Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling is Satisfying WORK

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!

W – Storytelling is Satisfying WORK

Sometimes storytelling is off the cuff, or casually spinning the story as you go, or remembering an experience you’ve had and simply sharing the story of it with someone.

But sometimes, real WORK is involved in storytelling. Perhaps:

• “going on a read,” as storyteller Heather Forrest used to say, to search for just the right story to learn and tell
• research – which can take many forms and paths (researching historical facts and contexts; language and idioms; the provenance/origin of a story; the culture from which a given story comes – to name a few possibilities)
• learning the story – some are longer and more complex than others
• preparing/rehearsing the story – such things as pace, choice of language, maybe character voices, gesture and blocking choices…
• sometimes WORKING with a storytelling coach, addressing any number of elements and aspects

And putting in such effort for preparing a story to tell can be deeply satisfying WORK!

For me personally, during these past two-plus disheartening years, WORKING on stories to tell in various contexts has been absolutely one of the most heart-lifting activities of all.

I recommend it!

Thanks for reading – Pam

P.S. I couple times I’ve mentioned in these A-Z posts, and today it seems perhaps especially appropriate, that I offer storytelling coaching. So if you’d ever be interested in exploring the possibility of WORKING with me, please contact me here about it, thanks.

Top photo by Cookie the Pom; woman reading on book stairs photo by Clay Banks; steaming cup and books photo by Charl Folscher; all on Unsplash.