By Nathan Young
Storytelling is important.
Stories are the building blocks of our mind, society, worldview, and relationships.
We connect with each other through the stories we share.
We understand the world through the stories we believe.
We relate to ourselves through the stories we tell ourselves.
Stories are also universal. They cut through cultural barriers.
Stories that focus on authenticity, and share our common struggles and desires can create a profound empathetic connection for the listener.
Stories are a way for each of us to share our humanity and express what really matters to us in the world.
All of this informs our own focus on storytelling in The New Narrative.
We want to help individuals learn how to tell their own stories, to build more authenticity and vulnerability into all of our lives, and facilitate the community connections that come from sharing our stories.
We also want to share stories to change the narrative.
There is an old narrative of American culture that’s due for a change.
It’s a very white heteronormative narrative.
It’s a narrative that promotes material worth over self-worth.
It’s a narrative that concentrates power in the few.
It’s a narrative that devalues anything that can’t be turned into money.
The narrative dictates the course of our lives, telling us to go to college, to get a job, to buy a house, to strive for a life that’s constantly just out of reach.
The narrative withholds opportunities and even inflicts punishment on people who deviate from the norm, whether you were born that way or made a decision to be different.
A big part of changing the narrative will be to elevate the stories of people that are not part of this white hegemonic culture. This includes the narratives of POC and LGBTQ+ folks. This includes stories of people trying to live with a smaller footprint. This includes the wisdom and experiences of people that are working to build community and lift each other up.
These are the stories we want to share
We want to share these stories to set a different tone for our national discourse
We want to share these stories to show what’s possible.
We want to share these stories to create options for those that don’t have them or didn’t see them
We want to share these stories to create empathy and solidarity for people that we might think of as different, but maybe we have more in common than we think.
And we also want to share these stories to create empathy, connection, and compassion for ourselves. This is something we all need too.