Healing Story Alliance

Suitcase Stories Unpacked  

Wednesday,  November 14th

at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern

Suitcase Stories® is a traveling live performance series that features foreign and U.S.-born residents sharing refugee and immigrant stories. Since 2017, nearly 3,500 people in Massachusetts and New Hampshire has seen a live performance of Suitcase Stories® and thousands more watched a taped episode on PBS television. Go behind the scenes with Creator and curator Cheryl Hamilton who has worked in refugee and immigrant integration for two decades. Hear how the program has used storytelling to foster community relations and address the complexity of immigration issues.

Chery Hamilton has devoted her career to advancing storytelling and immigrant integration. A relentless storyteller, she routinely appears in productions throughout New England, including on The Moth MainStage, WGBH, and Soundbites. Cheryl has served as Director of Massmouth since 2015, and is responsible for curating the national World Channel television show Stories from the Stage. She also created and curates the popular Suitcase Stories series that honors refugees and immigrants. Outside of Massmouth, Cheryl brings two decades of experience working in the refugee and immigrant field.

You can learn more about Cheryl Hamilton at www.cherylhamilton.com 

Distilling Hope with Beth Ohlsson

Wednesday,  October 10th

at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern

Beth Ohlsson is a person in long term recovery who just happens to be a storyteller. “Distilling Hope” combines her love of a good story with her lived experience as a performer, an educator, and as an addictions counselor, bringing the Recovery experience to light.

Beth takes her message of hope into jails and prisons with her storytelling workshop, “Reaching through the Cracks: Connecting Incarcerated Persons with Loved Ones through Story.”  Learning to tell one’s own story has a healing effect which has lasting impact.  Of those inmates who had been released after completing the workshop, there was a 10% recidivism rate after 2 years.

Beth is the author “Distilling Hope: 12 Stories to Distill the 12 Steps” published by Parkhurst Brothers.  You can learn more about Beth at www.bethohlsson.com

Surviving Trauma Through Story

with Dorothy Cleveland and Barbara Schutzgruber

Wednesday,  May 16th

at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern

Stories of personal trauma exist throughout the centuries in many forms. No matter where you are in the world, abuse happens. In researching Tale Type 706 – Maiden Without Hands for Beyond the Sword Maiden – A Storyteller’s Introduction to the Heroine’s Journey, we found 60 variants from 14 countries around the world. These are old stories. Abuse was happening then. Abuse is happening now. At some point it has to stop. One way is by sharing stories of perseverance, survival and transformation. Our presentation will discuss the steps of the Heroine’s Journey to move from trauma to wholeness in your stories.

 

Dorothy Cleveland is known in Minneapolis storytelling as the Queen of Darkness. She has performed and produced events of folktales and personal stories about the shadow of life using humor and insight. www.beyondswordmaiden.com

 

Barbara Schutzgruber is an award-winning storyteller of folktales, ballads and personal stories of resilience for schools, prisons, state parks and festivals and has presented workshops and showcases nationally and internationally. www.weavestory.com

 

Together they are the authors of Beyond the Sword Maiden – A Storyteller’s Introduction to the Heroine’s Journey published by Parkhurst Brothers.

Climate Despair: Can Storytelling Offer a Path Toward Light?

with Judith Black

Wednesday, April 18th

at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern

Anyone who reads climate science can see the writing on the decaying and broken sea walls, the flooded streets, the draught-stricken, hardened soils of central Africa, and their insurance premiums. There is little good news and a Federal government pushing us even faster over the precipice. Here is the truth: One cannot live in despair. It is not a home that generates light, love, or movement.

Join Judith for this HSA teleconference during which we will collectively explore ways to use our art that both acknowledge and combat the darkness and bring all around us to paths of environmental action and healing.

Judith Black, one of America’s foremost storytellers, retells history from new perspectives, tickles familial dysfunction, offers ironic explorations of aging, and most recently has turned her skills towards our disrupted climate. As a Wheelock College graduate and former teacher she is able to draw storytelling through the educational landscape, showing its profound uses in cognitive, emotional, and social learning. Her work for adults has been featured twelve times at the National Storytelling Festival and on stages from the Montreal Comedy Festival to the Art Museum of Cape Town, SA. She is the winner of the Oracle Award, storytelling’s most coveted laurel, and was recently given the Brother Blue and Ruth Hill Award. Locally she originated and ran Bridging Live for 16 years, sings with Calla Lilly, is an active member of the Marblehead Harbor Rotary Club, 350.org, and Sustainable Marblehead. Presently, she is trying to figure out how to live without burning fossil fuels and teaches two classes annually:

www.tellingstoriestochildren.com

http://www.storiesalive.com/MakingStories.html

For more info: www.storiesalive.com

Love, Loss And The Stories We Tell

with Laura Packer

Wednesday, March 14th

at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern

If you love, you will grieve. Whether you lose a job you loved, a relationship you cherished, a person who made your heart sing, or a way of life, loss is woven into the fabric of our lives. It is part of the common language we all share. Grief is a universal response to loss and is healed by experiencing it and talking about it. Join Laura Packer as she shares her experiences using storytelling and writing to help her mend from a devastating loss, eventually leading to work using story as a tool to understand and integrate grief.

Laura Packer knows the best way to the truth is through a good story. A performing storyteller, writer, consultant, and coach, Laura has used the transformative power of writing and story to entertain, enlighten, solve problems and heal  from the 2014 loss of her husband. She has worked around the world. For more information please visit laurapacker.com.

Silk and Honey: Enchanting Stories of Love and Wealth

with Luisah Teish

Join us as author, storyteller and healer Luisah Teish shares with us folktales drawn from the romantic traditions of the African diaspora. Explore deities, ancestors, and spirits of nature as they interact with each other thru story and song to bring us the powers of attraction, fertility, abundance, and beauty.

Yeye Luisah Teish is a teacher, dancer, storyteller and high priestess. She is also an author, most notably of Jambalaya: The Natural Womans Book of Personal Charms and Practice Rituals. Born in New Orleans, Louisana, her father was an African Methodist Episcopal and her mother was a Catholic of Haitian, French and Choctaw heritage. Yeye Teish is an Iyanifa and Oshun chief in Yoruba tradition. Yeye Teish is one of the most well known Yoruba priestesses worldwide and is celebrated international in Goddess circles as a writer and ritual maker. She quite literally is a legendary woman of great character and exceeding positive impact for this generation and all time.

To learn more about Yeye Teish visit https://www.yeyeluisahteish.com

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Yeye Teish is offering a special storytelling Master Class for our HSA community here:

bit.ly/silkandhoneymc

Listening Beyond Privilege: Reaching across Culturally Constructed Boundaries to Hear, Honor and Preserve One Another’s Stories

with Milbre Burch and Berkley Hudson

Wednesday, January 17th

at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern

Growing up White in the racially-segregated, Jim Crow South, storyteller Milbre Burch and journalist Berkley Hudson have spent their lives listening to, honoring and preserving stories—from people whose experiences were like and unlike their own. In the late nineties, the couple became “accidental ethnographers,” when they were commissioned to create the Storytelling Project of the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University. In 200 hours of interviews with culture bearers and platform performers, they archived the diverse experiences of storytellers from Maine to Hawaii. Today, the two are college educators and activists. Their commitment to social justice keeps them doing the difficult work of reaching across culturally constructed borders, through deep listening and sharing of stories. The focus of this teleconference is to offer models for welcoming everyone’s stories of race, ethnicity and privilege to the listening table.

 

Milbre Burch is a GRAMMY-nominated spoken word recording artist , an internationally known performer and teaching artist, a published poet and writer, and a produced playwright. A storyteller in every sense of the word, she has been featured at the National Storytelling Festival eight times and holds a doctorate in Theatre from the University of Missouri. She has served as the performance review editor for Storytelling, Self, Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Storytelling Studies, and a convener of the Storytelling Section of the American Folklore Society as well as the Playwriting Symposium of the Mid-America Theatre Conference. Using storytelling strategies to strengthen communication skills, she teaches for the Office of Graduate Studies at the University of Missouri.

www.kindcrone.com

 

 

Berkley Hudson is an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism where he has taught since 2003. From 2015 to 2017, he served as founding chair of the Race Relations Committee of the University of Missouri. With Milbre Burch as his co-director, he oversaw the Storytelling Project of the Cotsen Children’s Library. He earned a mass communications doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he also received a doctoral certificate in folklore. For twenty-five years, including at the Los Angeles Times, he worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist. A media historian, he has been published in journals such as Southern Cultures and Literary Journalism Studies and served as editor-in-chief of Visual Communication Quarterly.

 

A Deeper Dive:

Milbre and Berkley were generous enough to share with us their bibliography for this session. If you’re not already on our teleconference email list, please sign up for it here and we will send it to you when it is available.

Storycare with Dan Yashinsky

Wednesday, December 13th

at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern  

After three years of working as the storyteller-in-residence at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Dan Yashinsky has developed an approach he calls “storycare.”  It means creating times and spaces throughout the healthcare environment where stories can be remembered, invented, shared, heard, and valued.  From palliative care to psychiatry to long-term care, the principles and practices of storycare can humanize a healthcare setting for staff, patients, residents, and family members.  This teleconference will introduce participants to the idea of storycare.

Dan Yashinsky is a storyteller and the author of Suddenly They Heard Footsteps – Storytelling for the Twenty-first Century and Swimming with Chaucer – A Storyteller’s Logbook.  In l999 he received the Jane Jacobs Prize for his work with storytelling in the community.  He is the storyteller-in-residence at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. For more information visit: https://tellery.com/

Voices of Our Ancestors: Remembering “A Power With” Through Story & Song

with Gemma B. Benton

November 15th, 2017 at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific

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Much like a thumbprint, our voice is a unique expression of identity and belonging. Our voice, both the literal sound as well the artistic expression contained in story serve as a living connection with our ancestors and to the generations to come. Join us as Gemma shares with us her experiences working with story and song in traditional healing programs for Native American and indigenous communities.

Special  Giveaway:  Gemma will be giving away one of her giclee, fine art prints. Perfect as a gift for you or for gift giving. To qualify, sign up here to receive email reminders and then be on the live call.

Gemma B. Benton  is a traditional Native American singer, spiritual activist, mixed media artist , storyteller and the new coordinator for our own Healing Story Alliance.  Through her transformational art workshops, Gemma shares stories and wisdom gathered during her twenty-seven years of working in Native American and indigenous communities. Gemma is the creator of the “Ancestors Journey” online creative course that uses storytelling, sacred song, art and ritual to empower people to heal the wounds passed down through the generations by our ancestors.

gemmabbenton.com

Boo-Tickle Tales: Stories that Teach Kids Resilience

Sherry Norfolk and Lyn Ford

October  18, 2017 at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific

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Not-so-scary stories for young children can serve a deeper purpose of immunizing children from fear, encouraging creative problem solving, offering coping mechanisms and building resilience, while being fun to tell and fun to hear. Join the authors of Boo-Tickle Tales (Parkhurst Brothers, 2016) to learn more about the multiple positive impacts of “scary” stories – and hear a story or two.

Special Book Giveaway: Parkhurst Brothers has generously provided 2 copies of Lyn & Sherry’s Boo Tickle Book for a giveaway on our show. Just sign up here and be on the call on October 18th.

 

storytellerlynford.com

www.sherrynorfolk.com

parkhurstbrothers.com