Everyone has a story. A collection of lived experiences that inform all of their choices, fears, interactions, relationships and personalities. They live their days through stories that run and rerun in their mind, while their brains try to put all the pieces together and keep them safe. Safe is the hardest place to find. That group or space where you feel 100% comfortable being just you, the you that you are, when the stories stop running so quickly up against one another.

Finding a place where you are comfortable to share your stories out loud to others could be the secret to stopping the loop . To freeing yourself from the constant telling of past stories that you’ve altered to fit your current need to feel safe. Telling your stories to your community can help you gain new data about other people’s stories and their relationship to yours. It can arm your mind with new strategies and strengths. Sharing your stories can bring you closer to others and to yourself.

When we share our stories and listen deeply to the stories of others we exercise parts of our intuition that often go unstimulated in modern life filled with technology and streaming content. The stories we see on television and in movies fill us with lots of data, but don’t offer us the opportuniy to share our own personal stories back. They arm us with drama to reinforce old cycles of fear and no chance to process that or reflect upon it. Media speaks AT us. Communiy speaks TO us.

As we go out into the world, let us seek communities that have time to listen and share stories. Communities that value personal connections over business relationships. Communities that connect to interact not to consume fabricated media.