Storytelling

If you are on Facebook, then you know that I have a cousin, Melea Brock, who is a storyteller. Melea and I are very much alike in our values and beliefs. We both believe that people's life's are enriched by telling a story.

She went professional, where I like to tell stories to those in my daily company. I take a lot of things that I have experienced in my life and weave it into a discussion wherever I can. My friend Renee tells me "I love your stories." The truth is I love to tell my stories. And as my friends can tell you, I probably repeat myself too much... "Did I tell you the story about when I... heard noises upstairs in my old grandfather's house, and no one was home?" I usually begin a story with a question rather than "Once Upon a Time"... but it all the same. The way I start stories makes me sound like some senior citizen wanting to bend someone's ear. (And I have wondered if that wasn't true.) My stories are used to open up room for people to express their thoughts and opinions openly because of the story. Stories have a way of leading the audience to a place... a place that will bring them into examining what the story is telling them and how it might apply to them.

Last Thursday night, Melea had her first Telestory. That is correct... now the computer can be used to have storytelling nights. I came home... no one was in the house... so I got out my dinner and found the website that she was speaking on. She had an interviewer asking her questions, and the questions would lead her into a story. She read to us various stories she had written herself. As she read, I would try to guess where she had got pieces of her stories from... say like from within our family. She did mention in the interview that Margie, her older sister, would tell stories. So I am thinking this is very much a family thing. It has made me wonder who else before us would have told stories.

Our grandmother wasn't much of a storyteller. Coming from a farm in Kansas, she always seemed very practical and not one to use her time such

a way. Her sister Clara was more of a storyteller. And my grandmother mentioned once that her father, our great grandfather, would love to talk to people... even have them stay on their farm, so there could be long discussions into the night in the parlor. He was pure Irish... so I would think he had some "blarney" in him. That same gift of gap is still being passed down to us in the present.

I suppose too that blogging is the modern version of storytelling. Finding the nuggets of life in sharing our stories and belonging to each other even if we are hundreds, if not thousands of miles apart.

For fun, if you would like to hear one of Melea tell one of her stories and watch her friend... in mime, act out the story, please go HERE OR go HERE to explore the stories I heard last Thursday night. Just click on the arrow to get the interview and stories flowing. Enjoy... and get away from it all for a while.