"Courage Gives Us a Voice"

Fire Time, originally uploaded by jenleedotnet. It isn't easy being a story teller. People don't always receive our words as enthusiastically as a toddler at bedtime. Sometimes, when we tell our own stories, the people they involve don't agree with the telling, or the sharing. The stories we make up can be even more revealing than the ones that have really happened, whether we know it or not when they appear on our imagination's stage. Reading this passage was a great encouragement to me, and I gladly take all the encouragement I can get:

When we tell our stories, we change the world. I know that sounds dramatic, but I believe it. We'll never know how our stories might change someone's life--our children's, our friends', our parents', our partner's or maybe that of a stranger who hears the story down the line or reads it in a book. --Brené Brown, Ph. D., L.M.S.W in I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't)

Books of Wonder Madeleine L'Engle

Stories require voices to speak them and ears to hear them. Stories only foster connection when there is both someone to speak and someone to listen. . . . Courage gives us a voice and compassion gives us an ear. . . . But courage, especially the ordinary courage we need to speak out, is not simple or easily obtained. So often, we hear people say, "Just tell your story!" or "Speak your mind!" It's much more complicated than that. Sometimes we face real threats and consequences when we speak our minds or tell our stories. . . Sometimes compassion is listening to someone's story and other times it's sitting with her in her fear about not being ready to share.

Traceycommunity of courageyou