The radical act of storytelling

Storytelling has become ubiquitous. It’s a bit of a buzz word and is on trend for marketing purposes and branding. Radical storytelling on the other hand is less spoken about and it requires courage and bravery.

Radical storytelling can be used as a tool for social change. Feminism and movements like #MeToo have encouraged and given legitimacy for women to write from their own experience and incorporate their own voice and standpoints in their storytelling.

“When you stand and share your story in an empowering way, your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else.” Iyanla Vanzant

Stories self-medicate.

As a journalist I've been trained to be objective and detached. Later in my journalism career I came to see value in in-depth personal storytelling, and I am passionate now about feeling-based and women-centred stories. Like this one for instance.

Several years ago I decided it was time to tell my own story.  It became important to form a coherent narrative about what had happened to me that left an indelible mark on my entire being after being raped in an alley way by a complete stranger when I was 20 years old. I had discovered the therapeutic value of the telling and sharing of my own story. The story won an award at the HearSay International Audio Festival in Ireland, the largest, most unique celebration of creative audio in the world.

Last year, I told my story to a live audience at the Storytellers Cup at the Willie Smiths Mid-Winter Festival in the Huon Valley. Afterwards, a young woman came up to thank me. She said as a survivor of sexual assault it helped her to hear other people's lived experiences. Witnessing someone tell their story can have an immense healing effect on those that listen. It connects strangers so deeply and profoundly.

I have always believed in the power of stories, and since telling my own story, that belief has become palpable.

When someone tells me their story I usually succumb to the magic of it. I become so mesmerised that I lose sense of time and space and my own sense of self. I feel at one with the person in that moment. This is the power of story. We are taken out of ourselves, and for a moment, we see and feel what it's like to be someone else; if we're lucky we transcend, and when we come back to ourselves, we see that person differently, and perhaps even the world.