My great-grandmother once visited a fortune teller. As a practical and unsentimental woman, working as a maid at the local boarding house, it was out of character for her to seek out anything mystical, let alone a small-town psychic in the habit of serving passing tourists. But on that day, my great-grandmother was her guest, drinking tea in a little room, in that little boarding house off Main Street. My family doesn’t know much about what was asked, or what was answered. But we do know that at one point, the fortune teller looked at my great-grandmother, and told her that one day, someone in her family would become a writer. And while her daughter, my grandmother, told me many stories as I grew up, she did not share the one about Great-Grandma and the Fortune Teller. Not until I told her I was writing a play.

I’m a storyteller. And my stories often begin with my family; generations of women living in villages in Southeast Alaska. The stories usually start small, with a single moment, or memory; an adventure with my children, a photo of my mother, a tale my grandmother told me. Some of my stories are funny, some are heavy with sorrow. Some of my stories are told in 15 minutes on stage to an audience in a dark theater, and others are spoken by actors, living my life through the lips of new characters. But no matter whether I perform my stories for an audience or write them for a reader, whether they’ve been crafted and revised or are improvised in the moment, these stories all grow beyond that single inspiring memory.

Because my stories are not simply word pictures of a moment in the past; they are a chance to make that past present. To relive my family’s hopes and to share the burden of their tragedies. To know their life by making it real in mine, and understanding how their experiences made them.

So, Adventure with My Children is also...learning that a son is different than who we imagined.

The Picture of My Mother is also...wondering how to love a parent who died before we could know them.

Grandma’s Tale is also...discovering the mysticism and fortunes and faith we inherit through generations.

Not just ‘me’, but ‘we’. Because my stories don’t just grow beyond the moments that inspired them, but also grow beyond the storyteller too. Telling a story is a chance to share a moment, and a lesson, and a life, but it is also a chance to feel the lives and experience of an audience reflected back. For the audience to feel seen as much as the storyteller.

A story is also...a storyteller sharing the life they live, and an audience hearing themselves in it.