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“History is not the past, it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.” — James Baldwin
“...personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time.” — Carol Hanish
“Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.” — Salman Rushdie
In this highly participatory talk, we explored the power of personal storytelling by re-membering ourselves through the lens of the personal, the political, and the planetary. We navigated the perpetual tension between the individual and the systemic to honor our differences as we create new senses of belonging and liberatory power. i/you/we, matter.
Download the slide deck we used in this session and review the collective wisdom and resources shared during the session.
(Because of the highly participatory nature of this session, we recommend watching with a partner.)
Lawrence is a storyteller, narrative strategist, writer, and liberation worker who values love/justice, community, and transformation. His paid work includes serving as the Network Engagement Manager at the Center for Story-Based Strategy in addition to his facilitation and coaching work at lqb2&co. His unpaid work includes visionary fiction, (r)evolutionary uncling, community-focused healing work, and imagining/practicing/embodying post-patriarchal futures. He is the Board President of Resist, bakes a lot of bread, and meditated for ~162 hours in 2019. He has undergraduate and graduate degrees in City Planning from MIT and hopes one day all universities will be collectively-owned and democratically-controlled (or made obsolete). He lives on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag territory, often known as Boston.