At Their Best, Stories Heal

Stories entertain us, they educate, they interpret our lives, and at their best, stories heal.

They touch us in ways that facts can't. They travel deeply into those parts of our beings where we feel emotions ... sadness, happiness and everything between. All art does this. That's why we dance, compose music, write poems and novels and plays, create paintings and sculptures. Few folks these days read history books of the Elizabethan period, but we still produce Shakespeare's plays, and we attend them. He tells us the stories we crave to hear, the stories we need to feel deep down in the depths of what makes us human. Stories make a difference in our lives, and this is why we share them.

A number of years ago I was Storyteller in Residence at a school on the Oregon coast. My first day was also a fourth grade girl's first day. She had moved from Eastern Oregon -- a huge change of environment from the desert to the coast -- and not only was she going through the usual new kid in school traumas, she had it doubly hard. The girl had extremely skinny legs, and from her first day, the students teased her. These were the same children she had hoped to make friends with. This made her sad.

While in one of my workshops she composed a story she asked to perform for the entire class. This was not a requirement for the workshop. We were working in small groups. Each storyteller's first performance would be for a small audience of friends. But the girl insisted. This took courage. She mustered up her nerve, and the story had an amazing impact on her classmates.

Her story was about Crane, a large bird with skinny legs, and how the other animals teased her. "This isn't right," thought Crane. "I shouldn't be judged by how I look." Crane decided to show the other animals she was just as important as they were, and that there was more to who she was than her skinny legs.

In the story was a river and the animals wanted to see what was on the other side. But the river was too deep to wade, too swift to swim, and this was before boats and bridges, even before birds had wings.

So Crane stretched one of her skinny legs across the river as the first bridge and the animals walked across. But no animals teased Crane. They knew she might start shaking her leg when they were halfway across at the deepest and swiftest part of the river, dump them in, and that would be their end. They were starting to suspect that there was something worth learning here.

As the girl told her story, the class was dead quiet. The truth of the story, the moral, the theme, the meaning -- don't judge people! -- came across loud and clear. Then the bell rang. Her classmates went to recess. And out on the playground an amazing thing happened. Oral tradition happened. The students who had heard the story told it to those who hadn't, and just like stories have been spreading around for thousands of years, that story spread all through the school. By the end of the day, nearly all the students had quit teasing her, and within a week, she had some good friends.

That's what we storytellers call a healing story, a little something to help keep our world feeling well. Stories do a variety of things, and at their best, stories heal.