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Stories As a Means to Make Sense of Our Lives
When I was undergoing my personal transition (see the Change, Transition, and Transformation Series), I had to find ways to pay attention to, see and understand the connections between my mind, body and spirit to tap into a new sense of focus and creativity.
Another vehicle for becoming aligned and integrated as individuals involves stories.
Stories as a Mean to Enhance Mutual Understanding
Since stories are the way we make sense of our lives, story telling is an important vehicle for gaining mutual understanding. It is by telling our stories and hearing and understanding their differences that we can begin to create larger more inclusive and fully integrated stories. Like quilters, story-tellers piece together what is otherwise unconnected. Read more
Stories About Ourselves and Stories About Others
I had an experience recently in a long-term learning group that I was in. All the participants had made a commitment to attend six 3-day sessions over an 18-month period of time.
Making Up Stories
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly we human beings are to find ways to create “in” groups and “out” groups – how quickly we are able to connect with some individuals and simultaneously disconnect with others based on the smallest of differences.
Story Telling: A Space for Race
Recently, I did a book reading at Brownstone Books in Brooklyn, NY of my book, Repairing the Quilt of Humanity: A Metaphor for Healing and Reparation. The book uses Read more
Stories and Context
Stories can differ completely depending on who is narrating them as well as the point in time that is seen as the “beginning” of the story. In her book, The Thirteenth Tale, a mystery about a family, Dianne Setterfield speaks to this:
“I shall start at the beginning. Though of course the beginning is never where you think it is. Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born. …yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others Read more
The Power of Stories to Build Connections and Create Change
In the book, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, Sandy Tolan artfully tells the story of two individuals who grew up with dramatically different cultural “stories.”
Bashir Khairi, a Palestinian man, was six years old in 1948, when his family was expelled from the home his father built by Jewish Zionists trying to create a “national the Jewish people.” When the Israeli soldiers approached al-Ramla, the Khairi family’s village, the Arab civilian defenders were no match for the Israeli army. Read more
Alice Walker’s Powerful Story
Last month, Alice Walker published an open letter, Lest We Forget: An Open Letter to My Sisters Who Are Brave, about why she is supporting Barack Obama for president. It is a perfect example of the power of stories to influence in ways that “facts” and “logic” cannot. Stories provide the context that is crucial to understanding another’s perspective. Read more
Seeing and Being Seen
One of the most basic of human desires is the desire to feel “seen.” We want to be seen for who we are – and have the unique gifts that we bring to the world appreciated and valued.
An incident that took place with my daughter about a year ago helped me realize how easy it is not to “see” and appreciate those around us – even those who are nearest and dearest to us. My daughter is eleven years old now but was ten at the time of the incident I’m writing about. Read more
The See Saw: A Metaphor for Yin and Yang
Last week I participated in a fabulous writing workshop. After four days of constant writing, I found myself feeling a strong sense of nervous energy – kind of the way it feels when you’ve drunk too much coffee. Since I hadn’t had much coffee and wasn’t feeling nervous or Read more