Your Life's A Story
Make It a Good One
I twirled my plastic spoon in my melting mint chocolate chip ice cream and pulled, making little gnome hats around the styrofoam cup. My Dad held the blue driver’s ed manual in his left hand, his right deep into a Snickers ice cream pie slice. He was trying to get my answer on when to pass on the right (you shouldn’t), but I was too distracted by the beautiful boy behind the ice cream counter to respond. He was wearing a Beatles tee shirt, doling out dripping cones to a line of kids all jittery and with flushed cheeks from playing basketball outside. He had the deepest, kindest hazel eyes I had ever seen.
I knew at fifteen that if given the opportunity, I wouldn’t think twice about marrying him.
I didn’t think twice.
And I did marry him. Seven years later.
It is a story I have told for 20 years. The one we tell to our children. The one I repeated over and over to myself when our marriage was over. The one I returned to when we began again.
I have always been a storyteller.
Bards, Troubadours, Giots, Poets, and Shamans are all keepers of genealogy and myth, healers, life-bringers, gatherers, social commentators, beauty capturers. They don’t keep the score- they keep the first kisses trapped in cellophane and pass it down, palm to palm. They hold belonging in their chests like wildflowers, handing out petals with each word woven deftly into the fabric that makes our families and communities.
In my heart of hearts, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.
While a student of theater and music, I was encouraged to “tell the story”. This meant to emote and express through lines or song a part of the human condition as if I was experiencing it the first time- so others who bore witness could experience it along with me.
Story is so powerful that even if I had performed the same lines the night before, delivering them like it was the first time allowed me to experience it all over again. There is a magic to nuanced repetition. To walking the same block at different times of day. To seeing your front room in the morning light.
If you were to look at my resume or any of my professional paperwork, you would find “storytelling” listed in my skills and experience.
In marketing, storytelling simply means I understand a company’s mission and message and can communicate that to the public in a way that (hopefully) informs, inspires, and encourages a desirable action that creates a better world.
In every facet of my life, I have sought the art of telling a good story. Even on my darkest days of wondering where I have abandoned my dreams to pursue illusive security, or abandoned myself along the way- the story is there, with pregnant pause, waiting to be told.
I have never been unable to walk away from a good opportunity to tell a story that just might change someone else. It is in my lifeblood.
Stories connect us; to each other, to ourselves and to the world around us. And connection is how we thrive.
Storytellers hold all the power. They are the shapers of narrative. They can bring up or tear down. Villains become heroes with a single vocal inflection. Protagonists become peripheral characters. We have long touted doctors and lawyers as societal gold standards- but it has always been the storytellers who have kept us alive.
Everything, and everyone, has a story. The concept of story shapes everything I do. If ever I felt comfortable enough to admit I may have a calling- I can’t think of a higher one than that of storyteller.
I am counting on 2025 to be the year of the story.
Year of the story, I like it! I resonate with this, especially: "We have long touted doctors and lawyers as societal gold standards- but it has always been the storytellers who have kept us alive." I was definitely always encouraged, growing up, to consider becoming a doctor or lawyer (or engineer like my dad) - and it took many years to gather up the guts to try to be a writer (a kind of storyteller) instead. These days I think a lot about the kinds of work/hobbies/music/art/play/laughter etc. that make life vibrant and joyful and how crucial these things are to our lives and communities.
I’m in Okinawa, Japan and last night a group of kids who joyfully greeted me asked me what I did, and I (after leaving my job in marketing and brand storytelling less than two months ago to come here and find rest and recovery) told them, I’m a writer. They asked, “What do you write?” I said, “I tell stories”. It’s the only way I’ve ever wanted to be seen and known and it’s been a long time trying to get back here. This place not only feels like a second home, it feels like the home I want to write all my stories in. It’s where I want the next set of storytelling to be honed and to be “homed”.
You are hands down my favorite storyteller on here. I can almost taste your words and feel them as I’m reading them. And I find myself coming back to it over and over again like I’m riding past my favorite bridge or waterfront.