The Story You Are Telling

 

September 21, 2026 Regenerate Your World  Build the future you want to live in. I know these times aren't the easiest for all of us, but I am an optimist - I see the glass as refillable instead of half-full or half-empty. To brighten up your days, I publish the Regenerate Your World newsletter coming to your inbox on a bi-weekly basis. Let's Get Empowered!

The Story You Are Telling A reminder of where we have been. This is pre-hostas in June 2026. Dear Empowered Reader, "We do not remember our lives. We remember the stories we have told about our lives. And those stories, more than the events themselves, determine who we become next." Back in June, I promised you a post about the hostas in September. The one that looked defeated in May has many new leaves. The roots were working the whole time. I just couldn't see it yet. In June, I wrote to you about tending. About staying with something past the point of glamour, past the novelty, past the weeks when showing up feels like effort. The hostas were my example. They were also my practice. What I didn't anticipate, what the garden gave me that I didn't ask for, was the question that rose alongside the growth. Because watching those plants move from limp and uncertain to full and rooted, I found myself telling a story about it.  Not all of the hostas have survived but a few are thriving. Psychologist Dan McAdams has spent his career studying how people construct what he calls the "personal narrative", the internalized, evolving story each of us tells about our own life. His research shows that this narrative is not merely a description of what has happened to us. It is the primary mechanism through which we understand who we are and who we are becoming. McAdams and his colleagues identified two dominant story structures in personal narratives: redemption sequences and contamination sequences. In a redemption sequence, a bad or difficult thing leads to something good; loss becomes wisdom, failure becomes redirection, pain becomes growth. People who tell their lives primarily through redemption sequences show higher measures of well-being, generativity, and resilience. They are more likely to keep going after setbacks. In a contamination sequence, a good thing is spoiled, a promising start is undermined, an achievement is overshadowed, a hopeful period is remembered as naive. People who tell their lives primarily through contamination sequences show higher rates of depression, stagnation, and the sense that trying is futile. The events, McAdams notes carefully, are often the same. What differs is the story structure imposed on them. We have more authorship over our own narratives than we typically exercise. Read that last line again. We have more authorship over our own narratives than we typically exercise. This is not the same as toxic positivity, the decision to simply decide that everything is fine and carry on. McAdams is not saying the difficulty wasn't real or that the loss didn't happen. He is saying that we have a choice in what role we assign those events in the larger arc of our story. Whether they are the end of a chapter or the beginning of the next one. Whether they are evidence that we can't, or data that we are learning. This hosta is not giving up! The bunnies have eaten it twice...but it keeps growing back! Before we can revise a story, we need to recognize which one we are currently telling. Here is what contamination and redemption language actually sounds like,  not in theory, but in the way we talk to ourselves and others. Contamination language,  the story that closes:  "I had such momentum, and then I lost it."  "I used to be someone who could do that."  "Things were going well until ...."  "I don't know what happened to the person I was becoming. "Redemption language, the story that opens:  "That was harder than I expected, and I learned something I couldn't have learned any other way."  "The version of me who tried and stumbled was necessary for the version of me who is here now."  "This chapter is not the whole book." Notice that redemption language does not pretend the hard thing wasn't hard. It simply refuses to let the hard thing be the last word. Notice also how familiar contamination language might feel. Our culture is fluent in it. We learn it young, from the way adults around us narrated their own disappointments, their own unlived possibilities, the things that were spoiled. We absorb it the way we absorb an accent. And then, without quite knowing it, we speak it as our own. The question is not whether you have told contamination stories. Of course you have. We all have. The question is whether you are willing to pick up the pen. At first, I was disappointed because the hostas were starting to yellow; then a friend told me that the yellowing is all part of the process. I went from contamination language to Redemptive language in a heartbeat. The hostas have grown. Eight new leaves on the one I thought might not survive. Some hostas didn't make it as the bunnies and squirrels ate them...I have been thinking about what it means that I almost told that story as a failure story. Almost said: I planted them wrong. A few got eaten along the way. Almost said: too late in the season. Almost said: some things just don't take. Instead I stayed. I tended. I waited. I asked friends for help on what to do. Now I have to admit the story was never about the plants. It was about learning that I am someone who stays. That I am someone who tends past the wilting. Who trusts what she cannot yet see. Who returns, not because the conditions are perfect, but because the work is mine, and mine is worth returning to. This fall, I am planting that story deeper than the roots. I am letting it become what I believe about myself. We started something in June. We tended it through the summer. And now it is fall, and the beds are not quite what we thought, but they are ours, and the roots have gone deep, and the story of these plants, your plants and mine, is a story I want us to carry into the next season. What you planted this spring is not just in the ground. It is in you. Honor it. Name it. Write its next paragraph. AFFIRMATION "I am not the sum of what happened to me. I am the author of what I make of it. My story is still being written. I hold the pen with both hands — honoring what was, and opening to what is next." THE PRACTICE:  This practice moves in three stages. Give yourself an unhurried hour, your journal, and if possible, a quiet that feels like fall.  The harvest inventory: honor what was.  Before you analyze or reframe anything, simply witness the year.  Divide a page into two columns.  On the left: what grew: the things you tended that took root, the moments of genuine becoming, the small and large victories that perhaps you haven't fully claimed.  On the right: what didn't: the seeds that didn't germinate, the efforts that stalled, the things that were harder than you expected. Do not rush this. Linger with both columns equally. Both deserve your full attention before we move on. The story audit: notice the arc you're telling.  Look at the right column, the things that didn't grow, the hard chapters.  Choose one.  Now honestly ask: what story am I currently telling about this?  Write it down exactly as you would say it to a trusted friend. Don't edit it into something prettier; write the actual story you tell.  Then look at it and ask: is this a contamination sequence or a redemption sequence?  Is this a story that closes or a story that opens?  Is this the end of the chapter, or one sentence in the middle of a longer paragraph? The new paragraph: pick up the pen.  Now write a new paragraph. Not a rewrite of what happened; that would be dishonest, and honesty is the foundation. But a new paragraph, the one that comes after the hard part.  The paragraph that begins: "And what I came to understand from that was..." or "What I didn't know then, that I know now, is..." or simply: "The person I became on the other side of that is someone who..."  You are not erasing the difficult sentence. You are writing the next one. That is the whole practice. That is the whole art. If you're not sure where to begin, begin here. Use any of these as the first line of your new paragraph.  Write without stopping for five minutes. Do not read back until you've finished. "The version of me who went through that learned something I couldn't have learned any other way, which is..." "I used to tell this story as a story about loss. What I see now is that it was also a story about..." "The person I am becoming, the one I can feel taking shape this fall, is someone who..." "If I gave myself permission to write the next chapter with full authorship, it would begin..." Let me know how it goes. What insights did you have? Take Care, Dear Reader.  This season is yours. Julie Founder, Empower Possible Resources: https://psychology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core/profiles/dan-mcadams.html  Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Click here to get your own subscription. When the Geese Go When the geese go south, no sermon follows. The sky keeps their brief handwriting, then lets it fade. Creation practices departure without calling it failure...... Read the rest at https://www.everypoem.org/poems-about-harvest-and-autumn

In the Media Where can you find EMPOWER Possible? In addition to posting on my own social media, I collaborate with other entrepreneurs.  Thank you to the Canvas Rebel for the interview and article. Click the link, https://canvasrebel.com/meet-julie-zaruba-fountaine-2/ , read the article. Upcoming Events Luminary Conference Presentation When: September 25, 2026 Where: Rochester, MN  What: I am thrilled to be taking the stage at the upcoming Luminary Conference! I will be sharing actionable frameworks on sustainable leadership, thriving through large-scale organizational transitions, and shifting workplace cultures from a state of survival and overwhelm into a space of abundance and clarity. To learn more, click here. Wisdom of Winter Retreat When: February 25 to 28 2027 Where: True North Resort, Nisswa, MN What: In partnership with Art of Presence and Taylor and Co., Empower Possible is hosting a winter retreat. Surrounded by peaceful lake views, snow-covered forests, and the quiet beauty of winter, this retreat is designed to help you slow down, reconnect, and restore. Come as you are. Leave feeling rested, grounded, and renewed. Learn more: https://taylorandcoapothecary.com/2027-nisswa-retreat/  Mountain 10 Workshops What is Mountain 10?  During this three-hour workshop, we will focus on accessing your inner wisdom to bring about the changes you deeply desire in your life. We will use the Mountain 10 process, a proven, new technology for deep reflection on human change. It is based on the conviction that every person has the most important answers about direction, purpose, and calling within them. For a Mountain 10 experience, join the Wisdom of Winter Retreat. Can't make it to the Wisdom of Winter Retreat? Join the waitlist. Click HERE Please reach out if you have any questions: info@empowerpossible.com

Connect with me on social media! Copyright © EMPOWER Possible  Northfield, United States EMPOWER Possible is dedicated to empowering individuals, organizations, and communities to organize and act together to regenerate our world through Self, Social, and Systems transformation.  info@empowerpossible.com \ Website \ Mission You are receiving this email because you expressed an interest in my work—thank you! You can change your email preferences or unsubscribe at any time.  Disclaimer: This newsletter contains content that has been modified and inspired by ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI. While we use ChatGPT to enhance our content, it should not be considered professional advice. For specific concerns or decisions, please consult with a qualified professional or trusted source. The newsletter authors are not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided by or inspired by ChatGPT.

What Would You Need to Release to Move Toward What's Next?

 

September 8, 2026 Regenerate Your World  Build the future you want to live in. I know these times aren't the easiest for all of us, but I am an optimist - I see the glass as refillable instead of half-full or half-empty. To brighten up your days, I publish the Regenerate Your World newsletter coming to your inbox on a bi-weekly basis. Let's Get Empowered!

What Would You Need to Release to Move Toward What's Next? Photo from a bike ride over the summer. We biked along the shores of Lake Superior. Dear Empowered Reader, Our summer travel officially ended this week. Chuck and I got back, and the last stretch of any trip always has the same ritual: unpacking the car and sorting everything into two piles. What comes back into regular rotation. What goes into storage until next summer. It sounds simple. It never is. There's a camp chair with a broken zipper pocket I kept meaning to fix over the summer. A cooler we don't strictly need, we've got a better one at home, that I still couldn't quite talk myself into replacing, because it's the one that's always come along on our summer trips. That's the part that gets me every year, trip after trip. It's not that the chair is particularly special or that the cooler is better than others. It's that we've already grown attached to them. And somehow that alone makes them harder to let go of than their actual worth would justify. There's a famous set of studies behind that feeling, and it has nothing to do with camp chairs. Economists Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler ran an experiment in the late 1980s where they handed half a room a coffee mug and asked what they'd sell it for. The other half, empty-handed, were asked what they'd pay for the same mug. Classical economics says those two numbers should land close together; a mug is a mug. They didn't. The people holding the mug wanted roughly twice as much to give it up as the people without one were willing to pay to get it. They called it the endowment effect: the moment something becomes ours a possession, a role, a way of doing things, a version of ourselves- we attach a value to it that has almost nothing to do with what it's actually worth to us going forward. It sits on top of an older finding from Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky: losses simply weigh more than equivalent gains. Giving something up feels like more than the thing is worth, purely because giving it up is what's on the table. I think about this constantly in my work with leaders moving through change. A title, a way a team has always operated, a program someone built from scratch five years ago- none of it gets evaluated on its current usefulness. It gets defended because it's theirs. Not because it's still serving them. What the endowment effect doesn't fully explain, though: why does releasing something we chose to release still feel like a loss? Family therapist Pauline Boss spent her career studying what she called ambiguous loss (thanks to a friend for introducing me to her): grief with no clear ending, the kind that shows up when someone is physically present but psychologically gone, or physically gone with no resolution. She developed the concept working with families of the missing and families living with dementia. But the framework has become one of the most useful lenses for something much more common: the grief embedded in ordinary transitions we actually wanted. When you leave a role, a version of yourself doesn't die cleanly. It doesn't get a funeral. It just becomes unreachable, still vivid in memory, no longer available to you. That's ambiguous loss. There's no ritual for grieving a job you were glad to leave, an identity you outgrew on purpose, a relationship that changed shape instead of ending outright. So the grief goes unnamed, and unnamed grief tends to show up sideways, as second-guessing, as nostalgia you can't explain, as a strange heaviness on a day that should feel like relief. Our trusty red cooler has traveled many miles..... Chosen change is still change. And change, even the kind you're proud of, involves mourning something real. This is exactly the terrain of "letting go", the second stage in the Mountain 10 process. It's also the stage almost every team I work with tries to skip. Leaders want to move straight from awareness to vision, straight from "we need to change" to "here's the new structure," without ever naming what's actually being given up. But the endowment effect doesn't disappear because you didn't name it. It just makes the new structure harder to fully occupy, because part of the team is still quietly holding the old one. Naming what's being released, out loud, specifically, is often what makes room for the next thing to actually take hold. Not skipping past the loss. Moving through it on purpose. Just like a sunset bridges day into night, so do the September days bridge summer into fall. Affirmation "I can grieve what I'm releasing and still be certain I'm releasing it for good reason. Both things are true at once." A Seasonal Practice Take inventory before you release. Before letting go of a role, belief, or way of operating, name specifically what it gave you, not just what's wrong with it. You can't release something honestly until you've named its real value, endowment effect and all. Separate the object from the ownership. Ask: is this still useful to me, or am I only holding onto it because it's already mine? The camp chair test works on roles and routines too. Let the grief be small and real. You don't need a full ritual for every loss. A sentence is enough: "I'm letting go of X, and part of me will miss it." Naming it costs you less than carrying it unnamed. Notice what's asking to loosen. Not everything needs to go. Some things just need a looser grip, a belief you can hold more lightly, a role you can occupy differently instead of abandoning. Reflection Questions What are you holding onto right now mostly because it's already yours, not because it's still serving you? Where have you skipped the grief in a change you know was right? If you let yourself mourn it for one sentence, what would that sentence say? Until next time, release what's ready, grieve what's real, and let fall find you a little lighter than summer did. Julie Sources: Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J.L., & Thaler, R.H., "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, 1990; Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A., "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk," Econometrica, 1979; Boss, P., Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (1999) and Loss, Trauma, and Resilience (2006). Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Click here to get your own subscription. The Quiet Kind of Brave We do not roar, we do not shout When grief becomes our guest. We simply wake and take a breath With sorrow in our chest. The quiet kind of brave it is— To smile with trembling lips, To hold the coffee, feed the cat, With hands that shake and slip. And yet we do it, day by day,..... Read the rest at, https://trustedmemorialplanners.com/post/inspirational-poems-about-grief

In the Media Where can you find EMPOWER Possible? In addition to posting on my own social media, I collaborate with other entrepreneurs.  Thank you, Voyager Minnesota, for your article, https://voyageminnesota.com/interview/story-lesson-highlights-with-julie-zaruba-fountaine-of-metro-area-highlight/ Upcoming Events Leading Change When Nobody is Looking When: September 17, 2026  Where: St. Paul, MN What: Panelists will share real stories about leading through uncertainty, influencing without formal authority, working with limited resources, and helping people move forward when conditions are far from perfect. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for building momentum before buy-in exists, creating progress amid constraints, and sustaining change when the path forward is still taking shape. Discover more by clicking here. Luminary Conference Presentation When: September 25, 2026 Where: Rochester, MN  What: I am thrilled to be taking the stage at the upcoming Luminary Conference! I will be sharing actionable frameworks on sustainable leadership, thriving through large-scale organizational transitions, and shifting workplace cultures from a state of survival and overwhelm into a space of abundance and clarity. To learn more, click here. Wisdom of Winter Retreat When: February 25 to 28 2027 Where: True North Resort, Nisswa, MN What: In partnership with Art of Presence and Taylor and Co., Empower Possible is hosting a winter retreat. Surrounded by peaceful lake views, snow-covered forests, and the quiet beauty of winter, this retreat is designed to help you slow down, reconnect, and restore. Come as you are. Leave feeling rested, grounded, and renewed. Learn more: https://taylorandcoapothecary.com/2027-nisswa-retreat/  Mountain 10 Workshops What is Mountain 10?  During this three-hour workshop, we will focus on accessing your inner wisdom to bring about the changes you deeply desire in your life. We will use the Mountain 10 process, a proven, new technology for deep reflection on human change. It is based on the conviction that every person has the most important answers about direction, purpose, and calling within them. For a Mountain 10 experience, join the Wisdom of Winter Retreat. Can't make it to the Wisdom of Winter Retreat? Join the waitlist. Click HERE Please reach out if you have any questions: info@empowerpossible.com

Connect with me on social media! Copyright © EMPOWER Possible  Northfield, United States EMPOWER Possible is dedicated to empowering individuals, organizations, and communities to organize and act together to regenerate our world through Self, Social, and Systems transformation.  info@empowerpossible.com \ Website \ Mission You are receiving this email because you expressed an interest in my work—thank you! You can change your email preferences or unsubscribe at any time.  Disclaimer: This newsletter contains content that has been modified and inspired by ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI. While we use ChatGPT to enhance our content, it should not be considered professional advice. For specific concerns or decisions, please consult with a qualified professional or trusted source. The newsletter authors are not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided by or inspired by ChatGPT.