our story-lines

We are all embedded in a network of connections. There are invisible story-lines running between all of us. Through those lines flow all the influencing beliefs, feelings, and behaviors that shape each of the individual story characters and the whole community the story is set in. 

How do we fight the social norms like exploitation, domination, and extraction that lead to destructive behaviors like suicide, trafficking, and abuse of self and others? We must first recognize and accept that each of us plays a role in the health of our friends, families, neighbors, and communities. Their story is THE story and THE story is OUR story. It is our mundane daily life - our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions - that contributes to trafficking, suicide, and abuse OR lives marked by belonging, generosity, wholeness, and thriving. 

There are fabulous organizations that need our money and time. Donate and volunteer if that fits with your capacity. But by themselves, nonprofits and professional change agents are not close to enough. The only way we will see a reduction in the unhealthy and destructive is if we increase the healthy and constructive in our interconnected network - starting with ourselves. We need to not just tell but become a better story. 

So the question is, who are you and what is your role in the story? How are you connected to the stories of harm and the stories of healing? How do you increase the strength of your influence where it needs to be strong? How do you transform your harmful influences into healing ones?

Answering this question is how we become the conquering hero, the defeated hero, the mistaken villain, or the archenemy. And all the characters are present and potential in all of us all the time - waiting to be nurtured and released.

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