Challenge & Selection

Storytelling is a wonderful tool which I always use. I consult with disadvantaged populations, people  with learning disabilities, senior citizens and those with economic disadvantages. Some of these people  in every area of their lives struggle with injustice and misery, need to be inspired and inspiration is a  road to empowerment. I'm spending a lot of time "opening up people" and finding ways to inspire them  to change their situation. When I work with the seniors, for various reasons, we exchange stories. They  are sometimes lonely and so happy to share their life stories with me to connect and, in a way, they find  meaning in sharing these experiences as a means of teaching and/or legacy. I share stories of my life  with my developmentally disabled clients to help them envision a state of freedom, use their input  against the backdrop of my story to ascertain their aspirations, and often we use stories to better  understand their desires and processes of thinking. I use this knowledge to build various approaches in  order to try to find a way to achieve more flexibility in the ways that they find lacking in their lives.

Application

I have a story on how to use storytelling. In proposing policy changes with a social service provider, I  tried to clarify to them the advantages of, among other things, taking a more client-focused approach  and, in particular, understanding each person as a human being, and addressing their specific needs in  the first place. The organization was in the grip of a "compliance mentality" and, in this non-empathic,  hierarchical system, its clients suffered. I was also describing how coping with one individual's needs can  often affect others for the better, even though it seems drastic or out of the ordinary. I told a story  about after a natural disaster, when I ran an emergency shelter. Except for one woman whose tension  made her very emotionally fragile, everybody was doing pretty well. I could tell that she needed  attention; I decided to be "Princess for an hour" in my mind. I made her a cup of coffee and sat down  with her, letting her talk. It turned out that her mother, who was with her, had suffered a brain  aneurysm and she was afraid that she might fall or that she would face some other tragedy while in  shelter during this disaster.

Insight & Approach

Okay, damn, this has been an eye-opener. Her mother was a gentle woman, and very well done. It was  clearly time for me to open my story up. I told her how scary it was when my father had his brain  aneurysm before me and how I had to get him to the hospital and how complicated and stressful it was  all. I shared how well he recovered, and then tied us together, remembering that she and I both had  parents who had brain aneurysms. For that brief period she just needed individual attention and she  ended up with that and a real help. She calmed down, her mum, worried about her, calmed down, and  they calmed down everyone around them. In our little shelter Love reigned once again. So I told the  organization this story and I think it was having a significant effect on the people there. The procedures  are being re-evaluated, and new training is underway for the caseworkers. A little story can do quite a  lot of good at times. This course has helped me see things in a different way as an instrument. If I did it  before it was "ad hoc" really, but now I can plan ahead and think of stories that will allow me to present  my ideas and illuminate them best. I have a background in architecture but I ended up in business as an  entrepreneur. I had no idea that this would ever be treated as an advantage, but I am so thankful that it  is!

