Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times: Storytelling Creates CONNECTION

It’s all so overwhelming and it seems everyone is tired, discouraged, maybe angry or cynical or depressed, maybe confused or disheartened…just weary.
Each day during this April A-Z Blogging Challenge I’ll offer a short musing on an aspect or two of the many ways the ancient-yet-very-contemporary experience of storytelling – both listening and telling – is an enjoyable, fortifying and heart-lifting practice, for anyone!

C – Storytelling Creates CONNECTION

“The shortest distance between two people is a story.” (various sources)

If there’s one thing we need these days, it’s CONNECTION. Between individuals or groups, a loss of connection is at the foundation of so much pain.

Disconnect.

The shortest distance between two people is a story.

Telling stories together stories engenders a connection in the moment as everyone gathered has a shared experience that impacts the imagination, emotions, cognition, and even breathing patterns of everyone present.

Sharing stories can sow seeds for ongoing and deeper connection between individuals and between communities.

Storytelling can help to cross challenging boundaries.

One powerful example is detailed in storyteller/author Noa Baum’s book A Land Twice Promised: An Israeli Woman’s Quest for Peace, a beautiful memoir of how sharing stories contribute to understanding and connection in even the most fraught of relationships. [Along similar lines, for years I have given storytelling programs and workshops on peacemaking and on interfaith storytelling (links below, if you’re interested).]

Kinds and sources of divisions abound, whether prompted by personality, politics, religion, generation gaps, histories, and more – and we tend to shut off, or shout, or read articles that confirm our biases…

I don’t mean to be facile or to suggest that storytelling is a panacea for all our problems. But…

…it is an accessible, pretty easy, enjoyable and creative way to really make CONNECTIONS – whether it’s sharing personal stories that help us to see and understand each other, or even just coming together to enjoy an exchange of favorite traditional stories, inviting everyone to participate in a fun and age-old practice of humanity.

“The shortest distance between two people is a story.”

Thanks for reading – Pam

P.S. If you’re interested, here are a couple links to some of my programming I mentioned above: Interfaith Interplay! and Andalusian Trilogy.

Top photo by Kevin Erdvig on Unsplash. Hands photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash.