The power of stories

Each year I message well wishes to friend’s in the middle of the night, during the earliest hours of a new year. This simple gesture of connection felt like it had more meaning this time around.

I have often marked the passing of each year with new year resolution’s only to see myself shrug these off one by one in a matter of weeks if not days. I will lose weight, I will stop eating junk food, I will go to the gym and get fit. I will…. I will… I will…… I won’t.

Tomorrow marks the first day of February for 2021, meaning one twelfth of a new year is already in the rearview mirror. Time, and the window each of us have to make real change seems to drift past us so quickly.

This year I didn’t make specific promises about how I would go about ‘improving’ myself. This year the new year meant far more than that. Or at least it felt like it should mean more. Seeking ‘wellness’ felt like it required from me something far deeper than meditation, health kicks, fitness regimes, changes in diet’s or the kicking of habits.

The last year has certainly been tough. An extraordinary year. One where we have all felt ‘removed’ in some way. From our workplaces, our extended families, our usual social spaces, our gyms, sports clubs, our friends, our favourite cultural and entertainment venues and events.

Waves of emotion buffered us as we passed through the days, weeks and months of that year, pushing us between confusion, uncertainty, hope, frustration, and also to a degree through new discovery’s. Processes of letting go of the well-worn and familiar ‘known’, as we have sought to harness a rising tide of new ideas, new belief’s and new passion’s.

In that time we watched stories unfold though our screens and radios; saw tempers flare as people drew lines to distinguish ‘us and them’ across a range of polarising topics. Seen others come together to support friends and strangers alike; seeking to build a new sense of togetherness as a new heightened expression of emotions emerged from our communities, near and far.

We have perhaps each grown to appreciate the little things that we had previously let pass by unnoticed far too easily. The little wonders of nature, the importance of human connection, the significance of gatherings, and of a simple hug or touch. Of ‘owning’ our cities through our activation’s and the all-important sense of place we bring to them.

I came to a point where it seemed to me appropriate to personally recommit every day to my dreams and aspirations, and to my role in a communal future.

Having not written much since childhood I have started to write again. I have dusted off my camera to capture imagery. I am driven passionately by a awakened desire to share my voice (joining VOCAL only a few short weeks ago being symbolic of this), seeking to not just be an inactive consumer of stories, but someone carefully crafting, documenting, curating and caring for them.

In doing so I have started to seek new ways to empower others, to amplify those who might otherwise not have their voices heard, or have their journeys seen.

I believe strongly in the power of stories and the personal connections that can arise from these. For it is in the sharing of others challenges, pain, grief, dreams, hopes, joys and success that we truly come to understand others, and maybe ourselves. That we can help reshape and change attitudes in the most consequential of ways.

Our stories are the keepers of our histories; the way we mark celebrate and question our present; and they are the change makers for our future.

This year, each and every day, I look to the next with a renewed enthusiasm, a belief and a strong sense of optimism for a future I know that as writers and storytellers we can realise together. One that will draw us all together in all our glorious diversity in unique, meaningful ways.

And so once again I raise a pen to write….