I Was Born A Storyteller

It's the most powerful coping tool I have.

There’s a picture of me as a chubby infant, pulled up and standing at a turned over basket, my toes digging into the orange-brown shag carpet below. A striped navy, white and orange shirt tugged over my belly, a drool spot just below the glistening drops reflecting off my chin. My reddish hair was sparse and spiky, and my round cheeks framed my mouth mid-babble as I held court and narrated in my own language, with the confidence that my audience fully understood me.

I was born a storyteller.

I called out a fairy tale from my own imagination to the fish in the sea, off the end of a dock, as my dad tells it. I can’t remember how old and where- either 4 and in California, or 5 and in Hawaii. I am lucky to have had a childhood where I could have stood with my dad on docks overlooking the Pacific Ocean in more than one place, for more than a few years.

Storytelling has shaped my entire life, my entire being. Even when I’m not awake, my brain never stops creating stories with curated details, feelings, and human connections I analyze and put away throughout the day- always extrapolating into narratives that are forever new and familiar at the same time. There are whole worlds that live in my dreams that I have visited for as long as I can remember, and they don’t exist when I wake.

Psychology may make the case that this super power evolved in me as a result of traumas. Storytelling is the most powerful coping tool I have.

I have the ability to escape into vivid fantasy lands I’m familiar with, no matter where I’m at that’s not familiar. I’ve moved a lot in my life.

Conveying stories to others has long felt like a form of deep connection to me. You don’t need to know much about, or even have much in common with someone to strike a spark through a good story.

No matter what goes right, wrong, left, or sideways, I can craft it into an entertaining tale- a particularly useful skill when life is a total shit show. It’s no coincidence that I have blogged through the entirety of my motherhood. It’s how I’ve coped, and how I’ve connected.

I wasn’t born into generational wealth. Instead, I carry the burden of generational mental health traumas. I’ve faced a lot of challenges all on my own.

But, through it all, I’ve had the ability to soar above the moment and look at the larger landscape. I’ve been able to weave every heartbreak and hiijinks into a greater story. For better or worse, I’ve been able to connect the dots of humanity and trauma to the people who have loved me, and the people who have hurt me. I have a gift for tying all the pieces together and creating meaning out of anything.

That babbling infant became an imaginative preschooler. Some of my earliest memories are vivid visions of make believe play lands I entertained myself in- a lions cage that was actually the legs of a dining room table is one.

That preschooler became a girl who wrote creative stories in gifted & talented 1st grade class about coconuts and rainbows that talked to her dad while he was out to sea.

That girl became a comedian when she learned that making her mom’s new boyfriend laugh made her feel accepted by him. And that girl became a teen who found a safe escape for her many emotions on a stage or in front of an audience, telling someone else’s story while processing her own.

40-something now, in what feels like the fight of my life somedays, and I often pause to acknowledge how grateful I am that I was born a storyteller. There are days, like today, that my brain makes it hard for me to get the words out (I’ve been writing this for 36 hours, off and on, at this point), but the stories live there until I can push through.

And even if I never do get them out for the world or anyone else to hear or read, they live like silky ribbons inside of me, floating freely until something happens to me or for me that pulls on something familiar. They tie themselves to pains, joys, hopes, heartbreaks, emotions I file away as I move throughout my day. They help me make sense of what often feels too close to understand.

I was born to teen parents, into poverty, a family history of mental illness, addiction & suicide. I was born in the 80s and came of age at the height of Playboy and Girls Gone Wild culture. I was born into a generation that would be given the reigns to the internet while just young enough to feel at home on it, but old enough to experience first-hand all the lessons we’d come to warn others about someday.

But, I was born a storyteller.
And I count it all as great content.