In the most recent Rocky film, Rocky is asked why he is returning to boxing at sixty years of age. He replies with a committed and weary voice, “Because I have more stuff in the basement.”
I have long felt an affinity for basements, ever since a childhood basement was the scene of trauma and emotional scarring. And, I’m an ex-boxing coach, so I understand about the descent into personal fears in the pursuit of clearing the punching path. When I changed my life course to embrace story mapping, I trained for treks, each increasingly challenging, into the basement, in hopes of accessing the catacombs further down. The Story Mapping Guild approached me about preparing for guide training. Turns out, if you already have experience descending into a literal and then a memory-evoked basement, it’s highly likely you have deeper catacombs that can be mined for greater personal and humanity release. Story Mapping Guides emerge through their own story, first. I had to get beyond the basement and into the catacombs before I could be a Catacombs Guide.
The first obstacle of immense proportions I encountered as I took training treks into the basement looking for signs of Access Elevators, and/or Portals to the catacombs, was a toxic shame. A dense, damp gas seeping in at all pores, so covering my mouth or breathing shallow didn’t do much good. My guide kept their distance, since, like in a long distance swim across treacherous channels, the swimmer, or in my case, the catacomb trekker, is not to be touched; it interrupts the individual personal quest. If my guide feels it is absolutely vital they take hold of me to bring me back from total annihilation, this automatically ends the trek, and we return immediately to the surface or ground floor for resuscitation. No dedicated catacomb trekker wants to get pulled out too early. It takes so much out of me just to step into the toxic shame. It was difficult to look around for Catacomb Access Elevators or Portals because of the shame gas consuming my essence into a world of pain.
Sometimes my guide softly chants the names of others who had gone into the catacombs before me. I passed markers they left on the way down into their own horrors. Sometimes I paused to read the notes they left to remind themselves they had been that way before, and it was OK to keep going. There were also altars to mark the memory of trekkers who had left to join the other side. These markers sparked dread deep in my belly, triggering fear to blossom into my chest. The trekkers’stories of pain and separateness frequently brought me to my knees. I learned to use these moments to grieve. to gulp in the pain like breath until my body shuddered and released centuries of silenced voices, the dense trauma of trapped self-hood.
Typically, after one of these moments, I turn and trudge back up the stairs. I know the catacombs are beyond the basement shame field, and if I’m to get in shape to train as a story mapping guide, I have to get through that field. I gravitate toward feeling like a failure. My guide reminds me as we focus on intentionally taking each step up out of the basement, I’m building compassion strength. “Eventually, the shame field won’t get you so bad if you have compassion for what you're going through.”
The Story Mapping Guild welcomes every trekker in from the field. Guides who are trained in report records, help me dump what I’ve brought back with me into a pile on the floor, to sort and file my details into categories for future use. It’s a satisfying sense of connectedness, laughing and crying over the details I’ve managed to bring back with me. Then I’m handed a self-awareness focus to add to my everyday life. When I feel ready for another catacomb trek, I sign up and prepare for yet another descent. Someday I will get beyond the basement.
