Tell Me Something Good: Recognizing the Other Through Story by Kate Helm

You can’t hate someone when you know their story.

I remember reading that line in one of the texts for our Personal Stories class and it has stuck with me ever since. It assumes that humans are inherently bound to each other. Many times we forget about that connection and hate and suspicion grows. When that happens, we can turn to stories to find our way back to each other again. Once I know your story and you know mine, it’s as if we recognize each other once more.

I witnessed this directly just a few months ago. In my work as an interventionist at a local high school, I was recently brought in to mediate a conflict between two teenaged girls. Both girls are highly explosive and had been suspended multiple times for fights. For this particular incident, instead of being suspended off campus, I brought them to an intervention room on campus to serve out their consequence together over three days. I monitored from afar as the two of them slowly opened up to each other. I stayed out of their way as they shared stories about their families, their homes, and their lives. Their stories were both heartbreaking and heartwarming. At the beginning of their stint in our intervention room, they were sworn enemies. By the end, they found that their stories were the same and could no longer hate the other. How can you hate a person whose pain is the same as yours?

Storytelling helped the two of them find the best in each other when they had been hell bent on finding the worst. My mind continues to spin with what I witnessed and with all the possibilities that the simple act of sitting with one another can bring. I find myself seeking others out just to listen to their stories and hope that they ask me for mine. I believed that storytelling was powerful even before I took this class. I know it now.

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