Hi,
My name is Catherine Cote-Couton.
If you sometimes struggle to define who you are,
The good stuff and the hard stuff,
If you struggle with knowing where you begin and end and knowing where other things,
Maybe the things people say or you hear,
Begin and end,
If you are looking for a way to identify the not me that the world can throw at you,
Then this story is for you.
The name of this story is the Ice Cream Wrapper Story.
I wrote this short story to remind all of you,
Well,
And me,
All of us,
That we get to choose who we are.
You get to choose who you are.
Before I start,
Be sure you are seated in a comfortable position and feel well grounded.
Take a few deep breaths.
Allow your mind to settle and open up to listening.
Open up to the I wonder of the story.
The story begins in a park.
You are there.
It is a busy and really hot day.
There are all sorts of people,
Young and old,
Families,
Children,
And couples.
There are individuals taking in the beautiful hot day.
They're running,
Strolling,
And biking through the park.
There is a vendor capitalizing on this hot day at the park selling ice cream sandwiches.
People are standing in line to get one of her wonderful ice cream sandwiches.
She has sold tons of them.
As a result of her tremendous sales,
There are ice cream sandwich wrappers overflowing the garbage can.
Even some are blowing around in the hot summer wind.
They can be so sticky.
You're walking along and a breeze picks up one of those wrappers and that sticky side,
You know that sticky side of the ice cream wrapper?
Well,
It sticks right onto your leg.
What do you do?
Do you just look down and say,
Oh gosh,
I guess it's the way it's going to be now.
I'm going to have an ice cream sandwich wrapper stuck on my leg for the rest of the day,
Maybe even the rest of my life.
No,
Of course not.
No.
You look down and you pull it off and you wrinkle it up and you throw it away and you say,
That's garbage,
Right?
Well,
Consider that it can be that way with thoughts.
Then maybe you have thoughts that run through your mind because of a commercial that you saw because of some advertisement suggesting that you must be extraordinarily thin and very beautiful to be happy.
Maybe you're supposed to be rich or have a certain car.
That is an ice cream wrapper thought.
Or perhaps your parents told you something like maybe you need to be perfect or always together in order to be happy.
Maybe you were raised that way because they were raised that way and so on and so on and so on.
Maybe some kid in fifth grade said something really crappy that's stuck,
Right?
There are all these things that could be there and just like the ice cream wrapper,
We can look at it and say,
You know what?
That's not me.
That's garbage.
We take it and we wrinkle it up and we let it go.
Yeah?
So just because it's a thought in your mind,
Maybe a memory,
Maybe a reiteration of some commercial or advertisement you saw,
You can identify it for what it is.
It's garbage and let it go.
I am not that.
That is not me.
And that is the end of the ice cream wrapper story.
Take a few breaths here and allow the story to settle.
You might even want to take a few moments breathing.
Consider what the story means to you,
For you.
You may even want to journal about this story.
Thank yourself for taking a few moments to listen and to wonder.
And I thank you so much for listening.
