Perhaps someone waded with you into the big ocean when you were small. Or played piano tunes on a humid summer night or taught you how to dance after the dishes were done. Perhaps you marveled at life’s mysteries from a secret hiding place outdoors. The fact is when you were a kid, life was full of wonder, and you had a place in it!

Today the world may feel different than those simpler times. The speed of life, ubiquitous technology, the paradox of self-reliance and team work, shifting gender, race, and age dynamics, economic bifurcations, climate change and the sense that our unique story often doesn’t matter can feel chaotic. Still, we are human and our lives need meaning and purpose. Connecting into our deep stories is one way to build our new futures from the inside out.

In my story workshops, individuals and groups identify and explore rich, poignant material as they create bridges between their present and earlier lives while including the ancestral and cultural messages they inherited. Telling stories and listening deeply, they refine the muscle of the imagination, feel the spark of their own voices and envision how to generate the world anew. There is nothing as sweet as a fresh future. Just ask any kid!

Dwelling in that possibility may be what life is all about.

To learn more about my writing, media and consulting work in this area, please feel free to drop me a line here.

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince