Because so many great storytelling sites and blogs exist out there, with new ones emerging all the time, I don’t usually write full blog entries about any single site or blog but rather group them together and/or list them on one of my inside pages.

But I’m singling out the brand-new blog Transformative Narratives by Yvette Hyater-Adams (pictured) because her story practice really resonates with me, and I’d like to encourage and support her new venture (and hey, it doesn’t hurt that she shares a birthday with my son and lives a few miles from where I grew up in New Jersey).

I especially love her story of how she came to develop her storytelling approach:

In the early 1980s, I took a Franklin Planner class where part of the course entailed writing down goals and integrating them in my daily, weekly, and monthly calendars. This was a logical and mechanical process. Because my artist brain didn’t work so linear, I did more than write a goal sentence. My goal became a little story. In order for me to experience the goal, I stepped into my imagination and created a fictionalized story about me living and breathing that goal. It was so real, I could smell, taste, and touch it. Writing that visual image made such a difference. Having written the story, I could release it and be it.

And here’s how she characterizes transformative narratives:

[T]ransformative narratives 1) emerge from real and imagined visual, written, and spoken stories, that 2) become material to use for self-awareness, insight, and visioning, and 3) crystallize into deliberate actions for change

I’m really looking forward to more from Yvette and her new blog.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

One of the best pieces I’ve read about how stories heal is by Allison Cox, who not only describes several ways storytelling heals, but also guides practitioners in telling healing stories and lists books about therapeutic storytelling. Here’s a choice snippet from Cox’s article:

During storytelling, listeners let go of defenses and relax into the known, safe environment of story. A shift in consciousness takes place. Those who listen, actually live the story adventures in their imagination. The audience is offered a chance to measure their own experience in the light of the immortal tale… immortal because people often forget important details of their lives, but will remember a story they heard as a child.

Cox notes that “story lends narrative structure to events that might otherwise seem random and meaningless.” Stories tell us we’re not alone when faced with life-changing devastation and struggle, as the people of Haiti currently are and the victims of the 2005 Indian Ocean Tsunami have been. The site Surviving the Tsunami provides “stories of compassion, hope, and dignity. They highlight the resilience of communities in the face of catastrophe and the impact of humanitarian efforts.”

Cox writes about stories as “survival tools [in] an increasingly complex society.” Stories are part of an empowerment movement that, as Bonnie Rochman reports on TIME.com, many are calling Patient 2.0. Rochman cites, for example, Association of Online Cancer Resources, or ACOR.org, an umbrella site for information and shared experiences. One example is a site under ACOR’s auspices, Stories and Faces, a clearinghouse of stories of children with cancer. The site PatientsLikeMe enables people to learn from the real-life experiences — stories — of patients like them.

While there’s virtually nothing on the site The HIV Story Project except what you see in the graphic below, the planned short film compilation and online storytelling component sound as though they will provide the same kind of mental healing that comes from sharing experiences through story. Cox writes about storytelling as a prevention tool. Prevention may not be the primary motive of the HIV Story Project, but I’m guessing that it will be one of the outcomes.

Update, Feb. 20: No sooner had I published the foregoing entry than I came across information about an upcoming symposium in Scotland, Storytelling as a Healing Art, June 13-19. You can download a flyer about it here: Symposium-Condensed-Info.pdf.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m reading — via audiobook — a terrific book, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan, about the biggest wildfire in US history, which in 1910 consumed 3 million acres in eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana, destroying five towns and killing at least 85 people.

Narrative comes into play in the subtitle — the Fire that Saved America — in that, in the aftermath of the fire former president Teddy Roosevelt felt he must come up what author Egan calls a “master narrative” to garner popular support for the US Forest Service, the then-radical idea of conserving public lands, and ways of preventing and managing forest-fire threat.

Roosevelt, assisted by his close friend Gifford Pinchot, who had been the first head of the Forest Service but was fired by Roosevelt’s successor William Howard Taft, built this master narrative on what had transpired during and after the fire. A faction of lawmakers and businesspeople (who felt the forests’ resources should be exploited for commercial interests) had opposed the Forest Service and ensured that its funding was stripped to the bare bones. Consequently, rangers who played key roles in containing the fire got no sick leave and no assistance with medical expenses. No compensation was offered to families of those firefighters who lost their lives. Roosevelt told the story of the heroism of the rangers who fought walls of fire. He and Pinchot personalized the story of the fire, Egan writes. Particularly in a speech in Osawatomie, KS, Roosevelt (with speechwriting by Pinchot), told of the classic plotline, the “conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess…” (Read the text of the speech).

Leading the competing narrative was US Senator Weldon Brinton Heyburn, who blamed the Forest Service rangers for the fire and then, perpetuating a long tradition that continues today in the likes of Pat Robertson, said the fire was “God’s will” and that the deity obviously intended to clearcut all the trees from the forests.

In an interview with Smithsonian magazine, Egan tells how the fire — or more precisely, the “master narrative” Roosevelt and Pinchot told about it — “saved America:”

It saved America in this sense: it saved the public-land legacy. Now, people think public lands are national parks, but they’re really a small part of it. The Forest Service is the primary landlord of the American West. We have nearly 200 million acres of national forest land. At the time of this fire, Roosevelt had left office and Congress was ready to kill the Forest Service. So the fire had the ironic effect of saving the Forest Service, therefore saving America’s public-land legacy.

The fire and the master narrative not only saved the Forest Service but shaped its mission and “helped cement an antifire ideology in the Forest Service,” says John Galvin, writing about the fire as part of a list of 10 Worst Disasters of the Last 101 Years in Popular Mechanics (!). Galvin continues: “Congress poured money into the effort … The service created its own army to fight fires, replete with ground troops to dig trenches and set backfires, elite smoke jumpers to parachute into remote areas and an air force of tankers, reconnaissance planes and helicopters.”

Not only does Egan describe how storytelling changed public sentiment, but he engrossingly weaves the many stories of the fire and characters involved with it. I heartily recommend the book.

Read more about the fire and see pictures.

And here’s Egan talking about the fire and the book:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

… and is our current Storyteller-in-Chief even telling stories?

Political and communications analysts have written recently about President Obama’s storytelling — or lack thereof — both in his State of the Union speech and in the first year of his presidency.

Some, like Jason Snyder, said that the State of the Union address was a case study in the art of communication for three reasons, one of which was that it included authentic stories (the others: consistency of message and proper positioning). Others, like Emily Bobrow, said of the speech, “We didn’t get a story …”

I don’t agree completely that we didn’t get a story. We may not have heard an overarching narrative, but we certainly heard a patchwork of small stories.

But the lack of that overarching narrative is what New Yorker writer Junot Diaz (whom Bobrow also cites) laments. Diaz wrote his piece not about the State of the Union but about the anniversary of Obama’s inauguration. Some excerpts:

All year I’ve been waiting for Obama to flex his narrative muscles, to tell the story of his presidency, of his Administration, to tell the story of where our country is going and why we should help deliver it there. … a story that no matter what our personal politics are will excite us enough to go out and reëlect the teller just so we can be there for the story’s end. But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all. … The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. … I’ve yet to hear anything that excites that part of my brain which loves, which craves the symmetries the pleasures of well-told tale.

Diaz contrasts Obama’s unstoried first year, not only with tea-party and death-panel stories, but with newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown’s “story of an upstart outsider with energy and ideas, who was going to shake things up” and the story of himself and his background that Obama wove on the campaign trail.

So what would a presidential story that “excites that part of [our] brain[s] which love, which crave the symmetries the pleasures of well-told tale” look like? Diaz doesn’t give an example, but the one that springs immediately to mind for me is the future story JFK told that began “We will go to the moon before the decade is out.” I’m not sure that the State of the Union is the best platform for an inspiring story like that one, but I still would have liked a more cohesive narrative to tie together the policy points in the speech.

I also believe Obama did deliver an overarching narrative of a president who has made mistakes in his first year in office and learned a great deal. In that sense, he told a highly authentic personal story in the State of the Union.

I’ve read repeatedly that authenticity is key to effective storytelling, most recently in a blog post by Jo Golden: “No matter how you decide to tell your story, the most important quality will be authenticity. Authenticity, honesty, and straightforward ways of being promote trust.”

I know we want honesty and straightforward ways of being from our Storyteller-in-Chief. But I wonder about authenticity. Presidents rarely admit to mistakes; certainly Obama’s predecessor didn’t. My husband worried that the FOX News-type pundits would rip into Obama for telling his authentic story of imperfection. (I don’t know if that happened because I cannot bear to watch FOX News, but they pretty much rip into the president for everything.)

I’d love to get Paul Costello’s take on how the president is doing with his storytelling.

And what do you think?

How much authenticity do we want from our president? Are se so accustomed to spin that authenticity from our president makes us nervous?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The world’s eyes have been opened over the last two weeks, not only to a tragedy of unspeakable proportions, but to a nation that has been suffering long before this natural disaster befell it. Tonight, eyes will continue to focus on helping the Haitian people as major television networks broadcast a “Hope for Haiti” telethon.

During this period of opening the world’s eyes to Haiti’s past and present plight, the site Spoken Stories offered a video of Haitian author Edwidge Danticat, speaking after another natural disaster and reading from her work.

(Following a long introduction, Danticat starts speaking about 9 minutes into the video; the entire presentation is about an hour.)

This is also a good opportunity to call attention to the site that presented the Danticat video. SpokenStories.Org says it has “one short-term goal, one mid-term plan and one lifelong mission: to help Maximize Human Capabilities through Stories, Poems and other human-uplifting arts.” Here’s more from and about the site:

Why We are Different

We believe that the best way to bring the best out of people is to empower and inspire them with awakening stories. This is the basic premise and the foundation of the work we do. We tell and write stories that will nourish your life; stories that will strengthen your spirit and soul; stories that will help you sustain your senses; stories that will help you embark journeys that you never thought about before; stories that will help you preserve your inalienable human dignity; stories that will enlighten your ‘bad’ days, and lift you up!

Many of these stories are real-life experiences. Thus, the intention is to teach you a lesson that you would otherwise had no chance.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A year ago today, my heart soared as Barack Obama was inaugurated. While my regard for the president remains undimmed today, I find myself tending to agree with Arianna Huffington, who wrote in Huffington Post yesterday that the US political system seems to be broken (largely by bitter partisanship and punditry-disguised-as-journalism) and incapable of getting much done to move the country out of its doldrums. Huffington says Obama-brand Hope needs to give way to Hope 2.0 in which citizens must create change because government can’t or won’t do it.

Seth Fiegerman on the site Mainstreet has put together a slideshow, The Upside of Unemployment: 15 Stories, that shows how folks are making the most of the current jobless recovery. The stories remind me of last year’s Job Action Day, in which we similarly looked at silver linings and places that people were finding pockets of hope in these tough times.

The protagonists of Fiegerman’s very brief stories did not wallow in the misery of their unemployment but saw it as an opportunity — an opportunity for a mom to stay home with her new baby, for people to start businesses, for folks to qualify for cheaper homes and college tuition, for newlyweds to travel the world (using money they’d saved to buy a house), for a writer to author a book, for a woman to undergo self-actualization and learn the kind of work she really wants to do, for a woman to pursue personal fitness, for a property manager to go back to school, for a woman to care for a dying parent, for a dad to spend more time with his family, and more.

No matter what situation in our broken system is in need of fixing, stories of grassroots efforts to take the initiative and generate hope and change will inspire others to mobilize toward creating a better nation.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Barbara Burke self-published her novel, The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey, in 2006 and found it to be so successful that Hay House bought the rights to publish it in 2008. The Hay House version releases Feb. 1.

I enjoy “collecting” business novels — works of fiction that teach business lessons through storytelling — and am usually so excited to come across one that I tend to spread the word before I’ve finished reading them. (interestingly, Steve Denning said in a blurb for the book that business fables are “a dime a dozen;” yes, I come across them with some regularity, but I don’t feel they are all that common.)

A synopsis from Burke’s site:

As a new customer service agent, Olivia has been trained to handle irate customers in a calm, professional manner. But one day she loses control and yells back. Terrified that she’ll be fired, she seeks out Isabel, the call center’s sage.

The extraordinary advice she receives from her wise mentor changes her life:

SODA (Stop. Observe. Decide. Act) — a sure-fire formula for remaining calm in any situation

Unplugging — a centuries-old practice to reduce anxiety and promote creativity

Aha!s — 22 practical insights that become the framework for living a happy life

This modern-day fable shows us that the best way to reduce stress is to cultivate mindfulness. While we cannot control much of what happens, we can get better outcomes if we stop to see situations clearly and calmly.

This book serves as both a powerful resource for business professionals looking for practical, easy-to-use tools for dealing with difficult people and an inspirational tale for those who want better relationships and a happier life.

From the Cover:

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could become happy and successful
by simply changing your mind?

Meet Olivia, the newest hire at Mighty Power’s customer service call center. Excited to have a stable job and a good salary, Olivia starts out with a sunny disposition and a can-do attitude. However, the constant barrage of angry calls from frustrated customers soon wears her down. Instead of handling these irate customers in a calm, professional manner, as she was trained to do, she loses her temper and strikes back.

Terrified that she will be fired for her behavior she asks Isabel, an experienced rep and the call center’s wise woman, for help. The extraordinary advice she receives changes her life, and may change yours, too.

In this modern-day parable, author Barbara Burke introduces 22 unforgettable life lessons that are the framework for living a happy, struggle-free life. We learn that while we have no control over much of what happens to us in life or the behavior of others, we can choose our reaction. The secret to success is being able to stop long enough to see situations clearly—to see “what is.” Making this one small change gives us the power to make better decisions and get better outcomes. Being more mindful enables us to handle even the most challenging interactions with customers, co-workers, friends, and family with grace and ease. The Napkin, The Melon & The Monkey serves as both a powerful resource for business professionals looking for easy-to-use tools to sharpen their “inner game” and as an inspirational tale for those who want better relationships and a happier life.

You can listen to the book’s first chapter, read by the author here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

You can tell that a particular way of doing things is catching on when a practitioner carves a niche out of teaching others how to do it.

Lisa Bloom has recently begun to teach coaches how to use storytelling in coaching. In her newsletter, Kachanga, in an article that also ran in International Association of Coaching’s IAC Voice, Lisa explains why storytelling is a natural fit with coaching:

Storytelling is the perfect complement to the coaching process, helping us answer the questions we bring into coaching. On one level, storytelling gives the coach an additional tool to get to a level of understanding or awareness which may be inaccessible to the client. This level may be blocked for many reasons; through listening to a story, the client can hear and s ubsequently deal with more difficult issues.

On another level, we are all storytellers and our narrative is the story of how we talk of our lives. As we experience life, we “tell” it. We pass along almost every event that happens to us-as an anecdote, complaint or amusing tableside story-sometimes lightly and sometimes purposefully and with interpretation. And in the “telling,” in the narrative we choose, we define the experience. When we look closely at the narrative and examine the stories we choose to tell, we begin to understand how committed we can become to these stories. We also understand the fascinating potential to create new and better stories-stories that empower us and allow us create a more fulfilling reality.

Of course, Lisa is not the first coach to teach storytelling in coaching. That distinction may belong to David Drake, PhD, who not only teaches storytelling methodology in coaching but also operates the Center for Narrative Coaching. Or perhaps Dr. David Krueger at Mentorpath was the first. His program is Live a New Life Story, in which he offers a coaching certification.

Others use storytelling in coaching, too, including several folks who’ve been part of my Q&A series:

• Jim Ballard of LifeCrafters “uses the myth of the Hero’s Journey to teach groups and individuals how to develop their intuitive connection with their souls; to use not just the intellect but all of themselves in bringing meaning and passion to their experience.”
• Annie Hart has developed several bodies of original work including a Heart-Centered Communication model, DreamBuilders a group coaching model, Stories From the Heart of the Cosmos, a story performance workshop and her current work Skills of Excellence, a compilation of skills of the masters.
• Melissa Wells Q&A “explores remote areas to find unexpected stories about cool creatures” to “help individuals determine what they want out of their career and how to get it.
• Katie Snapp’s focus is leadership training, and she asks leaders what their leadership story is.
• After Rob Sullivan spent “countless hours helping job hunters from a variety of industries,” he “realized that the inability to share our stories is widespread — mostly because our society isn’t clear on the distinction between bragging and factual self-promotion.” Thus he coaches job-seekers to tell their stories effectively in the job search.
• Karen Gilliam explains here why she uses story-based techniques in coaching.

And finally, someone with whom I have not yet done a Q&A (but would love to) is Yvette Hyater-Adams, who has an assessment instrument, Transformative Narrative Portrait, which Yvette says “takes a collection of stories along a lifeline to look at the pattern of experience and make decisions on ways to ‘re-story’ unhelpful habits into new and thriving stories that move toward a desired vision.” Yvette calls the Transformative Narrative Portrait “a collection of past, present, and future stories along with action stories that help facilitate personal change.” She plans to offer a certification for people who want to use this method for coaching.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Guest entry by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team.

We’re continuing a tradition at The Health Care Blog started last year. Asking you to take a moment this weekend to discuss your desires for how to live the end of your life as meaningfully as possible — If you want to reproduce this post on your blog (or anywhere) you can download a ready-made html version here

— Matthew Holt

Last Thanksgiving weekend, many of us bloggers participated in the first documented blog rally to promote Engage With Grace — a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes. It was a great success, with more 100 bloggers in the healthcare space and beyond participating and spreading the word. Plus, it was timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these tough conversations — our closest friends and family. Our original mission —to get more and more people talking about their end of life wishes — hasn’t changed. But it’s been quite a year — so we thought this holiday, we’d try something different.

A bit of levity.

At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation started. We’ve included them at the end of this post. They’re not easy questions, but they are important. To help ease us into these tough questions, and in the spirit of the season, we thought we’d start with five parallel questions that ARE pretty easy to answer: 

Silly? Maybe. But it underscores how having a template like this — just five questions in plain, simple language — can deflate some of the complexity, formality and even misnomers that have sometimes surrounded the end-of-life discussion. So with that, we’ve included the five questions from Engage With Grace below. Think about them, document them, share them.

Over the past year there’s been a lot of discussion around end of life. And we’ve been fortunate to hear a lot of the more uplifting stories, as folks have used these five questions to initiate the conversation.

One man shared how surprised he was to learn that his wife’s preferences were not what he expected. Befitting this holiday, The One Slide now stands sentry on their fridge.

Wishing you and yours a holiday that’s fulfilling in all the right ways.

To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

When I give publicity to a contest in this space, I feel I should follow up and reveal the winner. A few weeks ago, I posted about the Obama administration’s healthcare video contest, noting that some entries among the top 20 finalists were more storied than others. On the continuum of storytelling —> not storytelling, I’d say the winner falls slightly closer to storytelling than not.

Please pardon the pitch for a donation at the end.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.