• I want to tell you about an amazing client of mine who we’ll call Carla (for the sake of privacy) who sought me out during the pandemic. She had slips of paper everywhere, journals and actual stories already written that she was not sharing.

    She joined the 12 Week StoryTelling Circle and was very quiet at first. We worked on folks opening up by sharing why they wanted to write.

    Then when she shared about the end of her marriage and how having kids, a career, the loss of her mother and a high powered corporate job with a relentless demanding boss made her feel; something profound happened.

    As she told her stories in the midst of this empty nest phase of her life, we were recording them. Then each person’s stories were read by another person.

    When she heard herself outloud for the first time, it was as if she was speaking to her younger self, her dreams that she had left behind in service to every one except herself.

    She didn’t need anyone to tell her why she was stuck. As she recalled each and everytime she spoke up for herself and was shut down:

    Each moment she sacrificed her dreams in service to

    the family’s dreams,

    the husband’s dreams,

    her mother’s dreams.

    She realized how far she had stepped away from her own.

    You see Carla was living to make other peoples dreams come true over and over again. Once she heard her words read aloud by another person, she started to remember who she dreamed of becoming.

    Every woman in the circle was totally invested in her story. Using the Roshamon Technique which I use to help writers create character and authentic POV, she could reimagine step by step where she could have made a differenct choice for herself without compromising the ones she cherished.

    She realized that her ever present exhaustion was less about sleep and more about an inability to see options for herself.

    But, once she started writing and hearing her words over and over again, week after week in an supportive environment with lots of personal attention; she could finally see herself like a character in her story choosing to act from a sense of agency and excitement about the new life she could create once she left the punishing job; the absence of the high maintenance ex husband and the support of her adult children, she saw opportunity instead of chaos.


    Writing her story and having the accountability of showing up each week like a weight watchers meeting with a small group of women supporting her every step, eager to hear what new adventures she set her mind to was exciting.

    RESULTS
    That year, not only did Barbara outline and write the the first half of her memoir, she also, left her job and started teaching her process of writing as a place to heal and reshape your future.

    THE TRANSFORMATION
    She also learned to stand up for herself and draw lines in the sand. Her ex-husband was no longer showing up at her door uninvited for a meal; her boss who had spoken to her as if she were an recalctrant child while her ideas were catapulting the business forward was sent packing. She left with a nice severance package to get her started in her new business venture.

    You know what else the writing process taught her?

    REMEMBRANCE & CHANGE
    As she tracked each moment in her life where she had learned to be silent, to be quiet in the midst of horrible things happening; she went back to where she learned that pattern.

    And lo and behold , she started telling the story of her mother, grandmothers and aunt who were German women who hid Jewish people from the Nazis in Germany. Her family was eventually discovered, the uncle was detained never to be seen agains and they had to flee Germany for America with the clothes on their back.

    Carla had learned to be quiet when horrible things happened because her family’s response to war, genocide and concentration camps was to quietly hide peeople to save their lives.

    Carla was a child of war and resistance. She learned to sacrifice her voice as an act of resistance. But when the war was over, her family was still practicing suffering in silence and it stifled the voices and power of a truly magnificent, brave family of women.

    Telling her story in TheStoryTelling Circle, is where she identified the moment that derailed her life and writing it down helped her regain her footing.

    In finding her voice as a writer, she found her lost voice in her life. Carla’s story was the lynchpin of that group of storytellers who met faithfully every week for 2 years.ription text goes here

  • Permission to be a StoryTeller

    by Susan Heyward

    “There was me and about

    20 other kids.

    Ages, 13 to 17.

    Sitting on the floor of a drama class, all of us drunk on our own melanin and hormones.

    I was one of the 14 year olds.

    And the teacher, her headwrap tight and her statement earrings in the silhouette of Neferttiti dancing said, 

    “Okay. What I want you to do is look at this empty room.

    And someone, imagine where it could be.

    Can be anywhere.

    And I don't want you to tell us, but I want you, one of you, to get up and start behaving.

    In that place. 

    Then.

    Anyone who's watching, when you figure out where they are, you get up and you add your behavior to it.”

    She and a couple other teachers sat and waited, expectant and sphinx-like.

    As the Nefertittis settled down, we teens all kind of sat there looking at each other thinking. Aight. Where ya'll want to go?

    And one kid got up, a guy, one of the older kids.

    He stood in the middle of the room and he squeezed his hands in two fists. He held them with his elbows bent at 90 degrees in front of himself, shoulder length apart, thumb to pinky, as if he were holding a police baton.

    He leaned back, swung his arms to one side as if the “stick” was heavy, then swung them towards the ceiling before bringing them down to the floor. 

    Then he did it again.

    Boom.

    Again.

    Boom.

    Again he arched up and then down to the floor.

    I realized there’s nothing there, he’s not holding anything.

    This is pretend.

    I don't actually hear a boom.

    I don’t actually hear a thud.

    But the rhythm he created landed on my body just the same.

    Boom.

    I watched and tried to understand.

    “ Ohhhh...it’s not a baton, they aren’t that heavy…he's, like, in a garden somewhere, like, working on...oh, the land!”

    And so other people got up and started ‘working the land’ with him. 

    I thought, ‘Cool,they saw the same thing I saw.’

    And then another kid got up and pretended to crack a whip.

    And started to bark orders.

    And suddenly we weren't just in a field.

    We were on a plantation.

    As soon as the whole class agreed that we were on a plantation, a bunch of my classmates rushed up to join and added to the world being built.

    One of us pretended to be on a tractor.

    One of us pretended to be feeding dogs, one of us pretended to be turning cotton into thread. Spinning. Spinning cotton into thread.

    I was still on the side of the room, watching. I looked and I looked and I asked myself, 

    “Okay, how can I add to this world without repeating?”

    I don't want to just do what everyone's doing.

    and,

    Something inside me pushed me up. Before I really knew what I was doing. I was walking gingerly up to one classmate, my hands heavy at my side, my back bent over and in a voice unlike my own, drawled,

    “Want some watah?”And the way they looked at me. We'd stopped

    Pretending.

    We were just living.

    My classmates.

    A bunch of city kids at summer camp, they looked different to me.

    They looked at me with gratitude and surprise.

    Relief.

    I gave water.

    More water. A moment between each laborer and I.

    Together, we slipped into this world.

    This improv lasted for 20 minutes..

    And it was incredible, the imagination and freedom and sense of ensemble we built.

    Whoever decided to cast themselves as the slave master went full in, grabbed one of the girls who was in the field and walked over to a corner with her. We heard the sounds of a master taking liberties, the kind that helped my great great aunts move west and never to be seen by our black asses again.

    ( I should really track down that student and see how she's doing. How both of them are doing. I remember the teachers at the corners of the room coaching us, but I’m not 100%. All I remember is I felt safe enough to play the scenario, but I can’t speak for everyone. This would probably never fly in a classroom today, but I’d be lying if I said it felt anything other than natural and free and creative.)

    The whole thing took on a life of its own. A momentum.

    We all pretended to pick her up afterwards and put her back together. And she said, 

    “I've had it, I'm leaving, we're not doing this no mo! I’m runnin’!”

    And then we were cooking with gas!

    One of the guys piped up that he was her husband.

    She couldn't leave without him and we improved “yes!” and went with it.

    Okay, who else is leaving? 

    Oh snap! There's a whole group who decided to go. 

    Okay!

    “I'm not going.”

    The words came out of my mouth smooth as a curtain rising at the top of a favorite burlesque act.

    From a place inside me that felt like home, I knew we needed conflict. So, right then and there, I decided, the water girl had to stay.

    I also decided (gasp!) master’s victim was my sister!

    So, I had to at least help her leave! Oh, and leave with her husband!

    All these creative decisions, the freedom!

    Just firing off like firecrackers.

    Better than any drug.

    (At least I imagine. I’m from the D.A.R.E generation, drugs scared the shit out of me so bad that cussing and theater were my addictions. Still trying to shake ‘em both.) 

    So

    My‘brother-in-NOT-law-cause-we-was-playing-slaves-and-marriage-wasn’t-legal-for-the-likes-of-us’ plotted the whole escape, with a bunch of us huddled around him.

    The person pretending to be the slave master; I think heard us but knew that it wouldn't help the story if he ‘found out.’

    So, he improved other things to do. Kept himself busy.

    Listened to the teachers coaching from the sidelines. 

    Then came the moment of parting, the moment, when we as an ensemble acted out the group escape.

    I felt such an upswell of emotion; sadness, and grief, and hope and joy. Literally, these people were going five or six feet across the room and pretending to go towards freedom, but we all believed it and our bodies acted as if it was the real thing.

    And as they tip-toed away, we wept, whispering our goodbyes.

    “You betta take care of my sister.”

    Yeah, that was me. The drama! I gave you drama, honey!

    Those of us who decided not to escape settled back into plantation life.

    And this thing had happened.

    And we all knew it was special.

    The teacher, after a few moments of stillness, really quietly said, 

    “Okay, now you can all let that go.”

    We must have sat there in silence for two minutes.

    I don't know what you call it. Orishas.

    Apollo.

    Dionysus.

    Spirits.

    Inspiration.

    We'd been visited by something.

    Superhuman.

    And we told a story.

    A story, honey.

    And our teacher asked

    “Everybody remember what they did?” 

    As if we could forget.

    We all nodded.

    And the teacher said, 

    “Okay. We're going to present this improv at the Parents, Family and Friends Sharing at the end of the summer.”

    I don't think I said anything out loud, but I remember feeling a flush of exhilaration and pride.

    And confidence; I knew whatever we found in that moment, we could do it again and we could share.And we did.

    I don’t remember rehearsing it again fully, but we had lots of staging rehearsals. We had sessions on blocking our positions on stage for each major moment, figured out our costumes and knew where the lights would be. The job was to let go, listen to each other, and tell the story again, this time to the folks who knew and loved us best. 

    When we performed that improv for our family and friends night, the same inexplicable magic, intangible thing lifted all of us together. We worked as an ensemble, we told the story, our people’s story and I'll never forget the moment.

    When the group of escapees left the stage to ‘escape’ I felt the same upswell of emotion; grief. Joy. Hope. Faith. Love.

    As I watched these kids carry the spirits of the escaped slaves with them through an auditorium of audience members in North Philadelphia, I could feel the audience's eyes on them, holding all this hope and watching them go. Watching me watch them go.

    I felt that there wasn't anything I could do wrong.

    Or any way I could mess up.

    I was fully present with the audience; they were fully present with us on stage.

    And I think that's the moment. I knew I could do this. I knew that I could tell a story. If I knew nothing else, I knew that. 

    I could serve something larger than myself and work with other people to serve something larger than us.

    And I've been chasing that feeling ever since

    —Susan Heyward