Storytelling is more than entertainment. It is a way to share wisdom across generations. Storytelling connects us through shared experiences. It keeps memories alive. It can help us to make sense of trauma and move forward in peace.
Everyone has a story to tell.
Think of yourself and the people in your life. Think of the everyday battles you fight—and WIN—just living your lives. Even the most boring experiences can be stories. I remember working at certain jobs I have had in the past—it was a battle just to put a smile on my face. That’s a story right there. The intimate moments of feeling beaten down but still needing to be nice because of the constant threat of losing that job. Everyday struggles might seem boring on the surface but when we look at them like that, they say a lot more. They tell the story of our survival on a physical level, as well as emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Maybe you are reading this because you are writing a story or book. What’s at stake in your story? If you don’t get what you are after, what will happen? Determining what’s at stake is going to determine how readers are going to connect with you. We might not have gone through exactly what you have gone through but we have experienced pain, loss, fear, heartbreak, and more. We are all connected by our basic needs—the need to survive, the need for love, the need to be heard, the need for freedom. No matter how unique your story is, at the heart of it, you are telling the story of humanity.
Making a connection with your reader is the only way to write something that people will remember. I believe that connecting with others is also the path to healing. We live in an incredibly divided society where, in our daily lives, we forget these basic human needs that we all share. It is so out of the ordinary to be vulnerable and say that we crave love or belonging. And yet, everyone craves this. Whatever deep need or desire you have that your story hinges on, I promise, so many other people feel the same way.
When you share your story, you’re allowing someone else to read a different version of their own struggle. You’re gifting someone else the relief of knowing that they are not alone. When you share your story, you aren’t just healing yourself but you are healing humanity. What an extraordinarily strong and brave person you are for freaking healing humanity!
When I first started writing, I did it as a way to process things that have happened in my own life. Getting my emotions out on paper felt freeing. It was like releasing a valve and letting out all the stuff that was bottled up. I think that’s why a lot of people get into writing. Whether we share our own personal stories or create new characters and new worlds, we are expressing ourselves in one of the most intimate ways. No matter how much we believe we are distanced from the story, pieces of ourselves find their way into our characters. The worlds we create mimic the environments we grew up in or had big life events in.
When you share your story, you’re allowing someone else to read a different version of their own struggle. You’re gifting someone else the relief of knowing that they are not alone. When you share your story, you aren’t just healing yourself but you are healing humanity.
The reasons that I started writing are almost the same as the reasons that I went into the human services profession. I felt that through helping others, I would help myself. Through healing others, I would heal myself. Oh, how naive I was. I thought that people getting sober or finding closure after a sexual assault would be a regular part of my life. It doesn’t exactly work that way. Human services is filled with nitty gritty work that is the complete opposite of glamorous. In this line of work, once you are with a client, what you want doesn’t matter! A lot of time is spent sitting with clients in their pain rather than fixing it. It can be frustrating to feel like you’ve gained some level of wisdom in life, only to leave it all at the door to center a client. The truth is, what worked for you, won’t work for everyone. What you want for your life, isn’t what everyone wants.
Writing is similar to the human services profession in this way. Starting out as a writer, I thought expressing myself on paper would lead people to understand me. Then I realized that it’s not about me at all. The job of a writer is actually to help the reader understand themselves. A writer forms a relationship with their reader just as a human services professional forms a relationship with their client. The basis of this relationship is empathy. People often mistakenly think empathy is putting yourself in another person’s shoes. This is not true. Instead, it is about listening intently to another person, sitting with them, and trusting what they express to you. If you try to put yourself in their shoes, then you bring all your perceptions and beliefs with you. That kinda takes away the point of listening to them.
When you write, bring this same sense of empathy with you. The task of writing a book isn’t to force the reader to see the world the way that you do. You cannot become attached to how they will walk away feeling about certain characters or events in the book. Instead, our job as writers is to artfully guide the reader through the events of a story so they can experience it along with you but as their own distinct person. The truth is, they are going to walk away with their own feelings about the story no matter how emotion-packed and compelling it is. I find that using literary conventions, tropes, story structure, and other tools helps me to be conscious about my storytelling. These tools give the story parameters. Using them is a bit like boundary setting. It creates a clear understanding between you and the reader.
If you want to heal through storytelling, you have come to the right place! I write stories as a way to compliment the work I do in the community as a doula and childbirth educator. I offer birth storytelling as a way for families to preserve their experience and share with generations to come. Subscribe to my weekly email message to receive content that connects storytelling with the creative process of pregnancy and childbirth. You can also follow me on Instagram @doula.brittany.