Tell Me Something Good

The Power of Storytelling by Nereyda Martinez

On September 10th, 2019, my husband forced me to get out of the house to attend a workshop. It was a workshop held by a nonprofit for its sponsors. My husband had become a Sponsor by providing photography and videography for this nonprofit, so we were invited.

At that point in my life, I couldn’t think clearly. I was in what you would call survival mode. My daughter, who was my second child, was nine months old. I had hardly left the house since having her. I was overwhelmed with now caring for two children while supporting my husband in his growing business. The last thing I wanted to do was get out of my house and talk to strangers. He didn’t even tell me what it was! I basically went in blindfolded.

Well, what do you know? It was such a gift to speak and connect with other adults. We were told to tell stories. I ended up telling a story about how my marriage almost came to an end during my pregnancy with my daughter and how I realized all the work it’s going to take to keep our marriage thriving. It felt SO good to be able to share that part of my life and for the listener to be able to relate. I was also in awe listening to the teller who I partnered with. She told a story of bravery and strength as she had complications after giving birth. I was so moved by this experience.

That was the day I first met Liz Warren. On September 10th, 2019. I had no idea that in December of 2022, three years later, I would be taking my third Storytelling class, Fact-Based Stories. Storytelling has become such an important part of my life, but I never realized it until finally taking my first class with Liz, herself.

You see, I realized, as mothers, we need to share our stories and listen to stories of fellow mothers. This is how we normalize the hard stuff. This is how we connect and don’t feel so lonely through the ups and downs of motherhood. So here I am three years later using social media platforms and mom circles to share stories with other mothers.

And after taking Personal Storytelling, The Art of Storytelling and now Fact-Based Stories, I have become so empowered and motivated to strengthen my skills. Why? Because through these classes, I have witnessed first-hand the impact others’ stories have on us and the power of connecting with others who may have been considered strangers initially but soon after listening to their stories, have become people I deeply care about. They are now people who I see for who they are and have such a loving appreciation for what they’ve lived. They are people whose stories have left an everlasting impact on me. 

That is the power of Storytelling. 

(The image at the top shows Nereyda at the first workshop she attended holding her daughter.)

Mind Your Ps and Cs by Diana Dinshaw

School was a struggle for me. Science, history, literature, geography – you name the subject I struggled. The only subject I did well in was math. I loved theorems. They were logical and there was structure to it. So, when I signed up for fact-based storytelling, I was having flashbacks to history class in school and having to memorize facts that I could not relate to. I should have known better; this was storytelling.

Stories like theorems have structure and sequence and I found myself using the well-known Five Ps story structures to craft my fact-based story. Then I read ‘The Art of the Tale: Story-Telling and History Teaching’ by  David Kennedy.  While reading this I found myself drawing a parallel between the five Cs in addition to the setting that make a good  historical story; Characterization, Connections, Conflict, Change, and Catharsis, and Donald Davis/LynnAnn Wojciechowicz, Five Ps of storytelling; People, Place, Problem, Progress, and Point.

People - Characterization

The first comparison of Characterization and People is quite straightforward. Most of our history is about people. Even when the focus of our fact-based story is a particular event in history, like the Civil Rights movement, the Great Depression, or the Suffrage movement, there are characters who play a role in making the story move forward.

Place - (Context)

David Kennedy in his article has setting of the story in addition to the five Cs. To keep with the iteration of using the letter C I would suggest Context. Where and when the story took place gives cultural and social context to the story that may not have to be explicitly described in the story.

Problem - Conflict

Then of course there is the Conflict or Problem. Again, an easy comparison. The word conflict is used interchangeably with problem when crafting a story. Without conflict we would not have history.

Progress - Catharsis/Change

Kennedy draws the distinction between stories and history in that stories have a happy ending, and a historical narrative may not end in favor of the character that the listener is rooting for. I believe he has misunderstood the meaning of what we storytellers consider Progress in the story structure. Progress means change and bringing the story to a satisfying end. Even though the story may start with "Once upon a time" it doesn't always end with "happily ever after". Storytellers see that so often in myths. When Hades kidnaps Persephone the story doesn’t end with Persephone living happily ever after with Demeter, her mother. But knowing that mother and daughter will be together for half the year brings catharsis to the listeners and resolves the problem.

Point - Connection

This was the hardest comparison for me but after reading again what Kennedy meant by connection it was quite simple to see how that relates to the point of the story. Kennedy in his article states that there are two ways he considers connection. The first is the connection of the character’s story in context to what is happening in history and the second is the connection of characters with other characters in the story. How often have we as storytellers have asked ourselves, “Why do I want to tell this story?” It is the connection we have to the character, the event or how the characters relate to each other is what makes us want to tell the story.  In other words, it is the point of the story that compels us to tell it.

Thomas Carlyle a Scottish historian said, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” I would add to this “and women.”

I wonder if I would have enjoyed history as much as I enjoyed math if David Kennedy had been my history teacher.

(The picture in the blog is an open-source picture from pixaby.)

Gwion Tells

I had a dream last night about the Welsh cauldron goddess, Cerridwen, and her two sons. It reminded me of this poem I wrote several years ago about the son who became Taliesin, the greatest of the Welsh bards.

Gwion Tells

Cerridwen had a daughter

A beauty from the start

But her son was so ugly

It almost broke her heart

(He wasn’t a bad or evil guy, just so horrible in appearance that only Cerridwen could bear to look at him.  After I’d worked there for awhile, I got used to him. It was Cerridwen I was afraid of.)

Cerridwen gathered flowers

She gathered dark and light

She spoke her words of power

To make a brew of might

(Gwion Bach – Official Assistant to Herself, aka cauldron boy. Ok - I was the stirrer.  All day.  Every day. For a year and a day. Terrified every minute)

Cerridwen filled her cauldron

With water, earth, and sun

She brewed a wisdom potion

To redeem her monstrous son

(The idea was that this potion would give her son all knowledge, all wisdom – enlightenment.  I don’t know why someone with her power didn’t just make him better looking, but this was what she came up with.)

Cerridwen’s cauldron simmered

I stirred if faithfully

But the wisdom meant for her son

Was all consumed by me

(Accidentally, of course.  I’d been stirring for the year and the day when the nasty stuff spurted up and burned my thumb, I stuck my thumb in my mouth, and well, then I knew everything - seasons, elements, dualities and their resolution, life, death, this world and the next.  And I knew that Cerridwen knew.)

Cerridwen knew my habit

I knew I would be found

I changed into a rabbit

She chased me as a hound

(It was great.  I thought, “I wish I was a rabbit,” and well, then I was!)

Cerridwen was an otter

When I became a fish

I rose up as a swallow

A hawk was then her wish

(If I hadn’t been so scared I would have stayed a fish.  The water was cool and like dense supportive air, only it was, you know – wet.  But so beautiful)

Cerridwen was close on me

A fearsome bird of prey

I changed into a grain of wheat

And fell into the hay

(I really think I could have outrun her if I’d been more familiar with my powers.  Each one was more astonishing, more amazing than the last.  Except for the grain of wheat idea.   Its consciousness was so, well plantlike, that it just didn’t occur to me – as a grain of wheat – to be afraid anymore.)

Cerridwen was a chicken

A-scratching in the hay

She swallowed up my wheat grain.

It was the first of May.

(And so there I sat for nine long months.  Actually, I kept transforming.  From wheat grain to tadpole to a fish again, floating in Cerridwen's ocean.  And then a bird, a mammal, and then I was born again – a baby boy!)

Cerridwen meant to kill me

When first she saw my face

But when she looked upon me

She saw my radiant grace

(She just couldn’t do it. She really wasn’t the type to destroy life needlessly.  It was just that she had been so angry and disappointed when I had received the dose of blessed enlightenment that was meant to redeem her poor afflicted son.  But now I was her son too.)

Cerridwen took a crane skin

And sewed me in it tight

She placed me in the river

At the kiss of morning light

(Well, most people know what happened after that.  I floated, just as I was until next May Day Eve and then I got caught in poor Elfin’s weir.  When he opened the crane skin coracle and saw me glowing in there he said, “Would you look at the radiant brow on this kid!” Which in Welsh is Taliesin – radiant brow that is - and that was my name ever after. I saved Elfin and his family and became the greatest bard who ever lived. But . . .)

Cerridwen was my mother

I owe her my tongue’s skill

She refined me with her cauldron

She turned me in her mill

 

Cerridwen was my mother

She gave me second birth

And through her matrix I became

A bard of highest worth

 

Cerridwen was my mother

Though I feared her at the start

She still resides within me

In my changeless inmost heart.

 

(The image at the top of the post can be found here.)

 

It’s the Storytellers Who Will Save the World By Karen Burns

“Everyone wants to know that their life has meaning.” Andrew Stanton

Immediately after the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001, the horror of the images and the stories that emerged were either devastating or inspiring. There wasn’t time to mourn immediately, there was too much need. The world rushed to offer help in any way they could. But I couldn’t get to New York. And what would I have offered if I could have made it? I came to the conclusion that my job, my life, was trivial.

I’ve always primarily been a dancer. As lovely as that is, no one NEEDS a pirouette when lives are being destroyed all around. I was appalled at my silly, insipid choice of career. It was fun, but quite unimportant. In 2001 I was a new dance professor at Chandler Gilbert and Mesa Community Colleges, and married with two daughters, who were a tiny four and five years old. But I needed to help New York! I raised and donated funds, my girls had a lemonade stand for the NYFD. It wasn’t enough. I was grasping at straws at how to comfort a city across a continent, and completely ignoring what was right In front of me asking for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or how to do a pirouette. It all seemed so trivial, just a drop in the bucket of what could actually make a difference.

In hindsight, I see that raising people to be responsible citizens and teaching anything, is not trivial. But, just by questioning the usefulness of dance led me to an article in the New York Times about the global sense of uselessness following September 11. I remember only one thing from that article: “It’s the trivial that makes us glad to be alive, so go to the movies, the theatre, concerts, dance, sing, listen and tell the stories that move your soul.” I’ve been pondering this thought since 2001. And I firmly believe this to be true. Well, dance is trivial and a luxury, but it is a storytelling art form that brings wonder and delight and a break from the disappointments around us. Just like storytelling in any art form. This is how we hold on to our humanity in light of the worst parts of living.

After the New York Times article, I started listening to my students with more empathy and encouraging them to tell their own stories in any way they could. I began, at first very quietly, telling them my own stories of struggle and the one success in my choices. As a choreographer I try to create a story that is inspired by the music, which means we tell the songwriters story with bodies. Our stories told in class; mine, theirs, and the music’s, brought us all much closer and ultimately changed us all by the end of that semester. I remain close to so many of my students from the last 21 years. That semester was not trivial. It was vital, for all of us. As storytellers we speak for the human spirit. Even though I wasn’t a first responder on 9/11, I know choosing the creative arts is not trivial, it’s essential.

(I started teaching Casey (pictured at the top of the post) to play the piano when he was 5. I had to tell stories about the music to get him motivated to read music. It worked. He’s 20 now and starring on Broadway telling Cameron Crowe’s story in the musical Almost Famous. This photo is from 10/13/2022. I actually made it to New York.)