Storytelling as Nourishment and a Play Space
Telling stories is about far more than the sharing of words from one soul to another. How can we embrace the innate powers of storytelling and make it another tool for nourishing ourselves? Let’s take a look.
Stories help you confront and feel fear safely
Picture this: you huddle around a fire with your tribe—whatever and whoever that means to you. As you help cook up the day’s catch, your mother begins a tale you’ve heard a dozen times. Still, you listen, finding calm in her voice.
She tells of a brave hunter working tirelessly to feed their starving family. For over a week, the hunter has not found any food, and it is too cold for plants to be plucked. So they venture deep into the forest. There, they encounter a great, fanged beast. For two days they battle the beast, but eventually the hunter returns, bloody and exhausted, with food for their tribe.
A tingle scurries up your spine. You know this beast. You’ve felt its eyes on you as you gathered stems and roots among the trees. You haven’t faced it yourself, but you know others who have.
That fear does not overwhelm you, though. Here, among your tribe, you can feel the fear safely. You relax, knowing it is only a story. But for a moment, you let yourself experience that fear without repercussion.
The magic of storytelling
Stories are powerful for many reasons, and storytelling has been one of our greatest tools as we try to make sense of our ambiguous place in the cosmos. It is an act of resistance, of community, of survival. Today, I want to focus on a different element of storytelling: the act of self-soothing.
Laura Simms writes extensively on storytelling as a practice of healing. She discusses telling stories to dying patients and traumatized youth. These stories allow others to feel what she calls the “groundless aliveness of [their] own imagination.”
But it is not only the listener who experiences this aliveness. The presence of the storyteller is vital to this process. And Simms spends many words discussing how the storyteller can be more present and in touch with themselves for this process.
All of us have different reasons for telling stories, but we do, each of us, tell them. Sure, one could focus—as Simms does—on the many ways we tell stories in person, on the feel of a shared space. While this intensely intimate physical act cannot be fully replicated through the written word, I argue that written stories still hold a lot of power for both the teller and the listener. Indeed, stories shared over the web and the page have some benefits that in-person stories can’t reach, like an increased audience, more time for processing, and availability for engagement at any hour.
No reader can forget the feeling of being so lost in a story that, for a moment, your own anxieties melt away. You lose yourself in the tale, even as it plays on your own emotions—even your own fears. Storytelling is a space to explore emotions safely, whether in community or with yourself.
Soothing myself by sharing stories
I often feel like the world gets scarier every day. Our media values stories of pain and fear, because they get the most clicks. So our news and entertainment amplify these stories, conversely downplaying the countless examples of hope and optimism also available.
And I must admit, I sometimes feel helpless. What is one lone crip meant to do against this tide of fear, anger, and threats to our safety? It’s easy to become lost in a spiral of hopelessness and loss. When I do, I return to what I am at my core: a storyteller.
This is twofold. I tell stories to heal others and, through that act, to heal myself. Why can both not be true at once? As Simms says:
“The storyteller who is a meditator can offer an experience akin to meditation in the telling or listening. Flowering space within allows us to reflect on problems and memories that arise without causing further fear or retraumatization. A word spoken becomes like an acupuncture needle at the right point on the meridian.”
Notice that it is in the listening and telling that this meditation and healing occurs. Simms also says that “It is compassion that informs us how to tell a story and which story to tell.” It is my own compassion that makes me want to tell you stories of hope, resistance, and love—to provide an oasis of peace in a landscape of turbulence.
I do not put my own fears and angers aside when I write. Instead, I use their energy. It is painfully clear to me that others share the same feelings, and some, like me, struggle to put them into words. So I offer words, words that invite exploration, meditation, and sitting for a moment with ourselves. From LGBTQ+ stories to blog posts to a novel, every time I sit down to write, I bring my emotions, thoughts, and fears with me.
For me, storytelling is how I address those fears and my own helplessness. When even one person connects to a post that I make, I know that to someone, somewhere, I’ve made a small difference. Most of us do not have the power to affect the globe, or even our entire country. So is that not enough?
To give one example, I recently wrapped up a semester-long project on Disability Studies in Education. As part of that project, I invited people to share their stories with me—stories of bullying, healing, despair, joy, hope, and fear. I sat and listened to them, gave them a space where they could share the tales that were important to them.
Their stories enriched my work, certainly, and I am very grateful to my participants for that. But more than that, they created moments of connection. They opened a space where both of us, interviewer and interviewee, could acknowledge the fears and pains we felt. In that space, I felt healing.
Making an impact, however small, in the life of a few people is no small feat. It takes me back to that campfire and the feeling of communal nourishment. For just a moment, the fanged beast is not a hidden fear to be suppressed. It is out in the open, and we can face it boldly, knowing we aren’t alone in the task.
I’ll leave you with a quote from my favorite tale, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. This quote has glued itself into my brain since I first read it almost a decade ago:
“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”
Do you have a particularly memorable storytelling experience? Let me know in the comments on this post if you’re so inclined.
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