About Me — Phyllis Unterschuetz
ReWriting the stories I’m telling myself
Hi! I’m Phyllis. This is my very first story on Medium.
I am a soul; I have a body
I identify as a soul who is temporarily associated with a physical body that has been living for 73 years, is peachy-beige in color, and female in gender. The hairs on my head are mostly white and become thinner as I age. The hairs on my chin are also white and annoyingly prolific.
Some of my joints are made of bone and some are made of titanium. I’m no longer able to do squats, but I am surprisingly good at sit-ups and planks. Even though I have not always been kind to this body, it has served me faithfully throughout the years and allowed me to do the work I was sent here to do. For that I am grateful.
My inner hippo is the voice in my head that tells me stories
Sometimes they are helpful and often they are not. Like the hippopotamus, which is awkward on land but graceful in the water, my inner hippo has a dual nature. When she’s in the water — which for me symbolizes the spiritual realm — she is my muse. When she leaves the water to forage for food, she tells me stories that feed my ego.
I am learning how to rewrite those stories so they reflect my noble, authentic self.
I’ll be sharing more about my relationship with my body, my inner hippo, and my rewriting process in future posts.
My life journey has four phases
Phases 1 and 2 took place in the Chicago suburbs, where I grew up, married my husband, and raised our children. For the first 15 years of Phase 3, we lived on the road in an RV and traveled around the country.
During our travels, my husband and I wrote a book, did interviews, gave talks, and conducted workshops on racial healing for community groups, schools, and social justice organizations. Our presentations focused on how we’ve been conditioned as white people to understand race. We created the Race Story ReWrite Project with an African American friend and facilitated dialogues on race in hundreds of physical and virtual spaces. In 2013 we sold the RV and settled, ironically, in Stone Mountain, GA, the birthplace of the KKK’s second incarnation.
Phase 4 is just beginning
A few years ago, during a week-long retreat in the mountains of northern Georgia, I created a timeline of my life and realized it could be divided into distinct, 24-year phases. I saw that I would transition from my 3rd into my 4th phase in 2021, but I was too busy with our project to give it further thought at that time.
I started thinking about that transition again at the end of 2020. Our Race Story ReWrite Project team was finishing a major initiative, and we were all ready to move on after its completion. So I hired a life coach, set April 1st as my transition date, and began a process that became the framework for everything that followed.
I’m now a year into Phase 4, and my life is drastically different. My husband and I downsized and moved to the other side of Atlanta. Our kids and three of our seven grandchildren live nearby. I have new neighbors and a new faith community. But these are outward indicators; the inside changes are more important. If you choose to follow my new adventure, you’ll read more about what I’m learning and who I’m becoming.
This 4th phase of my physical life will end when I leave my body and continue my journey in the spiritual realms. If I can find a way to keep writing without a body, I will do my best to let you all know what it’s like to live there.
These are my core beliefs
My faith
I am passionate about my Bahá’í Faith. Its principles are the guiding force in my physical and spiritual life.
A foundational teaching of the Bahá’í Faith is the oneness of humanity and the elimination of all forms of prejudice. American Bahá’ís have been given explicit guidance on uprooting racism and overcoming racial prejudice. I knew nothing about race when I became a Bahá’í in 1968, but that decision marked the beginning of a life-long commitment to racial justice and healing.
My calling
During the years we lived on the road, I made a pledge to free myself from my often unconscious racial conditioning, to accompany other white people engaged in that process, and to build authentic cross-racial relationships. I’ve come to regard these goals as my purpose for existing in the world. I have many other passions and topics to write about, and some aren’t related to race at all. Yet when I do abandon my physical shell, I hope I will be remembered as a racial justice warrior.
My mandate
I have to write. When my facilitator/speaker self retired, my author self stepped forward. The ideas that have flooded my brain for decades — that have been put on the shelf while I did other things — are now arising and demanding to be heard. Hundreds of stories need to get out of my head and into the world. They will emerge as memoirs, personal essays, poems, and fairy tales. Some will become books. Many will live here on Medium. I hope you’ll read them.
My focus
I want to become a more consistent rewriter. We humans believe we react to an event, but really we react to the meaning we give it, to the story we tell ourselves about what just happened. I want to become better at rewriting the stories in my head that trigger unhealthy behavior. This theme will be present in most of my writing.
Here are some random but interesting things I’ve done
One day on a beach in Oregon, as I stood still and looked out at the waves, the ocean placed an agate on my foot.
I sat in the eighth row at a Rolling Stones concert and caught a rose petal thrown by Mick Jagger. I’m Baby Boomer to the core.
I made a TV commercial for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, in which I took a plastic toy soldier out of the cereal box and shot at my brother across the breakfast table.
In second grade, I recited a poem on the stage of a Chicago nightclub that was owned by the mafia.
In my college swim class, I was officially recognized as the person who could float the longest without moving.
When I was 20, I worked for a private eye and went undercover with a camera hidden in a powder compact.
My maternal grandmother lived to age 108. I prefer not to live that long. Even 100 seems a bit extreme.
My great-great-grandfather was Kaiser Wilhelm’s barber.
I would love to learn how to make animated short films. My favorite animator is Erica Russell.
This is just the beginning. There’s so much more to come — how I ended up in an RV, why I work for racial justice, who has influenced me, what I struggle with, where I find inspiration and other things I haven’t even thought of yet.
I’m working on a new website, but for now, you can follow me here on Medium. Thanks for reading. Let’s get together for coffee sometime.
