I began my official storytelling journey in 2006 and received my storytelling certificate in 2010. So, I have been developing stories for a long time.
Recently I took another storytelling class, this time on zoom. Sacred Storytelling From Around the World, and while I was developing my last story to tell, I realized that many personal stories are indeed sacred stories.
I knew that family stories or personal stories were going to be some of the stories I developed over the years but in the beginning most of the personal stories I told were along the lines of a Donald Davis story with a little funny twist at the end. But always, in the back of my mind there was a desire to unravel my relationship with my mother through story. My aunts told me that my mother was painfully shy, but through my growing up years I experienced her as a stern mother who seldom shared her stories or her emotions. I was greedy for every little tidbit she told me about her childhood but what I had to build on were only crumbs. In one of my Personal Storytelling classes I told a short story that was more of an anecdote than a story and I ended up shelving it for a little over ten years. I was unaware that this was going to become the story I was trying to tell.
Storytelling is more powerful than the public believes and even if you value and understand what a treasure storytelling is, once you begin telling, you just keep building and learning. The more you learn and the more you practice your craft the more you understand how to take a personal story and share while keeping your audience safe, how to really think about the points that will be universal and valuable to them. My recent experience taught me that a story lying at rest is worth revisiting, it hasn’t just been collecting dust, it’s been growing roots.
So, my advice is if you're taking a storytelling class, keep taking them now and then, and if you have a little bit of a story don't throw it away, keep that idea and let it grow roots.
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