MY LIFE BEGAN WITH STORIES

My novel, I LISTENED, MOMMA, begins with a line of truth. It opens with, “My daddy was a storyteller, not the kind that traveled around…and got paid for it, but the kind who told real stories, ones he had lived.”

My earliest memory is of language. I was a baby, looking through the bars of my crib. My mom and grandma changed my baby sister’s diaper. I heard their language and tried to know what they were saying. This was a story, my first memory and it centered around words. Words would become my way of perceiving and understanding the world.

And my favorite word was always “Why?” The needing to know why sent me forever searching for more stories. Because, it was in the stories of humanity that my whys could find answers.

Stories have shaped my life. Maybe that’s why I’ve dedicated my life to stories. As a teacher, I helped write hundreds of stories. Each life is a story in progress. As a speaker and an author, I tell my story every time I speak or write. And as an artist, I paint, not only my story, but other people’s too. I paint photos of loved ones, of moments in their lives. People hire me to capture an emotion or an image that a camera can’t capture, that AI can’t generate. All of these are stories. The songs we sing are stories. The plays we produce, all stories.

THE HAND-ME-DOWNS

But my favorite stories are those handed down from one generation to the next. I love the stories that carry ancient wisdom from the elders to us today. I believe stories do so much more than entertain.

When I was a kid my dad used to tell us stories at night. In the winter, there would be a fire in the woodstove. The kitchen would be filled with warmth and a soft glow. And in the spring, we’d have storms. The lights would go out and there would be an oil lamp. The stories seemed magical to me, even the ones I’d heard many times before. With each telling, Daddy’s eyes would light up and his face would become animated.

His stories taught me many things. Mostly, they taught me to listen. Listening is so important, because it’s in listening that we learn the patterns of humanity. It’s in hearing those stories of our ancestors that we learn lessons which we can apply to our own lives.

WHY STORIES STILL MATTER

I believe stories matter so much because the help us make sense of our lives. They remind us that we are not alone in our questions, our griefs, or our wonder. Stories give us wings that lift us beyond our limited perceptions. They allow us to see the world through another person’s eye. They take us places we could never go on our own.

Stories invite us to slow down. The world is noisy. There are many people, and now AI bots, who are selling something. They are defending something or simply vying for our attention via click bait. They use urgent, emotionally charged words to enrage us, scare us, startle us. But like Joseph Campbell used to say, stories call to the heroes inside of us.

I don’t think stories are mean to “fix” us, but rather, they’re meant to spark us to life. All of us are called upon more than once to make a hero’s journey. As long as we are on this earth, we are on such a journey. In my opinion, stories are how we remember where we came from. They remind us that others have walked this road before us. They teach us how to listen and to recognize patterns. Once we recognize patterns, we can utilize those that recognition to write our own stories better. This enables us live our lives with purpose and intention.