Jacob wrestles with a dark shadow all night long fearing for his life. Only when the sun rises and first light appears, does he realize that he is wrestling with an angel. In telling personal stories, I have felt like Jacob in this Bible story. There are some stories that are vulnerable and difficult. However, sometimes those stories transform into some of my greatest inspirations.
Storytelling is transformational.
We know that finally taking the amorphous dark shadow of a story out of our head, giving it the structure of words, and having it witnessed by another person is transformational. This is the reflective and therapeutic process of crafting story. We make sense of our past. This is the art of the personal story: taking the inside out.
Sharing personal stories is a vulnerable act of courage. We struggle to find the universal themes in our stories, to know that we are not alone. We struggle to find meaning and make sense of our life. When the audience gives us the gift of honoring our story and seeing themselves in our story, we are at once connected and know that we belong to the community that is humanity.
But how do we excavate the stories from our memory?
When someone says, “Tell me a story,” if you are like me, the mind goes blank. The act of searching for a story brings me to the blank page of writer’s block or the blank computer screen with the menacing blinking cursor.
Here we must talk about the mind and neuroscience. Our memory works like hyperlinks on a webpage. We can go from one to another to another based on the links. Rather than start with a blank page, start with a prompt.
Memories are “memorable” because they have emotional content. In his book of prompts, Donald Davis tells us that the strongest memories are linked to people, places, events, and things that have emotional content.
- Tell me about your favorite teacher.
- Describe the first home that you lived in.
- What were you doing when the World Trade Center collapsed?
In order to find the seed memories that I can craft into stories for performance, I have struggled with and explored many different techniques. Here are some tips:
- Start with a prompt (instead of a blank page) that will take you into a memory that has emotional content.
- Listen to stories of others. Just like the hyperlink on a webpage, I always ask myself what stories are triggered from my own memories.
- Trust the feeling when it comes up: there is something here that I want to tell.
Now that I have ideas, I come to the next problem. How do I develop those ideas into a story? Stay tuned for the next blog post.
Tell Your Story, Transform Your Life
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