I struggle with what to say. As the Executive Director of a nonprofit, I am not supposed to play politics, to take sides. But as a person who runs a storytelling organization, as a person who has built a community in Northern Virginia based on sharing stories and shared experiences, I care about a lot of different people who are hurting now, and will be for the next four years.
In Better Said Than Done storytelling, people get up on stage and share stories, mostly personal stories. We storytellers listen to each other’s stories, and share our own. Our audience members listen to stories and hopefully share them when they talk about the show after.
I am a straight, white, cis, middle-class woman living in the suburbs. Over the past 13 years of producing storytelling shows, I have heard: stories from Black mothers worried for their sons, Black men hearing “the talk” or having to have it with their own children; stories from women who have been sexually assaulted, discriminated against, or abused; stories of medically necessary abortions and abortions that saved a life in a more metaphorical way; stories of emigrating and immigration; stories of witnessing the impact of climate change and being forever impacted by the changing climate; love stories from white cis straight men, gay women, trans and non-binary individuals; stories from Christians, Jews, Hindi, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, and Agnostics; stories of fear, courage, embarrassment, love, and sometimes anger. I have listened to hundreds of stories from people with different lived experiences, and, through those stories, I have walked a few steps in their shoes. It is hard to listen to a person’s story and not care about what hurts them.
I think that is why the election of a man who has promised to hurt so many people came as a shock to many in the storytelling community. We care. We care about people from the same background, and people from different backgrounds. We care, because we have heard their stories, we have heard them.
We have a community built on listening. Not everyone does.
In order to fix the hurt in this world, people need to be willing to listen to each other. So we, as storytellers and producers of storytelling shows, need to continue to share stories and give a platform for people from all walks of life to share their stories. We, as storytelling fans, need to continue to listen. But more than that. We need to reach out to those people, the people we might not normally talk to, and we need to say, “Do you want to hear a story? Do you want to share a story? Come with us. Let’s sit together, in community, and listen.” Because when people hear each other’s stories, it is hard to not care about what hurts them.
Leave a Reply