Have you told anyone your story yet?

I found old poems of mine yesterday. 

Poems that I had written when I was 12 years old. 

Reading it outloud, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself, and also sit in pride. 

I understood a lot, at 12. 

In one of my poems (it’s an entire collection, truly), there is a little except that goes like this: 

Behind every person,

Is a story,

Vicky, Jenny, 

And even Cory. 

So I’m telling ya, 

You just gotta be proud! 

Scream out your country,

Really nice and loud. 

See what I’m saying? 

Look at y’all. 

You all have traditions,

From the shortest to the tall. 

So todays the day, 

You’re gonna shine,

‘Cuz I’m tellin ya, 

You’re worth a gold mine! 

Are you smiling?

Because I definitely am. 

As much as it is my instinctive nature to cringe at the writing of a 12-year-old me, I can't help but smile at the strength of our stories that I knew even back then. 

See, there is power in our stories. There is power in understanding how our stories shape the narrative of our lives, and that we get to create the narrative that continues when we harness our stories and the truths of them. 

It took me a long time to realize that storytelling was truly my thing. I spent a lot of years being told that I was a jack of all trades, and trying to figure out the words that describe me best, often always including some variation of photographer, filmmaker, and writer. 

Somewhere along the way, I realized that the thing that tied together all of my work, was the thread of finding and weaving the strongest stories through it all. 

There is an incredible Ted Talk by Chimamanda Adichie, on the danger of a single story. Her Ted talk is one that stays in my heart often as I reflect on our mirrored experiences — similar but also vastly different — as young womxn of colour storytellers trying to find our voice. 

The danger of a single story, as Adichie points out, is the damage it creates unconsciously and ripples across our lives.

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” 

— Chimamanda Adichie

It’s been almost a full month of hearing other stories. Stories that are not new, but are new to being amplified. Stories that have always existed, but are new to being presented in our social media, in our everyday content, as a part of our literature and media where it otherwise did not exist. 

A while back, as I was navigating what  it meant to call myself a storyteller as a professional term, there was one specific thing that stood out to me in an article that I read. It was this idea that professional storytellers always credit when they hear stories that are not theirs. They mention their sources, they credit the story, and they tell their own narratives.

And I can’t help but recognize how important that element of storytelling is in the wake of what is happening in the world right now. 

As humans experiencing a massive unlearning, and the decolonizing and dismantling of the structures we exist in, there are going to be stories that are shared, and stories that come up for us too. 

Stories of our own experiences that we forgot were in us. Stories that we conditioned ourselves to ignore and that we ourselves invalidated because we didn’t think we were allowed to be our own main characters — because we ourselves only ever consumed single narratives. 

Through it all, I hope we remember to stay true to our truths. To remember that everything we hear and learn around us is not something for us to take and pass as our own, but to reflect on and use as mirrors to reflect the stories they spark within us — that we then feel called to share. 

For me, they look different depending on the day. 

...Perhaps you’ve noticed through these emails. 

Some days, the stories of advocacy are the ones that need to be heard. 

Some days, it’s the stories of existing in a culture that I often don’t fully understand. 

Other days they’re stories of entrepreneurs, of fear, of rising, and of succeeding.   

But I hope you remember that there will always be a time and space in the world for your stories. 

And as you find and share yours, I’ll be here, cheering you on. 

Because they, can, and will, change our world. That, I am sure of.

P.S. Have a story that these emails bring up for you? Hit reply and tell me yours — I'll be eagerly awaiting.