Storytelling - to repair our world
An invitation to frame our stories historically & gain an appreciation of our differences
Our stories matter - and context helps us to understand.
We’re expanding on our Memoir course - by putting our experience into a historical context.
We’ll begin by charting our ‘origin’ stories- 7 years at a time - as a way of understanding the circumstances during which our world-views were formed.
The times are fraught. We can either choose to remain at odds with our neighbors or get an insight into their humanity, their stories, and where we are all coming from.
There will be no discussion of politics - just what we learned about the world when we learned it and from whom, and under what circumstances.
Imagine that this is like the toddler experience of “parallel play”
...a form of play in which children play adjacent to each other, but do not try to influence one another's behavior. Children usually play alone during parallel play but are interested in what other children are doing.
We will not try to influence each other’s thinking or behavior - just listen & observe - in service of a collective desire to develop empathy and understanding.
You may choose to write out your reminiscences, collect photos, record a few thoughts on your phone - or sketch/paint or create collages or your life and the times. You need not share it with anyone.
At its core - this is an introspective process.
Since 2016, this Irish-Italian-American expat living on the border of the UK and the Republic of Ireland has struggled to be tolerant in this ever changing post-Brexit, post-Trump, and anti-immigrant reality.
The author Letty Cottin Pogrebin calls - a world of “incompatible historical memories”.
I invite you to join me in this process as a means of making peace within and owning whatever impatience and intolerance we’re experiencing by listening to the ‘others’ among us.
If only because, in one way or another, we’re all are or were once the ‘other’ - strangers in a strange land.
Let’s do this.