To know our family’s story, is to know our own
A space for locating ourselves & weaving connection through storytelling
A personal note
I am stuck in a story untold.
For many months, I’ve struggled to discover, celebrate, and preserve my family’s story. Unfinished essay drafts. Gigabytes of footage & audio clips. And countless conversations, still unexplored.
In a moment, I realized — I was trying to do it on my own. And it was leaving me stuck, foggy, and unhappy.
Isn’t it true? If we want to go fast, go alone. If we want to go far, go together.
This is the hope for Seeing Our Stories. I believe that every person has a story. Your story is worth knowing. And knowing is the first step to loving, and healing.
I hope you’ll join the space as it is ever emerging, changing, and growing. In seeing our stories, we can see each other. In seeing each other, we make a place where we all belong.
Looks like freedom, to me.
P.S. In making this space, I’m designing for myself — and for everyone I’ve ever met. If you choose, you can read the invitation, or the beginnings of an open journal here.
Purpose
“To transform the world, we must transform ourselves.” —Grace Lee Boggs
How we are at small scale, is how we are at large. And at large, our global society today is fractured. Divides and hatred bleed across identities and boundaries. Our planet is running out of time. We are disconnected in our relationships with our earth, and with each other.
At the source of this disconnection is a disconnection with our selves: a systemic, multigenerational manifestation of trauma. Etymologically, “trauma” comes down from the Greek word “traumatikos” — meaning “wound.” These wounds may stem from many places — not only from traumatic events such as war and extreme violence, but from grief and loss; intergenerational trauma; physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; and unfulfilled attachment needs during childhood — to name a few.
Some say that there are two types of people: those who have been traumatized and know it, and those who have been traumatized and do not. In the United States alone, 70% of adults have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives. Understanding individual trauma offers an understanding of the wounds that are amplified and perpetuated at larger and larger levels — shaping the symptoms of inequity, injustice, and oppression throughout the world today.
How do we heal? Individually and collectively, how do shape a world that is equitable, just, and free?
Opportunity
Love offers us an ageless, radical, and transformative way forward: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yet how do we cultivate powerful and revolutionary love? To be in loving relationship with any person, place, or thing, we must be in loving relationship with our self: “When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
If happiness is a birthright, sorrow is an inheritance. From our time in the womb, to our early years, to the generations preceding us — all these forces shape who we are, and who we will be. In the journey of cultivating self-love (in service of collective love), we believe in starting where it all began: with family systems, across generations past, future, and present.
Mission & Vision
Seeing Our Stories is a family storytelling community dedicated to knowing where we’ve come from, and how we fit together. Because every person has a story — and in seeing our stories, we can see each other.
Our vision is to cultivate love at all levels: starting at the level of self, extending to family, close relationships, communities, society, and the world. We are a multiracial, multigenerational community celebrating the multiplicity of identity. All are invited to join us in loving community as we discover, heal, and celebrate our stories — and how we’re interwoven with each other.
Start your journey
Join us in loving community as we discover, heal, and celebrate our stories — and how we’re interwoven with each other.