WHAT IS STORYWORK?
You have a story.
From the moment we were born, we were shaped by those who cared for us -- whether they cared well for us or not. We were also shaped by siblings, friends, teachers, coaches, church, and culture. We lived in a particular setting -- geographically, economically, ethnically, and racially -- that flavored our experience of childhood. No one traverses life without suffering harm. Some of us suffered horrible abuse. Some of us grew up in good homes and suffered more subtly. Each of us grew up in a world that is far from perfect, and we did our best to survive and make sense of it.
Your story matters.
As humans, we make meaning of our lives through story. When we are young, we have neither the wisdom of age nor the perspective of other experiences to objectively think about our lives. From our lived experiences, largely in the context of our families, we begin to construct stories about the world and our place in it. When we face relational heartache or outright harm in the absence of attuned care, we easily feel at fault for emotions and sensations we do not have the capacity to regulate, in ourselves or others. These experiences lead us to develop core beliefs and a style of relating that informs how we show up in the world, in order to minimize heartache and harm and/or secure attention and affection. Over time, our ways of being become “hardwired” into habits and continue to play out well past childhood, complicating our adult relationships.
What is Storywork?
Storywork is an unfolding process, a journey. While the details of our childhood stories are fixed, how we interpret those experiences can change through compassion and clarity. As we engage our story, beliefs that have felt true and limiting can be re- examined and unburdened allowing us to see the world more clearly, develop new beliefs (about ourselves, God, and others), and write a new story from a new perspective.
In coaching, your story will be engaged in real time through what naturally comes up in a session or deliberately through writing a specific childhood narrative that you want to explore. If you’re part of a story group, you will need to write a 600 to 1000 word vignette from your childhood and submit it ahead of time. Then under my care as a facilitator, you will share it with the group by reading it aloud and engaging what comes up for you and the other group members.
How Storywork Helps
Storywork helps us explore why we show up in the world the way we do, even when we wish we showed up differently. Storywork involves engaging our current reality with an eye to the past to understand beliefs and relational patterns that lead to reenactments of pain. We were wounded in relationships as we grew up. We are also healed in relationships as we encounter care we didn’t receive in the past. Storywork helps name what we’ve suffered and helps us explore how we live in light of our pain. When a current day or childhood story is engaged with care in a safe context, new neural networks form allowing us to tell a truer story of our lives. Storywork explores the particularity of the past so we can begin to dream a better future and show up differently in the present.