura Vanderkam's book Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters, she asks readers to write down 100 dreams. ​ That's your prompt today— ​ Write down 100 of your dreams, big and small. ​ Think grand and granular. You want to travel to India, Japan, and Botswana. You want to perform your puppet play on Broadway. You want to learn how to swim and sew a hem. ​ Writing down your dreams helps you think about what to make time for moving forward.

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Ideas

Insights from Authors & Thought Leaders
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Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters by Laura Vanderkam (Penguin Random House, October 11, 2022).

Three of my favorite quotes from the book:

• "Sometimes it feels safer to go with never... you can lament the perfect paintings in your head that you don't have time to create, rather than creating less-than-perfect paintings during your three weekly painting sessions."
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• "If you don't take time to plan or think about or evaluate how you're spending your time, you won't suddenly wake up one day doing nothing. You'll be doing what everyone around you is doing."
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• "Tasks expand to fit the available space. When we give them less time, they take less time."

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman (MacMillan, October 8, 2024).

One of my favorite excerpts:

"Actions don't have to be the things that we grind out, day after day, in order to inch ever closer to some elusive state of finally getting to qualify as adequate humans. Instead, they can just be enjoyable expressions of the fact that that's what we already are."

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Don't Miss!

Love, Heartbreak & Crushes Event

What Object Diaries: Show & Tell Networking Event When 2/7 @ 11 AM - 11:30 AM Central Where Online (Zoom) What to Bring An object that reminds you of love, heartbreak, or a crush

RSVP here →