Post Election: What can Story offer us in these unknown times?

Last Tuesday, on Election Day, I filled my day with people I love to listen to, people who see things differently than I do, urging me to sink into their ways of seeing.?

I was getting out of my car and for a second I felt a wave of women pushing me forward. “Keep going,” they said, ancestors who had survived so I could reach this moment.?

I understood what they had seen and knew that new muscles would be built and tested and built again. How would Story Asana(R) — my storytelling practice — and Storyhood(R) — the community we’d built through shared storytelling agreements — change and grow to help us meet new challenges, as they had since 2020??

How might storytelling help us through again??

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By “story” I mean things that happen in the world with other people. Not interpretations, analysis, judgements, criticisms, or solutions.?

Every moment is a story, and each person’s story of that moment is unique to them.?

The storytelling part of the human brain evolved to enable people to communicate and connect with other people, to discover what we have in common — especially at the borders between what we know and what we do not yet know, in ourselves and other people.?

In this moment of profound loneliness, confusion, and chaos, how can story enable us to know ourselves and one another better?

Here are 8 ways I leaned into Story this week to slow down and focus on who and what was right in front of me:?

1. Story allows me to experience moments and days, specifically, not just as a blur of change. I bring my journal with me everywhere these days, and if all I have is my phone I jot down everything I see in the Notes app. When I’m alone and can talk I use a Voice Memo — or sometimes Otter.ai — to capture precise words and images as the words come to me.?

2. Story enables me to deepen my senses — and through my senses connect my body to the physical world. When I pay closer attention, I’m excited by what I see, hear, smell, taste, and touch right here and now. And when I slow down into one sense at a time, I begin to see patterns in the world around me — Who and what is safe? What needs support, and how I might offer support? I’m not doing; just watching, listening; opening.?

3. Story helps me see the world from multiple points of view. I see where my story intersects with others’ stories, and how rarely I know even the tiniest fraction of another person’s story – their lived reality. This, for me, is the most illuminating part of storytelling: how much I can learn from other people.?

4. Imagining the future as a story makes that future real for me. The more specifically I can see the future, the more it guides my actions in the present. I imagine a day three years from now: Who else is there? What are we doing together? How are we creating shared intentions and meeting shared goals??

5. Story expands the language I have available to describe my inner landscape: my emotions, bodily sensations, and spiritual needs. For a long time I lived so far from my embodied memories it was as if I had no body in the present either. What important things do I keep secret from other people? When I describe those things as happening, they become more vivid and available to me in the present.?

6. Story helps me to decrease conflict and foster dialogue. When I follow the steps above – pay attention to sensory experience; see the world from multiple perspectives; imagine the future as an unfolding story; and use story to describe my own and others’ feelings and needs – I am able, over time, to see others’ experiences as real and valid. I’m still very conflict-averse, so the better I can see what someone else is seeing — including in me — the more I can stay with difficult and surprising moments.?

7. Stories from the historical figures inspire me to keep going in the present. The words and stories of people who have endured nearly unthinkable challenges and yet remained steady in their courage and vision – leaders and creators like Viktor Frankl, Rosa Parks, and Frida Kahlo – help me break down and work through my own challenges and grief.?

8. And all of this, taken together, enables me to understand myself and others more clearly, while also bringing to life the possibility of our shared humanity.?

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