Story Mining’s first offering
Today I’m thrilled to announce that Story Mining’s first offering, The Mini Dig, is officially available!
My incredibly talented husband and partner in life and business, Scott, has been helping me build and launch the technical and backend mechanics for months while I’ve been focusing on developing content and deciding how I wanted everything to look and feel from a client standpoint. Our talents and vision have coalesced into this satisfying milestone.
Before I tell you more about the specifics of The Mini Dig, here’s some background for context…
What is Story Mining?
Story Mining is a gentle method of reflection for women unearthing their true selves – after, or within, an abusive relationship. Its whole premise rests on something I’ve come to believe deeply – both from my own life and from the women I’ve sat with since: becoming yourself isn’t something you fail to do when you’re enmeshed in a relationship like that. It’s something that gets taken from you – by control, by danger, by chaos, all working together to keep you from ever finding a firm footing in your own life.
For some women, that means finding her way back to a self she remembers. For others – those who came to the relationship before she’d had the chance to become fully herself – she’s finding her way forward, into a self she never got the chance to build in the first place. Story Mining holds room for both.
I built this process because it’s something I once needed myself. The methodology that is the underpinning of Story Mining started, unglamorously, with a pen and a sheet of paper in our basement, on an ordinary, terrible night, in the middle of yet another fight with my abuser. I didn’t know it yet, but that seemingly simple act was the beginning of everything that followed – years of journal pages, a slow and often nonlinear process of finding out who I actually was, and eventually, a method I could offer to other women walking a version of the same road.
I’m not a therapist. What I am is a woman who went looking for herself and found her – and who built something, from that lived experience, to help other women do the same.
What is The Mini Dig, specifically?
The Mini Dig is a self-guided reflection experience I’ve developed – seven reflections, each one offering a question to sit with, entirely at your own pace. There’s no deadline, no program to keep up with, and nothing you’re required to feel. Some reflections may move you. Others may leave you blank. Either way is exactly right.
The seven reflections move gently from naming what was taken from you, to grieving what never got the chance to grow, to finding the part of you that survived anyway, to finally imagining – and beginning to claim – who you’re free to become now. Each one closes with a few words meant to hold you exactly where you are, whether you’re still inside a difficult situation or finally far enough away to look back on it.
Every choice in the Mini Dig – the pacing, the language, the complete absence of any “right” answer – was made with real consideration for the fact that the woman reading it may be in a genuinely vulnerable position, emotionally and sometimes physically. Nothing about this was built quickly or casually. It was built the way I wish something had been built for me.
Because I wanted The Mini Dig to be right before I ever asked anyone to trust it with something as tender as their own healing, I asked two people I deeply trust to look at it honestly. Kelly Carlin-McCall read it and told me it was “beautifully done… your warmth, calm, wisdom and ability to hold the truth comes through so well.” Mary Babehis, a clinical APRN at The Institute of Neurobehavioral Services, read it through a professional lens and praised its emphasis on “self reflection, personal agency, reconnecting to oneself, and moving at your own pace.”
I feel like Kelly and Mary agree that The Mini Dig delivers what I intended.
The Mini Dig is available now as a downloadable PDF, and you can find it here.
What’s next for Story Mining? The Full Dig
The Mini Dig is the beginning, not the whole journey. Further down the road (I’m still shaping exactly what this looks like and I intend to build it with the same care that went into everything else) is The Full Dig: a guided, one-on-one experience of Story Mining, walked alongside me rather than alone. Where the Mini Dig is self-guided and self-paced, the Full Dig will be an authentic conversation between two women who both know what it means to have to find yourself – sometimes for the very first time, sometimes long after you thought the chance had passed. It will feature an opportunity to go even further into the questions and reflections offered in The Mini Dig.
My personal/professional evolution into Story Mining guide
As a lifelong entrepreneur, I can tell you that Story Mining – and specifically the launching of The Mini Dig – is not only the culmination of months of deep consideration, meticulous planning and diligence – it’s a manifestation of my life’s journey. As a storyteller, I see clearly how my life has progressed from abuse survivor to woman who found herself, to woman who discovered healthy, unconditional love (from another and for herself) to wizened woman who sees the length and breadth of life on the other side of abuse. This is where my long, arduous and circuitous roads have led me thus far on my journey – and it’s my honor to offer support to other women traveling their own.
If something in it feels like it’s about you (or someone you know) – t’s here whenever you’re ready.
*Unearthing the gold in you.*
– Regina
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