Storytelling with Richard Stone

Michelle: once again to decluttering 55 plus with Michelle Passoff. I am Michelle Passoff. This is the place to come for news you can use to get things done in life without anything in the way on the road ahead. This is a podcast where we’ll talk about letting go of conventional clutter like clothes and papers and other paraphernalia so that stuff doesn’t get in your way.

Michelle: But that’s not all We will pull out from under the carpet other areas of life that are confounding and confronting, and we’ll call that clutter. Instead of brushing those topics out of the way to be dealt with later or never, our aim is to talk about it, gain clarity, get excited, move into action and be complete.

Michelle: We’re going to change our minds about what stops us and open space to keep going. Topics will include writing your life story, digital decluttering, relationship, where you’ll move and what you’ll do next in life. And we’ll also dive into financial matters and everything we need to know about making your final arrangements.

Michelle: In the end, we’ll hope those conversations will help invigorate your life and create a legacy, not a mess. So let’s get started. when we think about what we’re going to leave to the next generation, we commonly think of who we’re going to give money to and how much.

Michelle: Or, who gets the favorite set of china or grandma’s silverware? We often overlook the value of leaving a life story, so the next generation can know your experience, understand its history, and gain some wisdom. Let’s talk about why it’s important to leave a life story.

Michelle: I’m so excited to introduce to you Richard Stone. Richard and I met for the first time more than 20 years ago on a ferry from Block Island in Rhode Island. And here he is. All these years later to share with us his experience as a leading authority on the importance and art of storytelling, please welcome the author of the healing art of storytelling and story intelligence, Richard Stone, Richard, Richard, let’s get at it.

Richard Stone: Your line. Yeah,

Michelle: first tell us how did you come to be an expert on storytelling? How did it become your passion?

Richard Stone: Yeah, it was not something I grew up saying, Hey, I want to be a storyteller when I grow up. But a number of years ago, I have a dear friend, a Haiti Schleifer. And we were involved with an organization that was trying to get Jews and Arabs together to have a meaningful and peaceful conversation to explore their stories, really.

Richard Stone: And and out of that, we used to do fundraisers and someone said, you guys are very funny. You should do an evening of comedy. And we said, yeah. It was a fundraiser. We said, okay, and a committee got together and this was in Orlando, Florida, Winter Park. And and we worked all summer on our best jokes.

Richard Stone: And at the end of the summer, I invited a good friend of mine over who had a lot of theater experience. I said, we’d like to kind of do a run through with you and see what you think. And at the end he looked at us and said, don’t do this. You’ll humiliate yourselves. And serendipitously, I was out backpacking just shortly after that out west and I’m flying back with a couple people and they said, Hey, have you ever been to the National Storytelling Festival?

Richard Stone: And I said, what’s that? I had no idea what that was. And we had dinner, you know, we speak, we’d be kind of delayed by me or I invited them over. They haven’t had a camper that they were going to drive up and said, you want to come? And I said, sure. We went up and there I’m sitting listening to a guy named Michael Cotter, who is a farmer from Minnesota, whose life experiences are probably as far away as Anything for mine.

Richard Stone: And I have an epiphany. I’m thinking this is what I’m supposed to be doing is telling stories. And I came back. I said to Haiti, what we need to do is tell our life story. So we created, she said, you’re right. And we, we sat down and started writing and we created a show called stick and stone.

Michelle: That’s funny,

Richard Stone: which were stories about our growing up, but we also brought in two characters.

Richard Stone: One was a, an amalgamation of my grandfathers. I called him Morris Zavitsky and hers was a amalgamation of her grandmother’s Edna Zippelbaum. And so we would change characters occasionally and, and talk as we were, although we were that character. And and so some of it was stories that we grew up with about, you know, our, our grandparents and weaving those together with our own personal stories.

Richard Stone: And it was a big hit. We had about 250 people at nightclub and. And I was in the ad business at the time, which was a, a kind of storytelling and my business was for sale soon after that the business sold. I met my wife, Elizabeth, who you met there on that ferry on Block Island. And and my life went, uh, you know, took a quick right turn, 90 degree turn, and I dove into the world of story.

Richard Stone: So, and it’s, there’s a lot more to it, but that’s the beginning. Can you

Michelle: define what is storytelling?

Richard Stone: Well, I think fundamentally I mean, storytelling, if you say the word storytelling, it can mean a lot of things. Exactly. Uh, we think about entertainment, you know. Uh, you go to the movies, you read a novel, uh, that’s good storytelling.

Richard Stone: Hopefully if it’s the author or the producer or director, you know, done a good job, scriptwriters done a good job. But at a personal level, storytelling is about sharing our life experiences with others. That’s sort of a simple term, kind of a, kind of a boiling it down. It is sitting down with others, And in an authentic way, uh, reminiscing, sharing the things that, uh, have impacted our lives, maybe brought us pleasure, some things that have been difficult and challenging that we’ve gotten through, that we can now look back on and go, boy, that was a tough time, but you know, here I am, I made it through that.

Richard Stone: So not,

Michelle: excuse me, not all storytelling is memoir writing or memoir.

Richard Stone: Yeah. We were talking earlier about that. Yeah. You know, the memoir is a, is a, is an art form, I think it’s but it’s, it’s writing a book and I don’t think everyone’s a writer, you know, or, or even a good writer. So I don’t think that we should task everyone to say you should write your memoir.

Richard Stone: Now some people have had some pretty darn interesting lives. And there’s a rabbi I worked with, David Zeller. I got to know real well for a number of years and he, he had a really fascinating life. He had been a Sadhu, you know, the begging bull in India. His parents were Jungian psychologists. He sat on Carl Jung’s lap at one point, he had met all these interesting people and he ended up, that, that story was really interesting and worth sharing.

Richard Stone: But, you know, for your family to leave memories of things that you’ve gone through, I think is a great, invaluable service to them, but it’s not the only form. Uh, some people are just better orally. So if you want, if you want to capture your parents or your grandparents or great grandparents stories sometimes just sitting down with them with a recorder, not with a, not with a video, you know, video can be very intimidating for people because they know how I look, you know, my hair doesn’t look so great, you know, and, and sometimes people, you know, at the end of their life, they don’t look so good and, but their voice is still vibrant and still whole.

Richard Stone: And so sometimes it’s better just to audio record the stories. So, so whether you, whether you

Michelle: write the story. Or videotape the story or audio tape the story. Why is it meaningful?

Richard Stone: Well, I think that the process of telling our stories becomes even more important as we sort of, you know, somewhere in our fifties, we kind of, we, we go around a turn age wise and it becomes more important to look back than to look forward.

Richard Stone: And we start spending time reflecting on the things that have happened in the past, uh, you know, are the horizons for us in the future are, you know, getting shorter and shorter are the things that we’re going to be able to accomplish and. And so I think the life demands on us are different spiritually and physically.

Richard Stone: And so the process of reflecting on our life gives us a sense of its meaning and cohesion and coherence. How, how have things fit together? What, what has this journey been all about? You know, you know, gosh, I’ve, I’ve had all these weird things happen or these difficult things and these good things. How do they all knit together?

Richard Stone: And in the process of reflecting on them, we make meaning, we find relevance, we find connectivity we find aliveness. And, and sometimes, you know, when we’re going through something, you know, it doesn’t seem significant. It’s only later and telling about it, that it actually can nurture us in a very profound way.

Michelle: And besides the benefit that it gives to you, what is the benefit that it has for future generations?

Richard Stone: Well, there’s a lot of work that’s been done on what’s been called intergenerational storytelling. And, uh, and our stories, we don’t always realize that I call them our narrative assets. We have these wonderful assets that we’ve accumulated in our life and we, we can’t put a dollar value on them, but they are, they’re richer than that.

Richard Stone: They’re more valuable than that. And it turns out there’s some wonderful researchers. I’m in the Atlanta area here at Emory Marshall 30 years looking to intergenerational storytelling. And they found that, you know, when we’re born, we don’t come into life with a story. We have no stories. Now, we’re not tabula rasa.

Richard Stone: I think we come into life with a lot of pre programming and God knows what, you know, we bring along with us, but we don’t have stories. And so we are born into a story that’s already left the station and is ongoing, and we don’t have any stories about overcoming challenges, for example. But our parents and grandparents have those stories.

Richard Stone: And when we hear those stories, they become our stories as a child, as a young person. And, uh, so when we face a challenge, you think, you know, well, you know, grandpa, you know, survived the, you know, this and that and that, if he got through that, then, then maybe I can get through this little challenge that I have.

Richard Stone: And so until we get older enough and, you know, accumulated enough experience where we have our own reference points, those stories are invaluable. And they found that children who know their family’s stories. It’s the best predictor of them having resilience and high self esteem. No better predictor. So it, so, you know, for parents.

Richard Stone: and grandparents to share their stories. Now, you don’t have to do it, you know, in a formal setting around the fire. It’s often, you know, cutting vegetables, making a dinner, you know, and, and, you know, and just say, oh, you know, this reminds me when grandma, you know, used to make this dish, you know, and then you start telling.

Richard Stone: And often we don’t think our kids are listening, but they are listening. They’re, they’re, they’re hearing those stories. It helps, it helps

Michelle: them know who they are. Right.

Richard Stone: That’s right. Gives them a sense of belonging. I had a student years ago when I was teaching at the university in Orlando. And, uh, he was somewhat depressed and he had come from a divorce family.

Richard Stone: He knew nothing. Uh, he had no relationship with his father and he had an Irish last name. And I said, go find out who your people

Michelle: are.

Richard Stone: And his first name was Alexander. And the next week he came back and he was a changed person. He found out his people came from such and such a village in Ireland. And, and, and this village has a history.

Richard Stone: And, and suddenly he found his people and he, you know, and he looked up Alexander the great, who, you know, had quite an interesting life and suddenly he realized he’d been named that he was, that was his namesake and. He suddenly felt a sense of connectivity to the past. He had a sense of his place in the world and we need that.

Richard Stone: And once, once your

Michelle: parents or your grandparents are gone, you can’t ask them the questions that suddenly occur to you. So, um, better to get those questions answered now.

Richard Stone: Yeah, uh, you know, I, I think of trying to recover those past stories is like archaeologists, you know, they find a little pottery shard, you know, and it’s this little piece of clay and they go, what was this?

Richard Stone: Well, I think maybe it was a bowl. And here’s another piece of clay over here. And how do we put them together? You know, I grew up with a story when I was growing up that my grandfather, uh, Stole his brother’s ticket to come to America. And of course I, you know, I never, I never sat down and said, we didn’t call him grandpa.

Richard Stone: We call him George by his first name. I said, George, you know, what was that about? You know, no, no, no one ever explained what that was about. And, uh, and then George, you know, developed some dementia. It was, you know, by the time I was a teenager, you know, he would not have been able to share that story. So no one knows about that story, but there is a, there is a kind of a postscript to that story.

Richard Stone: I was talking to my aunt and uncle. My uncle said, well the question was, did he, did he ever pay to bring his brother over? You know, that’s a really remarkable thing. And indeed he did. But what happened, my uncle grew up in Lima, Ohio during the depression, and there was a man who lived above the building that my grandfather owned for his janitorial business, who sort of was the superintendent of the building to care of things.

Richard Stone: And it was from another country, didn’t speak very good English. And when the man died, He discovered it was his uncle. So, you know, what was that about? He brought it, he did bring his brother over, but maybe by the time he could pay, because my grant, my grandfather, George came over at age 13. So maybe he brought him over 15 years later when he had finally earned enough money to send back.

Richard Stone: And by then it was an older brother. He was probably in his thirties at that point in time, God knows. And he couldn’t make it in America. And, and George must have felt some terrible shame about it. His brother, you know, his brother wasn’t kind of with, who knows. So I ended up making up a story about that, trying to imagine what it was like for George at 13, hearing about his brother talking about America and, you know, and, and, and, and when his brother came home with a ticket and said he finally earned the money for the ticket, George couldn’t resist.

Michelle: Well, you, you, you bring it, you bring up a good point and that’s why I call it telling your side of the life story because something could happen and everybody in the family can have a different take on what occurred. And if, uh, you get to tell your life story, you get your, um, side of the story is what lasts from generation to generation and not hearsay from somebody else.

Michelle: So,

Richard Stone: yeah, you know, there’s no, like, uh, you know, video replay. There’s been a wonderful commercial playing where some people were having an argument about something that happened. And I said, okay, let’s go, let’s look at the replay. And they come in with a little computer and go, well, yeah, see what happened.

Richard Stone: We don’t have that. And, and the truth is that experience is mostly interpretive. We often think it’s perceptual. But it’s interpretive. So if you have a father who’s a very strict person, one, one sibling thinks that father, you know, always is on my case and the other sibling kind of needed the structure and was, you know, had, was thankful that dad set some limits and they will grow up with two very different stories about the same things that happened.

Richard Stone: And it’s not that one story is true and the other is false. They’re just different ways of seeing it. They had different relevance and meaning for each of those siblings. So we have to understand that, that there’s, you know, cause you know, siblings get together, you know, over the holidays and they’re talking about something that happened.

Richard Stone: And, oh, dad never did that. Oh, where were you? I wasn’t there. Yeah, yeah, yes, you were there, you know, but you know, we don’t remember it in the same ways.

Michelle: What, at what age do you think is a good time to start thinking about telling your life story? We only have a few more minutes. So if you could, uh, I

Richard Stone: think this becomes the task of those of us who are in their fifties, sixties, and certainly, you know, moving up beyond that age wise, that’s a time for reflection and harvesting.

Richard Stone: It’s beginning to harvest your life. And, um, not to say that you don’t have a lot of life ahead of you and that it can be rich and rewarding. But there’s, uh, it becomes, I think, spiritually an important task. For us to sometimes clean up the stuff that’s sort of from the past. Good point. You know, we may, we may be schlepping, you know, along with us.

Richard Stone: You, you, you’re about decluttering stuff. We’re maybe schlepping along with resentments and anger or things that happened where we’re still, you know, we’re still activated by those things. It’s time to sort of clean that stuff up and put it on the shelf and sort of be able to look at it and go, okay, well, that was not an easy experience, but it no longer, it no longer has me by the throat, you know, and there, therein

Michelle: lies the topic of your book, the healing art of storytelling and storytelling intelligence by Richard stones.

Michelle: So get yourself focused on the merit importance of sharing your life story with future generations. If you have comments or questions or your own experience to share, please be in touch with us by going to our website, www. decluttering55plus. com, navigate to the Let’s Connect page, and send us a message.

Michelle: Like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram and subscribe to us on YouTube. And by all means, rate us on the podcast platform where you’re listening from today, so we can continue to build this community and keep the conversation going. Thanks so much for being with us today and have a clutter free day.

Michelle: Bye now.