Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling Gives VOICE

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!

V – Storytelling Gives VOICE 

• A child who never speaks up in class discovers that storytelling invites & enables her to blossom.
• A teenager who is struggling with confusing emotions and questions finds a way to approach and verbalize them through the learning and telling of stories.
• An individual who has experienced trauma finds a pathway to healing when invited to tell their story.
• A lonely elder can find companionship and thriving when invited to share stories.
• Sharing stories provides structure and connection in ways that enable disparate groups to hear each other.
• Those who have been silenced one way or another are empowered when given opportunities to speak their truths.

Just a smattering of the endless ways in which storytelling gives VOICE to individuals and communities.

Sometimes what disheartens us the most is when we are not heard, not given opportunity to have our VOICES heeded.

This doesn’t just mean physically producing the sound of one’s voice; it also means to “have a VOICE” – that is, to have an active and participatory role in making or influencing a decision about something.

Storytelling can have impact in situations of serious consequence, enabling everyone’s VOICE to be heard and heeded (see A Land Twice Promised: An Israeli Woman’s Quest for Peace, for a good example).

Storytelling also can “simply” benefit an individual by giving them, with the structure it provides and the meaningful fun it produces, the opportunity to use their VOICE with others. (See my T post on “Tonic”!)

Thanks for reading – Pam

Top photo by Luis Morera; “not be silenced” photo by Stewart Munro; bird photo by Jeffrey Hamilton; all on Unsplash.