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Building Community Connections through Stories · Talking FACS

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  Welcome to Talking FACS, what you need to know about family,
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  food, finance, and fitness.
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  This nationally recognized, award-winning podcast is hosted by the University
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  of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Program.
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  Our educators share research knowledge with individuals, families,
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  and communities to improve quality of life.
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  Hello, and welcome to Talking FACS, what you need to know about family,
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  food, finance, and fitness. I am your host, Mindy McCulley, Extension Specialist
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  for Instructional Support with Family and Consumer Sciences Extension at the
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  University of Kentucky.
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  We are housed in the Martin Gatton College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment.
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  Long before there was the written word, our ancestors were sharing stories to
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  preserve heritage, to help understand the world around us, and to keep historical
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  accounts of important events.
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  Today, my guest, Sylvia Lovely, founder of Connecting Our Voices, and Dr.
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  Amy Kostelic, Extension Specialist for Adult Development and Aging,
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  will help our listeners understand the importance of keeping storytelling alive,
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  not just for our personal stories, but for the stories that help build community
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  and connectedness. Welcome, Sylvia and Amy.
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  Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Yeah, thanks for having us, Mindy.
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  Amy, what made you decide that this is a topic that really resonates with Family
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  and Consumer Sciences Extension?
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  Well, you kind of said it in the intro. I mean, you shared that humans have
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  communicated since the beginning of time, and they've communicated before reading
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  and writing. They've communicated through story.
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  So I think it's just such a powerful way to really spark connection.
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  And so I've been doing a lot of work in Extension lately with the power of connection,
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  social connection, meaningful relationships, relationships.
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  And Sylvia and I crossed paths in another talk that we were giving.
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  And it was funny because we connected through story.
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  I think so much of what happens when you hear someone else's story is that you
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  really start to reflect or at least see ourselves reflected in those stories.
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  And that's kind of what sparks that connection.
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  And so I think that's a way that we reflect on our own self as an individual,
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  but also the way in which we are a member of a community at large.
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  So, Sylvia, why should someone engage in collecting, curating,
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  and crafting their stories?
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  Well, you know, this is kind of one of those things that I have kind of grown
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  in my understanding and even deepened love for the idea of storytelling.
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  I started, Mindy, when I know you and I have a connection somewhere in the past
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  around the state because my work was all around the state.
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  And I remember being such a busy person going from city to city.
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  I worked for cities. And one of my mayors one day, a dear mayor,
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  dear friend, and he said, you know, you run into so many interesting people,
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  you should write down their stories.
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  Of the salt of the earth, you know, local, local officials, just people that
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  are just out there doing their utmost to contribute to their communities and their lives.
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  We only hear about the bad stuff, right? We don't hear about the good stuff.
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  I said, well, you know what? I have two boys who are eight and 10.
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  I have no time to write stories.
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  And he said, oh, wait a minute. He said, just take, and this is old school.
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  Index cards and just write down the bare outline of a story and then come back to them later.
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  Well, my stack of stories is like inches high now that I have collected.
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  He said, later on when the boys are grown up, you can write those stories.
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  And then lo and behold, I retired from that about 10 years ago and here I am,
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  you know, finding myself in stories.
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  Got into that by writing the Stories of Your Life class that I teach for Carnegie
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  Center for Literacy and Learning and for Good Foods Co-op and other folks too,
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  National Alliance on Mental Illness and such.
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  And what I've come to and why I called it Connecting Our Voices.
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  And by the way, Mindy, I have a podcast coming on the Lexington Public Library
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  called Quilting Kentucky Stories because they're a patchwork, right?
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  We will definitely link that in the show notes, too, so that people get to that as well.
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  So, fundamentally, what I've been trying to do is really work through this because
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  a lot of times when you talk about you should do your story,
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  it's really limited to maybe people in retirement wanting to leave stories for their family.
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  And there's nothing wrong with that. That's fantastic.
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  But I think it's even more than that. I think it is something that people need
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  to do in their lives, in their daily lives. lives and it doesn't have to be
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  that you're going to write a novel or you're going to do something like that.
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  I really think that writing your story and connecting with your own story isn't
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  that fundamentally how we connect to one another.
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  We're just one story after another and it's how you gain wisdom if you are attuned
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  enough to your stories to understand in the stories of others.
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  How many judgments have we questioned in ourselves where our opinion ran into
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  somebody else's opinion?
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  And we had to work through it. And we used to do more of that.
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  Neighbors over fences kind of thing. Well, we live in an era of unprecedented discord.
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  And so, you know, there's something missing out there.
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  And then the next step is, okay, so you have individuals who come together through their stories.
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  And eventually what happens is they are the members of a community.
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  And together, they build the resilience because you have that kind of thing
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  that's going on within our communities.
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  And I really think that's, at the end of the day, what creates strong,
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  resilient individuals and communities is learning how to capture your story.
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  Now, do you have to be a New York Times writer, award-winning writer to do that?
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  No, you don't. What you need, I
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  think, within communities is leadership to understand how important it is.
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  It's a trend that's catching on in corporate America.
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  People are tired of boring PowerPoints and that kind of thing.
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  They want to hear the story.
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  I'm a restaurant owner in addition to other stuff, but I know that people have
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  lots of places to choose to go eat at restaurants.
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  But they'll go where they have an experience, where it's a story in the making,
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  why you go to a restaurant, you go to mourn, to celebrate,
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  to laugh, to cry, all of those things, because it's breaking bread,
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  it's sharing stories and building small communities.
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  We just need to enlarge it and make it a bigger deal than it is.
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  I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a minute. What do we do when the
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  stories that we are hearing in our communities aren't necessarily the truth?
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  You know, Mindy, that's a great question because I was reading in the paper
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  this week and thinking about this podcast.
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  Fake, what they call them, fake obituaries.
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  Oh, yes. That are proliferating. Did you see that? It was in the New York Times.
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  And a young man had fallen on the subway tracks and had been run over and killed.
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  And the stories that got created just for the idea of, you know,
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  it's just all made up stuff. It wasn't real.
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  And yet there was this outpouring of people for the stories.
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  And I, you know, that's absolutely beleaguering.
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  I mean, I can't, I think you start one place at a time, one person at a time
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  to understand the joy and the kind of aha moment they can have as they cut through the noise.
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  You know, social media is mentioned a lot as a villain.
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  And social media kind of is a villain if you
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  don't use it right and don't keep your perspective on
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  it and a lot of people are turning away from it and
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  turning back to doing their own thinking
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  their own stories and sharing across the fence
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  with the neighbor and sitting down with people they don't agree
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  with necessarily and that's you know what is it they call it the big sort and
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  unfortunately or fortunately i don't know what i think about this completely
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  haven't thought it through I don't think that it is all about that this is a
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  giant place in New York City and that's evil and all that kind of stuff.
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  And small towns are the greatest.
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  But there's something going on there when something's too big that you can't
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  get it down to a level where we can talk to one another.
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  Form, you know, little small pods of people.
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  And that's, I think, the hope of our smaller communities.
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  And that's what Kentucky is made up of is small places. And I think they can
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  show the way, even though our small places have been battered over the years.
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  Oh, downtowns. I remember I worked on that. That was my beat, you know, and downtown.
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  And that, I think, is probably not a great answer to your question,
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  but it's a thinking answer to your question. Well, and it is.
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  I mean, it's kind of a thinking question for everybody who's listening.
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  What do you do when the stories that you think that you know by heart aren't
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  necessarily the way that it all?
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  Yeah, and being able to engage with other people and be cognizant of those stories
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  and cognizant of the pathways to get there and knowing people.
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  And, you know, a lot of our institutions are not as strong as they used to be.
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  Church going is not as strong as it used to be. And I'm not talking about religion.
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  I'm just talking about the activity of coming together with people is not as
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  strong as it used to be. So we almost have to invent ways to make that happen
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  and the importance of it.
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  So what is a particular way that I can take a story to help improve my life?
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  Well, one of the things that I do with my classes and my writer's retreats,
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  I call it the three C's, but there's a D that comes in there at the end.
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  But anyway, I thought three C's, you know, it's easy to remember.
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  So in retreats and in gatherings, you can teach people a variety of ways to
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  do their stories, depending on what they want out of it.
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  They might be wanting to advocate a cause. Maybe that's a reason that they want
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  to write a story. They may be healing from trauma.
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  I get a lot of that where abusive childhood, things like that.
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  And that's a tricky form of writing, by the way, and teaching it because you
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  have to make sure people know you're not a counselor or a therapist,
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  you know, because it's not therapy, but it's like mindfulness and a lot of other things.
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  It makes you focus. Focus and science tells us that once you put down something
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  on paper, it's almost like a cognitive release that you put down on paper.
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  Yeah, so I begin with, okay, collect your stories. Learn how to be a story listener.
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  Collecting what you hear out there and begin to write those stories.
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  It can be your own stories, but we're not in a vacuum.
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  Our stories relate to the stories all around us. You're hearing a conversation.
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  You just learn to listen. And I call that collecting.
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  Collecting is journaling. It's the most basic form of collecting your stories.
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  Everybody should keep a journal and reflect on whatever it is,
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  gratitude for the day or just what happened today.
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  Why did I make that decision? Why did I do that stupid thing? Why did I do that?
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  Reflection, self-awareness is such an important part. It's almost hard to explain
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  it. it's so self-evident.
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  Then you move on from that to curate your stories.
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  What are you looking for? Everybody's, you think about a thousand incidents
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  in your life probably per week.
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  What are the ones that stand out? So when I'm talking to individuals in classes,
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  begin to think about what stories really stand out. If you're a CEO.
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  What's your founder's story? Why are you there? Why are your values not just
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  something written on a page?
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  Why are they important to you and to your company or employees?
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  You know, finding meaning is one reason that people write their stories.
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  Finding meaning is so important because people don't find meaning anymore in
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  the small things that they do.
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  And stories can help you appreciate the meaning in day-to-day life.
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  And just the idea of sitting down with someone over a cup of coffee and how important that is.
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  So that's it. And then, and see crafting, crafting your story.
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  Now, a lot of people will say, why do I need to craft my story? Why is that important?
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  Well, we have attention spans that are about the size of a gnat.
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  And so we have to craft our stories so that we capture attention.
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  If it's an important story to tell, and we are meaning-making machines as humans,
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  then craft it in a way that's going
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  to capture somebody's attention if your job if you're advocating
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  for a cause if you're trying to get a
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  playground built in your town how are you going to talk about that how are you
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  going to share that story and then the other thing is the importance of small
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  steps oh yes start to recognize in storytelling that the tiniest of things
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  can say we'll touch what is it in a wonderful life it's
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  a wonderful life the christmas movie how many lives you
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  touch with your simple unique story and
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  then finally so crafting and then what i truly love to do but you know not everybody's
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  as enthusiastic as i am about it is actually delivering your story okay and
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  i love that i love coaching people through delivery because they're scared to
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  death what is it they say that people are scared more scared to do public speaking than to die.
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  Exactly. It does resonate with lots of people that they know their story.
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  They think that they have it pretty well put together, but then when they go to deliver it.
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  Many people will just freeze up and not have a thing to say.
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  So I think you're so right that we not only have to practice collecting and
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  curating and crafting, but also we have to practice delivering our stories.
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  Before we wrap up, are there any last thoughts that you or Amy,
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  either one, want to share?
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  Well, I think it's important to also make note of just the power that story
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  has to engage your brain. You know, we think about ways that everyone's always
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  worried about, how can I keep my brain more active?
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  So it's do a Sudoku, do a pressure puzzle, right? Because it's challenging.
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  But story writing is another way to engage your brain.
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  And I think it's a kind of a fun way to do so because we may put pressure on ourselves.
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  And that's why we need people like Sylvia in our lives to tell us,
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  okay, how do exactly we create and curate and share the story?
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  Because that can be intimidating for people. But once you start that process,
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  I think you realize this is an opportunity to leave legacy.
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  You can kind of, you know, share something that is meaningful in your family
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  or just share a story that people don't know.
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  Sylvia and I have laughed over a coffee, but my husband's got these fabulous
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  stories of when he was a kid, and I've encouraged him to write those down because
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  they're going to get lost.
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  No one's going to know those stories. His kids aren't going to know those stories
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  unless they're documented somehow. The other is, and Sylvia kind of touched
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  on this already, but it's just that reflection on your own journey.
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  Sometimes it takes some sort of journaling or story writing just to be able
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  to sort of make sense of whatever, life transitions, turning points,
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  to just sort of better understand your own journey. Yeah.
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  And sometimes, like Sylvia said, that could be advocating for a cause that came
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  out of this journey, or it could be healing from a trauma.
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  But whatever it may be, that process of story writing has certainly,
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  and journaling too, you know, is known scientifically to decrease stress,
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  to do things like regulate mood, help boost your own self-awareness,
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  security, self-confidence, self-esteem.
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  And I think those are some of the things when we talk about storytelling that
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  we don't always think about, some of the health benefits that come with storytelling. Right.
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  That's right. And science has proven there's those, you know,
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  I won't even attempt to say the name of the chemicals in the brain,
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  but, you know, scientists know about this and it works.
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  I mean, it shows people going to less often to doctors and all kinds of things.
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  And so it's a wonderful addendum feature attached to any kind of other therapy
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  or whatever brain science. And then I just want to mention my Quilting Kentucky
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  Stories podcast, and it's people in their own voices.
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  Seventy-nine-year-old Ritha, who is a wonderful writer, wrote beautifully of
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  the era when women couldn't wear pants in elementary school, women teachers.
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  I mean, our young people don't know about these things. We need that tradition.
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  We need to go back, and we need to pull those things into our consciousness today.
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  I do a lot of talking with groups about leadership, and sometimes I get a little
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  tired of the 30,000-foot leadership stuff, you know, when, in fact,
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  I remember Mayor Gorman in Hazard, Kentucky,
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  admonishing me one day because I was about to leave the room to get back to Lexington.
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  He was in Hazard. The governor had just spoken.
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  I was rushing out the door because I had a meeting back in Lexington,
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  and he stopped me. And he was, I mean, he was an authority figure in Eastern Kentucky.
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  And he said, you're not leaving until you go up and you thank the speaker.
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  I'm like, whoa, okay. Not only was he my boss, but that made some sense.
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  Always thank the speaker.
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  It's a tiny leadership lesson, but it's something the younger bunch needed to know.
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  And so I'll never forget that tiny little story. And I'll end with this.
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  If anybody's interested in a wonderful movie about stories, Living. It's called Living.
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  And it was an Oscar nominee, I think, that didn't win.
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  But he's this really sad man who's
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  diagnosed with cancer and he has only six months
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  to live and he takes up the cause of a small
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  playground and i think it's in London or something like that and he finds such
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  satisfaction in making that small story come through you know somebody's dream
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  of a small tiny little playground and so you know i think of that in our communities
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  that's That's what people need to think about.
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  It's not, you know, it's fun storytelling and it's also storytelling with purpose.
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  Sylvia and Amy, thank you both for sharing with me today, sharing your stories
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  and taking the time for our listeners to hear those stories as well. Okay. Can't wait.
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  Thank you so much. Nice to re-meet you. Yes, indeed.
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  And if you're just tuning in, you're listening to Talking FACS,
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  you can find us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
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  Thank you for listening to Talking FACS. We deliver programs focusing on nutrition,
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  Music.