Why Storytelling Matters

One of the important things I’ve learned over the course of my long career as an academic administrator is that we define ourselves as human beings through storytelling. After I retired, I became inspired to write my own life’s story, resulting in my first book, Where the Water Meets the Sand.

 The experience of writing my memoir gave me a new appreciation for my own mother, who also loved to tell stories about her life. Once, while I was visiting her, she showed me a box filled with spiral-bound notebooks and hand-written stories about her life with my father, and as a young girl growing up on a farm in West Texas.

After mother passed at the age of 94, I opened one of the boxes containing her notebooks. I encountered her familiar handwriting in faded ink. The pages were filled with scratch outs, cross-throughs and addition and subtraction columns in the margins or on blank pages.

I am sure that the ‘figuring’ was mother’s attempts to calculate someone’s age or determine the correct year an important event took place. Within each old page, I could see her mind working.

My mother wrote eloquently about issues that were affecting her life. She chronicled stories about my father, Cliff, who died at age 36 of a heart attack in June 1956. At the time of his passing, she was seven months pregnant and just 34 years old.

As a single mother, thanks to hard work and determination, she went on to make a good life for herself and her children. She got her bachelor’s degree and became a teacher. She went on to earn a master’s degree and ultimately became the primary school librarian at one of our hometown’s elementary schools.

As I read mother’s notebooks, I found myself filled with nostalgia and appreciation for her efforts to connect my family to the lives and stories of our ancestors. Her writings recounted stories about her romance with my father and going ‘Kodakin’ before they married. These stories chronicled events in the lives of our family including my brother, me and our little sister, born two months after daddy’s fatal heart attack.

Mother ultimately published a book about her life with my father in 2013, entitled Livin’ Till. She dedicated Livin’ Till to my younger sister, who inspired the whole endeavor by saying, “Mother, I know nothing about my dad.”  Two years later mother finished her second book, As I Recall about her childhood.

Toward the end of one of the notebooks, I came upon an emotional passage written in mother’s familiar script describing the events on the day my father died. She went on to reference the marker at Dad’s gravesite, which includes the epithet: a quote by Thomas Campbell, “To Live in Hearts We Leave Behind is not to Die.”

Nearly 40 years after my father’s death, at the age of seventy, mother married for the second time – to a man she loved, Leon. She wrote in her notebooks, “During these many years, I’ve often dreamt of Cliff, especially if we had problems. Since I’ve married Leon that is not so. Just a while before Leon and I married, I dreamt that I was with a family group and I heard a noise. It sounded like a knock at the door but nobody else heard it. I went to the door to check who was there and found a red rose with a note that read, ‘You know I always loved you.’”

“If you don’t believe that,” Mother wrote at the end, “that’s your problem.”

My mother’s ability to chronicle her life has been an ever-lasting gift. Her writing not only uplifted her spirit but provided all of us with memories for generations to come.

After her death, her personally uplifting stories are part of what inspired my new book coming out this summer. That book, Your Turn: Ways to Celebrate Life Through Storytelling, will allow my readers to celebrate life’s stories and leave a legacy for their families. When we share our unique narratives, we realize we have more in common with most people than we thought. Writing and reading about the lives of others leaves me proud of our potential to support one another through even the most trying moments.

In my upcoming interactive book about storytelling, I challenge readers to explore their own emotional histories with writing prompts and tools. I encourage readers to explore who they are, where they came from and why it matters just like my mother did for decades. I can’t wait to invite others to share stories, just like my mother and I have done for a huge part of our lives. Your families, your children, their children, and your beloved friends will cherish your work. When we share our stories, we come closer together and focus on our similarities rather than our differences.

My hope is that everyday writers take the chance to channel creative thought and self-reflection. Watch for those “ah-ha” moments. Enjoy the tingle that runs down your spine as you record a touching story about your first love. Write about a family trauma that brought your family together.

Remember to reflect on the good times, the times when no one was watching, and when you skipped on the beach as the water lapped over your bare feet. Write about those alone times when you listened to your favorite song and bawled like a baby. Write about those times and you’ll find that others admire you for sharing your vulnerability. You will find that people will applaud you for sharing those stories and beg for more.

What memories are you going write down on the page for posterity? Why are they important?

© Tyra Manning 2019

Dr. Tyra Manning is a renowned educator who brings an inspirational message of hope to individuals struggling with addiction, mental illness, or grief. She overcame personal struggles with substance abuse and mental illness and went on to become one of America’s top educators. As Superintendent of River Forest District 90 in Illinois, she presided for twelve years over high-performing public-school districts, where her students often reached the highest levels of academic achievement.

Her debut book, Where the Water Meets the Sand, was awarded the Independent Book Publisher’s (IBPA) 2017 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award for Best Memoir and the Texas Association of Authors Award for Best Autobiography. Tyra’s way’s to celebrate life through storytelling guidebook, Your Turn, is out now! 

Connect with Tyra at tyramanning.com and facebook.com/drtyramanning.

YOUR TURN

Creative expression through writing helps us uncover gems of hope and serenity, enabling us to navigate difficult times. Sharing stories with one another fills the space between us, inspires us, helps us forge stronger relationships, and teaches us that we’re more alike than different. In Your Turn, renowned educator Dr. Tyra Manning offers examples of stories from her own life, followed by an invitation for readers to delve onto their own emotional histories, with plenty of room to explore on the page with writing prompts and tools.

“A well-told saga of recovery from loss and emotional breakdown, and a tribute to the ordinary blessings that made it possible.”
―Kirkus Reviews

“Telling stories and writing through your everyday stresses is the key takeaway in Your Turn. Dr. Tyra Manning believes that writing brings about clarity and hope in life. Her essential tools will help you get your inner thoughts onto paper and get you focused on the positives.”
―Parade

“Our worrisome thoughts can feel big, urgent, and uncontrollable. As Manning said, it can feel like we’re ‘getting caught in a whirlpool.’ While we might not be drowning physically, we’re drowning in negative chatter, she said. Even though our worries can feel overwhelming, we can shrink them. We can channel them into solutions―or we can reveal them for what they are: unhelpful, unreasonable, and illogical. The key is to know the difference. ”
―Psych Central

Buy the book HERE

Tags: featurd, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips