Interview with Terri St. Cloud

I’ve always felt extremely emotional. I started to notice this when I was a teenager. I had strong feelings.

“Hypersensitive” was used once, as an insult, to describe me. Now it makes me smile - it’s true!

Being hypersensitive made me feel different.

...as a teen I would go, with friends, to a movie. Everyone would have a great time. They’d be saying “Wasn’t that great?” And I would be profoundly sad. Sad for the way a family might be portrayed, sad for cheap sex or the cruddy language used in the movie, sad that there wasn’t more in the movie.

I’d feel betrayed, all heavy, different.

I take everything to the depths...and heights too.

I have a story about “heights”. I’ve always felt like if I let all the heights out I would freak out the whole world - everybody would be scared. The only time in my life that I totally went to the heights was...

One Christmas eve. The kids were little. Santa Claus came by on a fire engine. We all went out to see him. The fire engine was really loud.

It was like I was 6 years old. I was SO excited. The fire engine was so loud you could scream and carry on and no one could hear. So I screamed and carried on {Terri laughed as she said this} and I didn’t scare anyone.

I think life prepared me.

When I was growing up I had posters all over the walls of my room. I slept under quotes.

I was being trained for figuring out what was going on inside me - noticing my feelings and then figuring them out.

Looking over the Square-Peg interview questions - and thinking through them - helped me with trust. I really saw how awesome my business is - and how life prepared me for bone sighs.

Making bone sighs is the way I maintain my Square-Pegness.

When (my marriage) was falling apart we went to marriage counseling. At sessions my husband would shred me, I would usually cry - go home - veg out. But one time, after one awful session, I made my first bone sigh.

I wrote "I matter..." I wrote the bone sigh as a housewarming present for a woman in a women’s therapy group I was in. I thought of her while I wrote the saying and watercolored and matted it. Then I saw that it was about me!

The thing is: bone sighs started as a gift!

Before I gave it to the woman, I showed it to my counselor - she cried. And she said: “Terri, you need to keep writing.”

So I kept a notebook by a cot in the kids’ room, where I was sleeping.

I didn’t want to numb stuff out. I made a decision to feel everything. To walk through and feel everything. It was HARD! When it was so hard that I didn’t know what to do with the pain, I would write.

I had this deal with the universe - I will follow my heart, do everything that feels right. If it felt right, I’d do it. Even though I needed to figure out a way to support myself and the kids, my main focus was not on money.

Somehow walking, praying, asking “What am I supposed to do?” led to bone sighs.

People seemed to like them, so I began to take them to stores. I didn’t have a name for the bone sighs, i called them “thingees”.

I was calling these things “thingees” - and taking them to stores. I needed a name for them. I laid on the cot and said “Give me a name”. And got “bone sighs”.

The deal was - I will listen to everything. But, at the time I got up - stood up and looked at the ceiling and said “Is that the best you can do?”{laughter}

It was a gift from the universe! And I did use it, but I didn’t like it at first. Now, I don’t think there could be a better name. If I hadn’t gotten that name I’d be calling them “Terri’s thingees”. {more laughs}

So that was another lesson in trust - listen and do it!

When I’m riding along feeling really comfortable - feeling good - not thinking about fitting in - close with somebody - and something happens. I get the feeling that I’m 100 miles away from that person.

That makes me hate myself for a few minutes - asking myself what’s wrong with me.

And that’s all inside of me - my thinking it is what separates me from the other person. So it’s up to me whether I keep that “hardest thing” or not.

I’m non-judgmental. I think it ties into the hypersensitivity thing. It’s a full-circle thing.

It’s funny - I’m kind of a goody goody. Initially, people can be hesitant to talk to me. People act surprized when I don’t react with shock when they tell me things.

But I take anything a person tells me and relate it to what I’m going through - what goes on inside me - and grow from it.

Everything there is - is in all of us. You can come to me with anything, and I’ll grow from it.

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. That book was my bible. Estes talks about how you can feel things - know things - in your bones. She talks alot about that.

Another book I like is Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsh - the first volume, first section. It was hard for me to get. He talks about praying - how you need to know you’ve already got what you’re praying for.

I’m starting to understand it.

I’m relating that to bone sighs. And trying to get past thinking “How can I be doing something special?”

Trying to remember “I matter.” I never thought I’d have something to say, I was just trying to get through my pain. I’m stunned - I don’t know how all this happened.