​Why  Do  Stories  Matter?

The narratives we construct about our experiences have a profound impact on how we understand and move through our lives. Sharing a story is an effective means of imparting wisdom to others and a valuable tool for processing our own experiences. An encounter with a story that helps us make sense of a troubling experience is a powerful healing tool - such a narrative helps us formulate a plan for coping and provides evidence that others have faced the same challenges and survived. Stories matter because they are a powerful mechanism for instilling hope.

For a period of several years, I had the opportunity to bear witness to the stories of a circle of women who have lived with prolonged episodes of recurrent depression. I listened to these stories in the context of completing a qualitative research study, the focus of my doctoral studies in Transpersonal Psychology at Sofia University in Palo Alto, California. Early in my graduate career, I had an advisor who once gestured toward the bound dissertation on his bookshelf - unread by many people outside of his academic circle. Because stories can only matter when they are shared with others, I included the creation of this web site and the  use of multimedia tools as part of my research proposal to make sure these women's stories would not just sit on a shelf. 

Our current narratives about the behaviors and ideations that we label as mental illness in our culture are often authored by people who have no direct knowledge of the experience. Most of the stories we hear about depression come from advertisers or entertainers, and those stories are mostly triumphant narratives of overcoming. This is not the case with the stories presented here. It is my hope that the act of bearing witness to these narratives remedies some of the distortion, stigma, and shame around the experience of managing a life slowed by depressive episodes. 
An encounter with a story that makes sense of a troubling experience is a powerful healing tool.
"We are immersed in narrative, telling ourselves stories in a virtually uninterrupted monologue." - Donald Polkinghorne

Chimamanda  Adichie:  The  Danger  of  a  Single  Story