so the story goes.

I have long been enamored by stories. I love stories from the past. I soak up my family stories. These are the stories of immigrants and housewives, divorces and births, stories that make up my family's history, the roots that start deep and lead up to me. I love hearing a funny story, an adventure story, a love story. My friend's and my family's stories are where I get to experience their worlds; the world of traveling through Europe or being in the Navy or becoming a new mother, through the eyes of the people I love the most. Lately, I've even loved the sad stories. The stories that pour out of people who have also buried someone they love or seen grief up close are becoming some of my favorite kinds of stories. I love hearing a good story and I love telling a good story. I've even decided recently that I'd rather call myself a storyteller than a writer. Writing takes work and practice and discipline. But storytelling? That comes as easy to me as breathing.  Lately this love has been growing in me, stirring into something that feels important.

I think there is power in sharing our stories. It's where we meet and laugh and cry and heal and we are reassured that we are not alone in thinking or feeling the way we do. It's where we get to experience awe and wonder in a world where awe and wonder are sometimes hard to come by. It’s where we connect in community, where we strip away some of the put-togetherness and get down to some of the realness.  And somehow I can't seem to shake the notion that this is big. Telling the stories is a big, important thing.

I'm working on a project, something that I'll keep under wraps until it becomes a little clearer to me exactly what it is. But I'll give you this clue: it has to do with telling stories. And while I work out what this project will look like, I figured this might be a good place to practice telling some stories. I suppose that's what I do already, I tell stories of homecomings and home brewing and stories about a Chocolate Lab. But I think there are bigger stories swirling around inside me; stories of grieving and family and marriage and growing up, stories about the world around me. Don't worry, there will still be stories of that Chocolate Lab, but if I seem a little more nostalgic or a little more sentimental, it's because I can't ignore the stories that keep swelling up inside me.

Thanks for reading along as I tell my story.